The Tale of Balen

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Down in a sweet small garden, fair
With flowerful joy in the ardent air,
He saw, and raged with loathing, where
She lay with love-dishevelled hair
Beneath a broad bright laurel tree
And clasped in amorous arms a knight,
The unloveliest that his scornful sight
Had dwelt on yet; a shame the bright
Broad noon might shrink to see.

And thence in wrathful hope he turned,
Hot as the heart within him burned,
To meet the knight whose love, so spurned
And spat on and made nought of, yearned
And dreamed and hoped and lived in vain,
And said, “I have found her sleeping fast,”
And led him where the shadows cast
From leaves wherethrough light winds ran past
Screened her from sun and rain.

But Garnysshe, seeing, reeled as he stood
Like a tree, kingliest of the wood,
Half hewn through: and the burning blood
Through lips and nostrils burst aflood:
And gathering back his rage and might
As broken breakers rally and roar
The loud wind down that drives off shore,
He smote their heads off: there no more
Their life might shame the light.

Then turned he back toward Balen, mad
With grief, and said, “The grief I had
Was nought: ere this my life was glad:
Thou hast done this deed: I was but sad
And fearful how my hope might fare:
I had lived my sorrow down, hadst thou
Not shown me what I saw but now.”
The sorrow and scorn on Balen’s brow
Bade silence curb him there.

And Balen answered: “What I did
I did to hearten thee and bid
Thy courage know that shame should rid
A man’s high heart of love that hid
Blind shame within its core: God knows,
I did, to set a bondman free,
But as I would thou hadst done by me,
That seeing what love must die to see
Love’s end might well be woe’s.”

“Alas,” the woful weakling said,
“I have slain what most I loved: I have shed
The blood most near my heart: the head
Lies cold as earth, defiled and dead,
That all my life was lighted by,
That all my soul bowed down before,
And now may bear with life no more:
For now my sorrow that I bore
Is twofold, and I die.”

Then with his red wet sword he rove
His breast in sunder, where it clove
Life, and no pulse against it strove,
So sure and strong the deep stroke drove
Deathward: and Balen, seeing him dead,
Rode thence, lest folk would say he had slain
Those three; and ere three days again
Had seen the sun’s might wax and wane,
Far forth he had spurred and sped.

And riding past a cross whereon
Broad golden letters written shone,
Saying, “No knight born may ride alone
Forth toward this castle,” and all the stone
Glowed in the sun’s glare even as though
Blood stained it from the crucified
Dead burden of one that there had died,
An old hoar man he saw beside
Whose face was wan as woe.

“Balen the Wild,” he said, “this way
Thy way lies not: thou hast passed to-day
Thy bands: but turn again, and stay
Thy passage, while thy soul hath sway
Within thee, and through God’s good power
It will avail thee:” and anon
His likeness as a cloud was gone,
And Balen’s heart within him shone
Clear as the cloudless hour.

Nor fate nor fear might overcast
The soul now near its peace at last.
Suddenly, thence as forth he past,
A mighty and a deadly blast
Blown of a hunting-horn he heard,
As when the chase hath nobly sped.
“That blast is blown for me,” he said,
“The prize am I who am yet not dead,”
And smiled upon the word.