Oh, King!—great King
Afar in that pleasant place—
(Sleeping in Avalon,
Island of Queens—)
What are thy dreams?
Where no sound cometh at all
Save the lapping of waves,
Of the lake's waves lapping the shore;
And the moving of winds
Stirring a rustle and ripple of leaves—
An infinite rustle and ripple of leaves—
And lifting a little, a little thy wide-strewn hair
Fadeless and gold—
What are thy dreams?
There where no bird sings,
Nor is any bruit by thy head
Save only the singing of Queens—
Seven and sad—
Singing of swords and of war,
Singing of Carleon—
Singing a magical lay,
Sweeter than lutes,
A song made of magic by Merlin
Dead in the wood....
What are thy dreams, oh King!—
Arthur—thy dreams?
Tristram is dead, and Gawain.
Galahad gone, and Sir Bors.
Merlin is dead in the wood.
The base peasant tramples the mire
That once was the heart and the lips
Of Mordred the base and the liar.
The wind of the Breton coast,
Stormy and sad,
Has blown for a thousand years
The dust of that Knight—
Launcelot's dust—
Dust of his bones—
To and fro in the roads—
And the dust of his sword
Blows in the eyes of brave men passing that way
And stings them to tears.
Oh, dread King, what are thy dreams?
Guinevere is but a name—
Frail, and lovely, and sad.
All whom thou lovedst are gone.
Beauty availed them not;
Courage, nor pride, nor desire.
The sound of their singing is dumb;
The sword is broken in twain;
Magic to folly is turned;
Even love might not avail.
Only the King liveth still—
Only the King
Liveth and dreams.
Only the heart above self—
Only the heart steadfast and wise
Liveth forever in Avalon,
Hearing a song
Always of swords and of war,
But dreaming of Peace,
Dreaming of Honour, oh King!
Dreaming great dreams.
January 1.
The Little Room.
I remember that long ago when I used to be made to memorize Campbell's sentimental lines on The Exile, beginning,
"There came to the beach a poor exile of Erin"—
they only called forth my unsympathetic infantile jeers; but last spring I went home. Suddenly, as we passed along the tawny marshes lying like great dun lions by the edge of the misty gulf, I realized that for twenty discontented years I too had been suffering the pangs of the Exile. Memories and emotions, so long disused as to be almost forgotten, boiled up with the impetuosity of geysers. Possessions of my secret life that I think I was never really conscious of at all came to life. I haven't the least idea, for example, why the buoyant feathery boughs of the first Southern cedar I saw made me strongly wish to weep lovely, sentimental tears, but I knew at once why I had invariably felt bored with the conventional admiration of mountains. Why, indeed, should scenery only be important when perpendicular? To my mind, to have the landscape getting up on its hind legs and hiding the view is simply tiresome. Here one could see everything—could open one's lungs and breathe what the Creoles used to call la grande air, and let one's heart go out to the land.
You blessed mother country! Those people where I have lived so long seem not to care particularly for their birthplaces. Their patriotism is satisfied by an immense political abstraction and a striped flag. I have always suspected that if one took off the heads of such folk and looked down inside one would find inside only wheels and coiled springs, instead of flesh and blood. David Yandell used to say, "I'm for the Yandells against the whole world, but if it's between the Yandells and Dave, then I'm for Dave!" One might be for that political abstraction against the world, but between that abstraction and Louisiana, then I'm for Louisiana.
I began to suspect too that some of my heresies and revolts had really been caused by the bitterness of exile, though from the very beginning I have seen the King without his mantle. When my elders handed out to me the accepted platitudes in answer to my early attempts to realize the world in which I moved, I stared at them "in a wild surmise," the aforesaid conventionalities appearing to me to be so at variance with the facts as I saw them. They appeared to me—these elders—to be imagining a King's cloak to cover the world as it really was; to be neglecting and minimizing the things really worth while; to be inventing ideals and standards not in themselves noble.
I struggled long against the mask and domino which muffled words and impeded action, but time and the years have made me more patient. I have grown to see that they may have their uses. The average man shrinks aghast from the naked truth, even when it is beautiful. There is a sort of universal prudery that shrinks from the nude in life as well as in art. Perhaps these universal draperies cover as much that is repulsive as it does of the beautiful.