The Dread Voyage: Poems

by Wilfred Campbell

Henceforth the years would rise and wane and die, And glory come and glory pass away, And battles pass as in a troubled dream, And Arthur be a ghost, and his knights ghosts;— The castles and the lists and the mad fights, Sacking of cities, scourging of country-sides, All dreams before his eyes;—all, save her love.

So girded she her magic round his heart, And meshed him in a golden mesh of love, And marred his sense of all earth’s splendour there.

But in the after-days when brake the end, And she had fled to Glastonbury’s cells, With all the world one clamour at her sin; And Arthur like a storm-smit pine-tree stood, Alone amid his kingdom’s blackened ruins;— Then Lancelot knew his life an evil dream, And thought him of the friendship of their youth, And all the days that they had been together, And “Arthur, Arthur,” spake from all the meres, And “Arthur, Arthur,” moaned from days afar. And Lancelot grieved him of his woeful sin:— “And this the hand that smote mine Arthur down, That brake his glory, ruined his great hope Of one vast kingdom built on noble deeds, And truth and peace for many days to be. This hand that should have been his truest strength, Next to that high honour which he held.” And all the torrents of his sorrow brake For his own Arthur, Arthur standing lone, Like some unriven pine that towers alone Amid the awful ruins of a world. And then a woeful longing smote him there, To ride by murk and moon, by mere and waste, To where the king made battle with his foes, And look, unknown, upon his face, and die.

So thinking this he fled, and the queen’s wraith, A memory, in the moonlight fled with him. But stronger with him fled his gladder youth And all the memories of the splendid past, Until his heart yearned for the days that were, And that great, noble soul who fought alone.

Then coming by cock-crow and the glimmering dawn, He reached the grey-walled castle of the land, Where the king tarried ere he went to fight The last dread battle of the Table Round. And the grim sentinels who guarded there, Thinking only of him as Arthur’s friend, And knowing not the Lancelot scandal named, And judging by the sorrow of his face, Deemed him some knight who came to aid the king, And pointing past the waning beacon fires, Said, “There he sleeps as one who hath no woes.”

And Lancelot passing silent left them there, And entering the old abbey, (’twas some ruin Of piety and worship of past days,) Saw in the flicker of a dying hearth, Mingled with faint glimmering of the dawn, The great king sleeping, where a mighty cross Threw its dread shadow o’er his moving breast.

And Lancelot knew the same strong, god-like face That he had worshipped in the days no more, And all their olden gladness smote him now, And he had wept, but that his awful sin, That made a wall of flame betwixt them there, Had seared the very fountains of his soul. Whereat he moaned, “O, noble, saintly heart, Couldst thou but know amidst thine innocent sleep, Save for the awful sin that flames between, That here doth stand the Lancelot of old days, The one of all the world who loved thee most, The joyous friend of all thy glorious youth; O noble! god-like! Lancelot, who hath sinned As none hath sinned against thee, now hath come To gaze upon thy majesty and die. O Arthur! thou great Arthur of my youth, My sun, my joy, my glory!” Here the king Stirred in his sleep, and murmured, “Guinevere!”

And Lancelot feeling that an age of ages, Hoary with all anguish of old crime And hideous bloodshed, were now builded up Betwixt him and the king at that one name, Clothed with the mad despairings of his shame, Stole like some shrunken ghost-life from that place, To look no more upon great Arthur’s face.

Then it did smite upon him he must die; And in him the old ghost of honour woke That he must die in battle, and go out Where no dread sorrow could gnaw at his heart, But all forgetting and eternal sleep.

Whereat the madness of old battle woke, For his dread sin now burned all softness out, And the glad kindliness of the Table Round, And left him, shorn of all the Christian knight, The gentle lord who only smote to save, Or shield the helpless from the brutal stroke; And flamed his heart there with the lust to slay, And slaying be slain as his grim sires went out.