Grinn'd the grim chief, vouchsafing no reply;132
The knight resumed—"Your pleasant looks bespeak
A mind as gracious;—may I ask you why
You fish for Christians in King Arthur's creek?"
"The kings of creeks," replied that hideous man,
"Are we, the Vikings and the sons of Ran!
"Your beacon fires allured us to your strands,133
The dastard herdsmen fled before our feet,
Thee, Odin's raven guided to our hands;
Thrice happy man, Valhalla's boar to eat!
The raven's choice suggests it's God's idea,
And marks thee out—a sacrifice to Freya!"
As spoke the Viking, over Gawaine's head134
Circled the raven with triumphal caw;
Then o'er the cliffs, still hoarse with glee, it fled.
Thrice a deep breath the knight relieved did draw,
Fair seem'd the voyage—pleasant seem'd the haven;
"Bless'd saints," he cried, "I have escaped the raven!"
BOOK VII.
ARGUMENT.
Arthur and the Lady of the Lake—They land on the Meteor Isle—which then sinks to the Halls below—Arthur beholds the Forest springing from a single stem—He tells his errand to the Phantom, and rejects the fruits that It proffers him in lieu of the Sword—He is conducted by the Phantom to the entrance of the caves, through which he must pass alone—He reaches the Coral Hall of the Three Kings—The Statue crowned with thorns—The Asps and the Vulture, and the Diamond Sword—The choice of the Three Arches—He turns from the first and second arch, and beholds himself, in the third, a corpse—The sleeping King rises at Arthur's question—"if his death shall be in vain?"—The Vision of times to be—Cœur de Lion and the age of Chivalry—The Tudors—Henry VII.—the restorer of the line of Arthur and the founder of civil Freedom—Henry VIII. and the Revolution of Thought—Elizabeth and the Age of Poetry—The union of Cymrian and Saxon, under the sway of "Crowned Liberty"—Arthur makes his choice, and attempts, but in vain, to draw the Sword from the Rock—The Statue with the thorn-wreath addresses him—Arthur called upon to sacrifice the Dove—His reply—The glimpse of Heaven—The trance which succeeds, and in which the King is borne to the sea shores.
As when, in Autumn nights and Arctic skies,1
An angel makes the cloud his noiseless car,
And, through cerulean silence, silent flies
From antique Hesper to some dawning star,
So still, so swift, along the windless tides
Her vapour-sail the Phantom Lady guides.
Along the sheen, along the glassy sheen,2
Amid the lull of lucent night they go;
Till, in the haven of an islet green,
Murmuring through reeds, the gentle waters flow:
The shooting pinnace gains the gradual strand,
Hush'd as a shadow glides the Shape to land.
The Cymrian, following, scarcely touch'd the shore3
When slowly, slowly sunk the meteor-isle,
Fathom on fathom, to the sparry floor
Of alabaster shaft and porphyr-pile,
Built as by Nereus for his own retreat,
Or the Nymph-mother of the silver feet.[1]