Chapter II

Sir Cawdore came at sunset,
Belated, belted knight,
The last rays took his hauberk and
Danced back in points of light
From off his blue-tipped, white ash spear
His eyes were wild and bright.

He saw the rolling, wooded hills,
The pine tree’s ruddy stem,
The fallen needles burned to brown
About the far pool’s hem,
The pointed glossy osier twigs;
A faint wind harried them.

The silver-tinted clouds uprose
About the pallid moon,
The rosy west lay to his back
Before him lay the gloom,
His mortal eyes saw not the wall
Which stopped him, of that room.

But like the voice of Dryads all
Complaining round a pool,
Or Pan pipes scarce articulate
Where forest ways are cool,
He heard a voice without a form
Said, “Stand awhile, thou fool!

“What news of royal Arthur? Speak!”
“He sleeps in Avalon.”
“How went the battle in the west?”
“The steel clad hosts are gone,
Are scattered as the dry red leaves
The first blast blows upon.

“The Holy Grail has left the land,
By minster, weir, and lock
No book, no bell, no angels’ wing;
The coming shadows flock;
All, all are broken in their pride,
A wave upon a rock.”

“And Guinevere?”--“At Almsbury
Her glory and her gold
Are shaken as a cup upheld
In palsied hands, and old,
Before the altar of God’s wrath
In some dark chancel cold.

“But who art thou that speakest thus?
Between the setting sun
And yonder pallid, rising moon
The wold lies cold and dun;
I hear a voice speaks in mine ear,
But presence there is none.”

Aërial, ethereal,
Athwart the gleam and glow,
The airy charm wheeled slowly up,
And slowly, and more slow,
“Lo, I am Merlin,” spake the voice,
“And thus our glories go!”

THE PRINCESS OF YAN

_Nu-Nu-Nu!_[2] (And the daisies are piled like a flood!)
We never shall see the Chalcydian Sea
Nor the place where the Yakadil stood,
Nor suspended by silk, and far whiter than milk
Aladdin’s famed egg of the Roc,
But I know, where the breeze sighs beneath the pine trees,
Where the Maids of the Yan Princess walk,
With their wide, floating hair, and mysterious air,
And finger on lips as they talk,
With their azure, pale, trailing silk robes, and their veiling
As they wonder, and whisper, and talk.

_Zo-Zo-Zo!_ (And the glow of the sun on the gorse!)
They stole her away at the close of the day
With gongs and enchantments, of course,
While a dragon of old rolled his amber and gold,
Burnt orange, and umbers that gleam
In the marvellous scrolls that the Chinese unrolls
On lacquer and teak--in the gleam
Twixt the dusk and the dark all the people cried, “Hark!
They have shut her away in a dream.
Where waters are falling, and white storks are calling,
In a brittle, blue, beautiful dream!”

_Na-Na-Na!_ (And the poppies are bright in the corn)
When the desert is red, and the sun goes to bed
In the piles of the purple clouds torn
By the wings of the Djin, ’tis a crime and a sin
To loiter, in camel or man,
Lest the soul’s vital spark be extinguished ere dark--
By Allah! you ride as you can.
But the end of your toil through the gray, slipping soil
Is more near than the Princess of Yan.
The mirages glimmer no dearer, no dimmer
Than the faraway beauties of Yan!

_Tsi-Tsi-Tsi!_ (And the elm trees are drowsy with shade!)
Neither peacock-eye whorls, nor platters of pearls
Nor a palace of treasures in jade,
Nor a jewelled palanquin borne by Negroes in green,
Nor olives of far Samarcand
Can buy you a ship that will dock in the slip
Where the green running seas meet the land,
And the red granite frowns, that her tall tower crowns
Nor the glimpse of one nail of her hand,
Through the silver-soft curtain, the rosy, uncertain
O, the flitting half moon of her hand!

_Bang-Bang-Bang!_ (And the heroes are coming to war!)
In terrible throngs, with cymbals and gongs
The heroes and conquerors are
All arming their hordes with lances and swords
With scimitar, yataghan, drum.
In the dust and the heat, see the elephants’ feet,
And the camels, bedizened and dumb!
Even Sindbad himself, with a beard like a shelf,
Even Kameralzamen has come,
His horse’s hoofs tingle, his silver bells jingle,
Even Kameralzamen has come!

_Crash-Bang-Crash!_ (And the Princess aloof like the moon!)
They have fought the good fight in abysmal night
With comet, cyclone, and simoon.
The eclipse was unchained, and the shooting stars rained
In tempest and vapour and wrack,
But they warred for their prize with implacable skies
And the heroes were all beaten back.
Like the nebulæ thin, by the wings of a Djin
Were blown out, and extinguished in black,
Like the last thunder moaning, with wailing and groaning
In a deep and imponderable black.

_Tso-Tso-Tso!_ (And it’s time we were home for our tea!)
And why should we weep for a Princess they keep
In a pearl on a rock in the sea?
Lo! the butterflies’ wings with unutterable things
Are dusted: with portents they run,
Golden, freckled with zones, and the red, tawny ones
And the blue, and the black, and the dun
Say, “With barter and pain, you shall never attain,
Turn away and the Princess is won,
Where you loiter and play, where you half turn away
At a touch the Yan Princess is won.”

FOOTNOTE

[2] Chinese music sounds, to be said through the nose.

THE SPELL OF COLD

Ah! What unearthly music plays so still
So hushed, about the window sill,
Aërial more than an æolian harp,
Or with chromatic risings sharp
Whistles the heart away into the ice-cold moon?
It fluted through the dawn wind; soon
The snow’s white, woven dance will come
And close the little room
In soft-fluffed, crystal silence, with the trees.
Still, still in silvery cadencèd degrees
The heavenly gradual
Will rise and fall.
Ah! what god in the forest plays
One instant that makes all our days,
And sends great music so about a little room?
We would have quiet now in all our ways,
And with the winter night, quiet and candlelight ...
Ah! what unearthly music plays!

Haunted! Not here nor there,
Nor from the forest hollows bare,
Nor shining-particled, chill air,
Nor star hung, and swan-breasted hill,
But closer, closer still,
Weaving between the nerve and bone
The melody flows on.
We would have quiet in the winter grays,
And for the winter gloom, embers and a quiet room ...
Ah! what unearthly music plays?

Spell-bound!
Not coolly rippling ivory.
Nor cithers slowly sighing a nocturne,
Nor mournful clarion of silver horn,
Nor bells at midnight, hollowly forlorn,
Could swell this tide of sound, nor turn
This tide away from one who hears
This music in between the ears
And brain, from one who sees

Too long, the snow’s slow woven dance of imageries.
No, nor the thousand forest Seraphs of the violin
Shiver and clamour up, and cry, “Give over and give in!”
So wildly! Hush! This is the spell the winter weaves;
The song for which the tree sheds all its leaves,
The high, chaste comfort for which worlds grow old.
This is the glamour of the frost and cold
Heard by the stars. It is the breath
And premonition of the requiem of death
Higher and colder than all. The frost crystal rays,
And ice in the moon sing, when this unearthly music plays.

THE OLD POET FORETELLS THE MANNER OF HIS DEATH

I shall not hear men’s voices soon
For the silvery music of the Shee;
Between me and the world a veil
Will fall of woven imagerie,
With cooling green of boyhood’s leaves,
With whorls of water light that weaves.

I shall not bring to mind the tasks
I laboured at so long ago,
But I shall marvel much that man
On dewy earth should travail so
To bring small matters to an end
Where all things weave, and change, and blend.

I’ll mind me how like morning light
Love was before it turned unkind,
But when the change, or what the harm,
I shall not search the past to find
While burning questions, cried to God,
Flow off, like wind waves over sod.

The evils that I wrought myself
Like hoarse war bugles, sea-ward driven
Will pass; the evils men did me
Be half forgotten, all forgiven.
I’ll think the worst to God must seem
Like small, sick movements in a dream.

This body that like marble was
For heaviness and weight of care
Will burn with a celestial fire,
And fade, and free me to the air
Where I shall never know again
Old troubles born of nerve and vein.

Meanwhile a spacious loveliness,
A quiet, brooding sense of light,
Majestic freedom, and fine strength
Will near me. Led by visions bright
Of natural beauty I’ll be drawn
Toward greater loves than I have known.

I’ll seem to sleep. Disturb me not,
For while Incarnate Light draws near,
A last gift of the race to clay,
Sweet music of the Shee I’ll hear,
Lulled and withdrawn by soft preludes
Through deep, expectant solitudes.

Transcriber’s Notes

• Italics represented with surrounding _underscores_.

• Small caps converted to ALL CAPS.

• Footnotes renumbered consecutively.

• Obvious typographic errors have been silently corrected.