Fluttering she peered within the hollow gloom
That cloistered a wild wood beyond the wall;
For shapes are woven by the troubled loom
Of night; and tremulous tapestries oft fall
Across familiar paths and make them all
Astir with effigies that snarl and grin
And take strange steps along a horrid hall
Which is by day a lane of leaves within;
As if at night a holy nun should dream of sin.
At length she reached a little windless glade
Fragrant with natal April not long flown
And dreamful of the days when lips were laid
On lips that trembled as they found their own.
There where the mooned close was thickest sown
With shadows was the lady met with one
Who sat with drooping head and made soft moan.
He was a stranger knight whose armour shone
Bright as the molten golden javelins of the sun.
“What things are griefs?” the Lady Margot sighed
And moved a little nearer pityingly.
“The wonder wasteth from my days,” he cried,
“The burden of my blessings wearieth me!
Lo I have journeyed from an unoared sea
In the white north to where the winds caress
Warm sail-sown oceans murmuring round a key
Odorous with wine and fruit in fragrant dress——
And yet I passion for some little happiness.”
“Ay, now,” the lady cried, “most strangely come
Are you, Sir Knight, for I am one who longs
As never heart has longed before for some
Strange world, strange tongue tuneful with alien songs,
Strange mad old cities brooding on their wrongs,
With unfamiliar streets which smile and show
Me many a colonnade and portico
Where some unclaimed and starry hour belongs.
O you who know all that I long for—bid me go!”
No strange thing seemed her prayer unto the knight
Who knew her father’s little court by name,
And pitied her that all her beauty bright
Must fail and fade in such confined fame.
Swiftly he knelt to her and with no shame
She gave her hand the while he led her where
Within the close the moon took silvery aim
And lured a sickle bed of bloom to bear
In bloom’s sweet stead a birth of stars pearly as air.
The lady stooped and laid her little hand
Upon a dreaming lily whose faint cream
And gold, stirred at the fingers’ soft demand,
Dreamed that the white touch was their sweetest dream.
The lady rose and every opiate beam
Made lucent pillage from her unbound hair
And moths brushed lightly through the saffron stream
In quest of stars. The lady was so fair
That the dusk swooned with passion and the light with prayer.
“Nay, now, my child,” the knight said courteously,
“Would that your joy lay in your castle home,
In phantom folk who pace your broidery,
In haunted parchment of a pictured tome.
But if you are of those whose hearts must roam
Afar afield to meet the hushed advance
Of spheres and win from the blown spray and foam
What weaker some leave to impotent chance
Then, by my blade, that blade shall bring deliverance!”
A little door, covert in creeping green,
Gave from the court upon the room where lay
The aged doting nurse who wept, I ween,
At all the Lady Margot strove to say.
But when it had proved vain to weep or pray,
She rose and bade her trembling fingers light
Her taper and thereby she led the way
Through secret gates till, soberly bedight,
The three set forth together in the faery night.
O many a league for many a day they went,
And some magician kind they were aware
Delivered captive treasuries and spent
His lavish store of beauty everywhere:
Slim brazen towers that taught the sun to share
Its shining he revealed; and odorous gloom
Packing with odours the receiving air;
Flowered silken sails that set the sea abloom;
Isles spread with fabrics from the moon’s high loom.
Sometimes the lady knelt in a fleet prow
That flung the gaudy bubbles from the blue,
And joyed to hear the lean blade of the bow
Plunging the thundering sundered breakers through;
Keen swept the foam-born breaths of salt, to do
Sweet violence to her pale cheek; and all
The spirit of her fancy peopled new
The perilous sea’s impermanent citadel
That kindled into spray with the ship’s rise and fall.