But no account could anxious love obtain,24
Nor curious wonder, of the portents seen:
"Bootless his search," he lightly said, "and vain
As haply had the uncourteous summons been.
Some mocking sport, perchance, of merry May."
He ceased; and, shuddering, turn'd his looks away.
Now back, alas! less comely than they went,25
Drop, one by one, the seekers from the chace,
With mangled plumes and mantles dreadly rent;—
Sore bleed the Loves in Elphin's blooming face:
Madoc, whose dancing scarcely brush'd the dew,
O grief! limps, crippled by a stump of yew!
In short, such pranks had brier and bramble play'd,26
And stock and stone, with vest, and face, and limb,
That had some wretch denied the place was made
For sprites, a sprite had soon been made of him!
And sure, nought less than some demoniac power
Had looks so sweet bewitch'd to lines so sour.
But shame and anger vanish'd when they saw27
Him whose warm smile a life had well repaid,
For noble hearts a noble chief can draw
Into that circle where all self doth fade;
Lost in the sea a hundred waters roll,
And subject natures merge in one great soul.
Now once again quick question, brief reply,28
"What saw, what heard the King?" Nay, gentles, what
Saw or heard ye?"—"The forest and the sky,
The rustling branches,"—"And the Phantom not?
No more," quoth Arthur, "of a thriftless chace.
For cheer so stinted brief may be the grace.
"But see, the sun descendeth down the west,29
And graver cares to Carduel now recall:
Gawaine, my steed;—Sweet ladies, gentle rest,
And dreams of happy morrows to ye all."
Now stirs the movement on the busy plain;
To horse—to boat; and homeward winds the train.
O'er hill, down stream, the pageant fades away,30
More and more faint the plash of dipping oar;
Voices, and music, and the steed's shrill neigh,
From the grey twilight dying more and more;
Till over stream and valley, wide and far,
Reign the sad silence and the solemn star.
Save where, like some true poet's lonely soul,31
Careless who hears, sings on the unheeded fountain;
Save where the thin clouds wanly, slowly roll
O'er the mute darkness of the forest mountain—
Where, haply, busied with unholy rite,
Still glides that Phantom, and dismays the night.
Sleep, the sole angel left of all below,32
O'er the lull'd city sheds the ambrosial wreaths,
Wet with the dews of Eden; Bliss and Woe
Are equals, and the lowest slave that breathes
Under the shelter of those healing wings,
Reigns, half his life, in realms too fair for Kings.
Too fair those realms for Arthur; long he lay33
An exiled suppliant at the gate of dreams,
And vex'd, and wild, and fitful as a ray
Quivering upon the surge of stormy streams;
Thought broke in glimmering trouble o'er his breast,
And found no billow where its beam could rest.[4]