but still reality, and, as such, preferable to all the baseless visions of fancy, all the glitter and glamour and illusion of romance. We mortals must have our dreams; doubtless it is for a good purpose that they are so fair and sweet, that their duration is so short, the waking from them so bitter and forlorn. But at last most of us find ourselves disenchanted, weary, hopeless, memory-haunted, and seeking sanctuary after all, like Guinevere, when Lancelot had gone
“Back to his land, but she to Almesbury
Fled all night long by glimmering waste and weald,
And heard the spirits of the waste and weald
Moan as she fled, or thought she heard them moan,—
And in herself she moaned—‘Too late! too late!’”
What a picture of desolation and despair! Mocking phantoms all about her, now gibing, now pitying, now goading her to the recklessness of despair. Before her, darkness uncheered by a single beacon; behind her, the sun of life and love gone down to rise no more, and, lifting helpless, hopeless eyes above,
“A blot in heaven, the raven flying high.”
Deep must be the guilt for which such hours as these are insufficient to atone!
But the queen’s penance hath only just begun, for the black drop is not yet wrung out of her heart, and even in her cloister at Almesbury it is remorse rather than repentance that drives the iron into her soul. As it invariably does in moments of extreme feeling, the master-passion takes possession of her once more, and “my Lancelot” comes back in all his manly beauty and his devoted tenderness, so touching and so prized, that for him, too, it must make the sorrow of a lifetime. Again, she sees him in the lists, best, bravest, and knightliest lance of all the Round Table. Again, sitting fair and courtly and gentle among dames in hall, his noble face none the less winsome, be sure, to her, for that she could read on it the stamp of sorrow set there by herself as her own indelible seal.