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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Victorian Narrative Verse," Charles Williams meticulously explores the intricate weaving of storytelling and verse that flourished throughout the Victorian era. This scholarly work delves into the rich tapestry of poetic narratives, highlighting prominent figures such as Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning, while also illuminating lesser-known voices that contributed to this transformative literary form. Williams offers keen insights into the stylistic nuances, thematic preoccupations, and societal influences that shaped Victorian poetry, employing a critical lens that balances both historical context and literary analysis. Charles Williams, an eminent figure in literary criticism and a keen observer of the Victorian zeitgeist, draws on his profound understanding of the period's aesthetics and ideology. His background in both English literature and history positions him uniquely to dissect the complexities of poetic form and societal reflection. Williams's own experiences and scholarly pursuits encourage a nuanced exploration of narrative techniques in poetry, shedding light on how these works both echoed and challenged the conventions of their time. Readers interested in the intersection of poetry and narrative will find "Victorian Narrative Verse" an invaluable resource. Williams's comprehensive analysis not only enriches our understanding of Victorian literature but also reveals the enduring relevance of these poetic narratives in contemporary discourse. This book is an essential addition for scholars, students, and anyone captivated by the intricate interplay of poetry and storytelling. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - An Introduction draws the threads together, discussing why these diverse authors and texts belong in one collection. - Historical Context explores the cultural and intellectual currents that shaped these works, offering insight into the shared (or contrasting) eras that influenced each writer. - A combined Synopsis (Selection) briefly outlines the key plots or arguments of the included pieces, helping readers grasp the anthology's overall scope without giving away essential twists. - A collective Analysis highlights common themes, stylistic variations, and significant crossovers in tone and technique, tying together writers from different backgrounds. - Reflection questions encourage readers to compare the different voices and perspectives within the collection, fostering a richer understanding of the overarching conversation.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Victorian Narrative Verse
Table of Contents
Introduction
Victorian Narrative Verse presents a landscape of stories told in meter across a century that prized narrative imagination. The works gathered here move among myth, legend, history, and intimate anecdote, from The Day-Dream to Heather Ale. Their titles alone point to journeys, reckonings, and revelations, making the case for narrative poetry as a form able to hold public event and private vision together. In presenting tales of kings and sailors, lovers and exiles, saints and outcasts, the collection foregrounds a shared concern with how individuals meet fate, community, and time. The result is a conversation among poems that are various in setting yet united by the impulse to tell a story in verse.
One through-line is the Victorian return to inherited myths and heroic cycles. Morte d’Arthur and The Delivery of Iseult signal an Arthurian and romance current, while Andromeda, Balder Dead, The Death of King Olaf, and The Son of Croesus invoke classical and northern traditions. Sohrab and Rustum adds an epic horizon beyond those spheres, affirming the era’s outward-looking appetite for distant names and foundational conflicts. Together these poems show how mythic materials can be refashioned to ask perennial questions about honor, destiny, and kinship without forfeiting narrative momentum. Even when the titles announce mortality or departure, the energy of quest, ordeal, and remembrance persists.
Another current reaches into chronicle, ballad, and regional memory. The White Ship and The King’s Tragedy frame catastrophe and rule within the registers of maritime peril and courtly crisis, while The Yerl o’ Waterydeck and Heather Ale suggest a vernacular strain attentive to place and speech. Conary and The King of Brentford’s Testament evoke the voices of rulers and retinues, testing the bonds between authority and accountability. By foregrounding social roles and communal witness, these pieces model how narrative verse can be both an archive of collective experience and a spur to ethical reflection. The interplay of shore, hall, and hinterland turns the historical into living story.
The collection is equally alive to psychological drama and the allure of the mysterious. The Flight of the Duchess and Donald pivot on departures and arrivals, tracing the delicate ties of loyalty, desire, and reputation. The Witch’s Ballad and Goblin Market place song, bargain, and enchantment at the edge of the everyday, while The Day-Dream contemplates inward vision and suspended time. These poems draw power from voice—confidences, ballad refrains, and whispers—through which the ordinary is disclosed as threshold. Their narratives depend less on spectacle than on the felt weight of choice and the seductions of story itself.
Moral and spiritual inquiry threads through the book in striking ways. Judas Iscariot’s Paradise tests the boundaries of judgment and mercy by naming a figure associated with betrayal alongside a promise of bliss, creating a deliberate tension in the very title. Concerning Geffray Teste Noire and Geffray Teste Noire trace the reputational shadows of conflict and command, where courage, cruelty, and remembrance intersect. The King’s Tragedy and The King of Brentford’s Testament revisit the responsibilities of sovereignty, exploring how words spoken in extremity shape legacies. Across these works, narrative verse becomes a medium for conscience, not only recounting events but weighing their meanings.
These poets favored titles that announce mode as well as matter: tragedy, testament, ballad, market, paradise, day-dream, and flight. Such signposts reveal an art of framing, where the declared form guides expectations about voice, pace, and scope. Names like Iseult, Olaf, Croesus, and Rustum anchor stories in deep time, while titles centered on roles—king, duchess, son—signal attention to social identity and inheritance. Recurrent terms such as death, delivery, and ship suggest a preoccupation with thresholds, transitions, and the costs of passage. The result is a richly patterned field in which individual pieces echo and counterpoint one another.
Read together, these works offer more than a tour of the Victorian imagination; they model how narrative verse can illuminate present concerns. Questions of leadership, loyalty, family bond, and economic or spiritual exchange remain pressing, and the poems’ engagement with ancestral stories offers a shared vocabulary for thinking about them. Their variety of tones—sober, tender, rapt, and sometimes wry—demonstrates the flexibility of the form. By assembling Arthurian romance alongside classical tale, northern saga beside market fable, and courtroom reckoning near intimate confession, Victorian Narrative Verse affirms the continuing vitality of story in verse. It invites renewed attention to how inherited narratives can be reanimated to speak, again and again, to changing worlds.
Historical Context
Socio-Political Landscape
The anthology’s poems emerge from a Britain ruled by a constitutional monarchy at the height of imperial expansion and industrial transformation. Reform agitation, from 1832 through later franchise extensions, and wars from the Crimea to colonial campaigns, pressed writers to weigh tradition against change. Many turned to legendary or medieval frames—Morte d’Arthur, Andromeda, Sohrab and Rustum, Balder Dead, The White Ship, and The King’s Tragedy—to explore authority, loyalty, and catastrophe at a historical remove. This backward gaze offered cultural stability while quietly asking what virtues a modern empire required, and whether old models of kinship and chivalry could survive competitive markets.
Class stratification, new wealth, and precarious labor shaped the poems’ imagined communities and audiences. Circulating libraries and family periodicals favored respectable narratives, yet poets probed friction points. Goblin Market stages anxieties about commercial desire and sisterly solidarity; The Flight of the Duchess scrutinizes aristocratic discipline and the costs of female disobedience. The King of Brentford’s Testament lampoons succession and bourgeois acquisitiveness under constitutional rule. Religious contention—between evangelical rigor, Anglican ritualism, and skepticism—haunts Judas Iscariot’s Paradise and Arthurian pieties alike. Publication navigated gatekeepers, including editors wary of sexuality or blasphemy, while public recitation culture rewarded vivid storytelling over radical polemic.
National memory and regional identity energize the collection’s ballads and chronicles. Scottish and Norse inflections sound in Heather Ale, The Yerl o’ Waterydeck, Donald, The King’s Tragedy, The White Ship, Balder Dead, and The Death of King Olaf, while Conary gestures toward Irish antiquity. Such retrospects intersected with contemporary debates about union, land, famine, emigration, and linguistic revival. They also offered ethical parables for a Britain confronting unrest at home and expansion abroad. Satirists exploited mock-archaic tones—most pointedly in The King of Brentford’s Testament—to question the legitimacy of inherited power and the cheerful blending of romance with realpolitik.
Intellectual & Aesthetic Currents
Victorian narrative verse balanced Romantic inheritance with moral inquiry and formal experiment. Tennyson’s The Day-Dream and Morte d’Arthur refine chivalric idealism under modern doubt. D. G. Rossetti’s The White Ship and The King’s Tragedy adapt chronicle materials through Pre-Raphaelite color and psychological intensity. William Morris’s Concerning Geffray Teste Noire, The Delivery of Iseult, and The Son of Croesus pursue medievalism as an ethical craft ideal. Matthew Arnold’s Sohrab and Rustum and Balder Dead channel classical restraint into comparative myth, while Kingsley’s Andromeda reimagines Hellenic legend for muscular Christianity. Across the anthology, epic narrative fuses with lyrical textures and painterly detail.
New sciences and media widened horizons. Steam printing, rail distribution, and the telegraph accelerated networks of reception, while geological deep time and evolutionary speculation reframed antiquity as a living laboratory. Comparative philology and translation cultures fed interest in Persian, Norse, and Celtic materials tapped by Sohrab and Rustum, Balder Dead, Conary, and The Death of King Olaf. Pre-Raphaelite visual ideals shaped D. G. Rossetti’s narrative coloring; theatrical elocution fostered dramatic textures in The Flight of the Duchess. Folk revivalism informed The Witch’s Ballad, Donald, and Heather Ale, as Goblin Market’s chantlike cadences edged toward symbolist suggestion without abandoning storytelling clarity.
Victorian poetics staged vigorous contests among schools. Public-spirited eloquence, associated with laureate authority in Morte d’Arthur, vied with aesthetic inwardness refined by D. G. Rossetti. Morris advanced a craft-centered medievalism that later converged with social critique, though his tales here concentrate on chivalric ethos. Arnold’s spare epic manner countered ornament, while ballad experiments—Heather Ale, The Yerl o’ Waterydeck, The Witch’s Ballad, Donald—reclaimed popular forms for literate audiences. Satiric energies in The King of Brentford’s Testament resisted pieties shared by both moralists and aesthetes. Fin-de-siècle sensibilities glimmer in Goblin Market’s sensuous economy, foreshadowing the symbolist strand without discarding narrative clarity.
Legacy & Reassessment Across Time
Subsequent upheavals altered these poems’ accents. The world wars, suffrage victories, and decolonization tempered imperial confidence underlying martial or expansionary allegories. School canons long privileged Sohrab and Rustum and Morte d’Arthur as models of stoic heroism and public virtue; later syllabi elevated Goblin Market for its daring treatment of desire and care. Recitation pieces migrated to radio and recordings; stage adaptations and choral settings periodically revisited Andromeda and Arthurian scenes. Scholarly editions stabilized texts once trimmed for propriety, restoring suggestive textures in Christina Rossetti and clarifying variants in D. G. Rossetti and Morris that earlier editors had regularized.
Recent criticism reframes empire, gender, and environment across the volume. Postcolonial readings interrogate Orientalist vantage points in Sohrab and Rustum and the Norse revivals surrounding Balder Dead and The Death of King Olaf, while Celticized pieces such as Conary and Heather Ale are reconsidered alongside language politics. Feminist scholars revisit The Flight of the Duchess and Goblin Market for their negotiations of consent, care, and economic pressure; theological studies test the provocations of Judas Iscariot’s Paradise. Digital archives, enabled by copyright expiry, broaden access to multiple states of The White Ship and The King’s Tragedy, encouraging renewed debates about voice and authority.
Synopsis (Selection)
THE DAY-DREAM
A luxuriant recasting of the Sleeping Beauty tale that meditates on time, art, and awakening as an enchanted court stirs back to life.
MORTE D’ARTHUR
Arthur’s last battle and wounded departure are told with elegiac restraint, tracing loyalty, loss, and the fading of a heroic age.
THE DEATH OF KING OLAF
An episodic saga of Olaf Tryggvason’s zeal and warfare that blends Norse legend and Christian mission, culminating in his downfall at sea.
CONARY
A retelling of an Irish king’s doom when sacred taboos are broken and enemies converge upon a firelit hostel, sealing a tragic fate.
THE KING OF BRENTFORD’S TESTAMENT
A satirical mock–last will in which a whimsical monarch parcels out his realm and affections to comic effect.
THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS
A retainer recounts how a young duchess, stifled by ritual and pride, seizes an unexpected chance to escape into a freer life.
DONALD
A Highland narrative ballad of love and duty, following a soldier’s parting and the quiet cost of war on those left behind.
THE WITCH’S BALLAD
A dark dramatic monologue in which a witch boasts of midnight rites and baleful charms, hinting at the human toll of her craft.
ANDROMEDA
A vivid classical romance in which Perseus confronts a sea monster to free Andromeda, marrying mythic spectacle to moral resolve.
SOHRAB AND RUSTUM
A solemn epic of single combat between a Persian champion and his unknown son, unfolding with austere grandeur and tragic inevitability.
BALDER DEAD
The Norse gods mourn Balder’s fall and send a doomed embassy to Hel, revealing the limits of power before fate and grief.
THE YERL O’ WATERYDECK
A mock-Scots sea ballad charting a hapless earl’s maritime misadventure, mixing broad humor with ballad bravura.
THE WHITE SHIP
A narrative of revelry turned disaster in the 1120 wreck off Barfleur, told as a sober chronicle of pride and dynastic calamity.
THE KING’S TRAGEDY
The night assassination of a Scottish king is foreseen in ominous signs and witnessed in loyalty and betrayal within a besieged chamber.
GOBLIN MARKET
Two sisters face the lure of goblin fruit-sellers; temptation and peril are met by steadfast love and redemptive sacrifice.
JUDAS ISCARIOT’S PARADISE
A visionary afterlife journey imagines Judas grappling with guilt and the possibility of mercy, probing the boundaries of justice and grace.
CONCERNING GEFFRAY TESTE NOIRE
A Hundred Years’ War tale of a Breton freebooter’s raid, narrated with stark realism to weigh chivalry against the cruelties of mercenary strife.
THE SON OF CROESUS
From Herodotus: an oracle’s warning leads a Lydian prince and his house toward unintended catastrophe, where prudence cannot outpace fate.
THE DELIVERY OF ISEULT
The sea-borne conveyance of Iseult to Cornwall becomes the moment when destiny entwines her with her escort, setting a famed romance in motion.
HEATHER ALE
A stark legend of conquest and secrecy in which the last keepers of a fabled brew face ruthless coercion with unbending resolve.
Victorian Narrative Verse
THE DAY-DREAM
PROLOGUE
O Lady Flora, let me speak:
A pleasant hour has past away
While, dreaming on your damask cheek,
The dewy sister-eyelids lay.
As by the lattice you reclined,5
I went thro’ many wayward moods
To see you dreaming—and, behind,
A summer crisp with shining woods.
And I too dream’d, until at last
Across my fancy, brooding warm,10
The reflex of a legend past,
And loosely settled into form.
And would you have the thought I had,
And see the vision that I saw,
Then take the broidery-frame, and add15
A crimson to the quaint Macaw,
And I will tell it. Turn your face,
Nor look with that too-earnest eye—
The rhymes are dazzled from their place,
And order’d words asunder fly.20
THE SLEEPING PALACE
I
The varying year with blade and sheaf
Clothes and reclothes the happy plains;
Here rests the sap within the leaf,
Here stays the blood along the veins.
Faint shadows, vapours lightly curl’d,25
Faint murmurs from the meadows come,
Like hints and echoes of the world
To spirits folded in the womb.
II
Soft lustre bathes the range of urns
On every slanting terrace-lawn.30
The fountain to his place returns
Deep in the garden lake withdrawn.
Here droops the banner on the tower,
On the hall-hearths the festal fires,
The peacock in his laurel bower,35
The parrot in his gilded wires.
III
Roof-haunting martins warm their eggs:
In these, in those the life is stay’d.
The mantles from the golden pegs
Droop sleepily: no sound is made,40
Not even of a gnat that sings.
More like a picture seemeth all
Than those old portraits of old kings,
That watch the sleepers from the wall.
IV
Here sits the Butler with a flask45
Between his knees, half-drain’d; and there
The wrinkled steward at his task,
The maid-of-honour blooming fair:
The page has caught her hand in his:
Her lips are sever’d as to speak:50
His own are pouted to a kiss:
The blush is fix’d upon her cheek.
V
Till all the hundred summers pass,
The beams, that thro’ the Oriel shine,
Make prisms in every carven glass,55
And beaker brimm’d with noble wine.
Each baron at the banquet sleeps,
Grave faces gather’d in a ring.
His state the king reposing keeps.
He must have been a jovial king.60
VI
All round a hedge upshoots, and shows
At distance like a little wood;
Thorns, ivies, woodbine, mistletoes,
And grapes with bunches red as blood;
All creeping plants, a wall of green65
Close-matted, bur and brake and brier,
And glimpsing over these, just seen,
High up, the topmost palace-spire.
VII
When will the hundred summers die,
And thought and time be born again,70
And newer knowledge, drawing nigh,
Bring truth that sways the soul of men?
Here all things in their place remain,
As all were order’d, ages since.
Come, Care and Pleasure, Hope and Pain,75
And bring the fated fairy Prince.
THE SLEEPING BEAUTY
I
Year after year unto her feet,
She lying on her couch alone,
Across the purpled coverlet,
The maiden’s jet-black hair has grown,80
On either side her tranced form
Forth streaming from a braid of pearl:
The slumbrous light is rich and warm,
And moves not on the rounded curl.
II
The silk star-broider’d coverlid85
Unto her limbs itself doth mould
Languidly ever; and, amid
Her full black ringlets downward roll’d,
Glows forth each softly-shadow’d arm
With bracelets of the diamond bright:90
Her constant beauty doth inform
Stillness with love, and day with light.
III
She sleeps: her breathings are not heard
In palace chambers far apart.
The fragrant tresses are not stirr’d95
That lie upon her charmed heart.
She sleeps: on either hand upswells
The gold-fringed pillow lightly prest:
She sleeps, nor dreams, but ever dwells
A perfect form in perfect rest.100
THE ARRIVAL
I
All precious things, discover’d late,
To those that seek them issue forth;
For love in sequel works with fate,
And draws the veil from hidden worth.
He travels far from other skies—105
His mantle glitters on the rocks—
A fairy Prince, with joyful eyes,
And lighter-footed than the fox.
II
The bodies and the bones of those
That strove in other days to pass,110
Are wither’d in the thorny close,
Or scatter’d blanching on the grass.
He gazes on the silent dead:
‘They perish’d in their daring deeds.’
This proverb flashes thro’ his head,115
‘The many fail: the one succeeds.’
III
He comes, scarce knowing what he seeks:
He breaks the hedge: he enters there:
The colour flies into his cheeks:
He trusts to light on something fair;120
For all his life the charm did talk
About his path, and hover near
With words of promise in his walk,
And whisper’d voices at his ear.
IV
More close and close his footsteps wind;125
The Magic Music in his heart
Beats quick and quicker, till he find
The quiet chamber far apart.
His spirit flutters like a lark,
He stoops—to kiss her—on his knee.130
‘Love, if thy tresses be so dark,
How dark those hidden eyes must be!’
THE REVIVAL
I
A touch, a kiss! the charm was snapt.
There rose a noise of striking clocks,
And feet that ran, and doors that clapt,135
And barking dogs, and crowing cocks;
A fuller light illumined all,
A breeze thro’ all the garden swept,
A sudden hubbub shook the hall,
And sixty feet the fountain leapt.140
II
The hedge broke in, the banner blew,
The butler drank, the steward scrawl’d,
The fire shot up, the martin flew,
The parrot scream’d, the peacock squall’d,
The maid and page renew’d their strife,145
The palace bang’d, and buzz’d and clackt,
And all the long-pent stream of life
Dash’d downward in a cataract.
III
And last with these the king awoke,
And in his chair himself uprear’d,150
And yawn’d, and rubb’d his face, and spoke,
‘By holy rood, a royal beard!
How say you? we have slept, my lords.
My beard has grown into my lap.’
The barons swore, with many words,155
’Twas but an after-dinner’s nap.
IV
‘Pardy,’ return’d the king, ‘but still
My joints are something stiff or so.
My lord, and shall we pass the bill
I mention’d half an hour ago?’160
The chancellor, sedate and vain,
In courteous words return’d reply:
But dallied with his golden chain,
And, smiling, put the question by.
THE DEPARTURE
I
And on her lover’s arm she leant,165
And round her waist she felt it fold,
And far across the hills they went
In that new world which is the old:
Across the hills, and far away
Beyond their utmost purple rim,170
And deep into the dying day
The happy princess follow’d him.
II
‘I’d sleep another hundred years,
O love, for such another kiss;’
‘O wake for ever, love,’ she hears,175
‘O love, ’twas such as this and this.’
And o’er them many a sliding star,
And many a merry wind was borne,
And, stream’d thro’ many a golden bar,
The twilight melted into morn.180
III
‘O eyes long laid in happy sleep!’
‘O happy sleep, that lightly fled!’
‘O happy kiss, that woke thy sleep!’
‘O love, thy kiss would wake the dead!’
And o’er them many a flowing range185
Of vapour buoy’d the crescent-bark,
And, rapt thro’ many a rosy change,
The twilight died into the dark.
IV
‘A hundred summers! can it be?
And whither goest thou, tell me where?’190
‘O seek my father’s court with me,
For there are greater wonders there.’
And o’er the hills, and far away
Beyond their utmost purple rim,
Beyond the night, across the day,195
Thro’ all the world she follow’d him.
MORAL
I
So, Lady Flora, take my lay,
And if you find no moral there,
Go, look in any glass and say,
What moral is in being fair.200
Oh, to what uses shall we put
The wildweed-flower that simply blows?
And is there any moral shut
Within the bosom of the rose?
II
But any man that walks the mead,205
In bud or blade, or bloom, may find,
According as his humours lead,
A meaning suited to his mind.
And liberal applications lie
In Art like Nature, dearest friend;210
So ’twere to cramp its use, if I
Should hook it to some useful end.
L’ENVOI
I
You shake your head. A random string
Your finer female sense offends.
Well—were it not a pleasant thing215
To fall asleep with all one’s friends;
To pass with all our social ties
To silence from the paths of men;
And every hundred years to rise
And learn the world, and sleep again;220
To sleep thro’ terms of mighty wars,
And wake on science grown to more,
On secrets of the brain, the stars,
As wild as aught of fairy lore;
And all that else the years will show,225
The Poet-forms of stronger hours,
The vast Republics that may grow,
The Federations and the Powers;
Titanic forces taking birth
In divers seasons, divers climes;230
For we are Ancients of the earth,
And in the morning of the times.
II
So sleeping, so aroused from sleep
Thro’ sunny decads new and strange,
Of gay quinquenniads[1] would we reap235
The flower and quintessence of change.
III
Ah, yet would I—and would I might!
So much your eyes my fancy take—
Be still the first to leap to light
That I might kiss those eyes awake!240
For, am I right or am I wrong,
To choose your own you did not care;
You’d have my moral from the song,
And I will take my pleasure there:
And, am I right or am I wrong,245
My fancy, ranging thro’ and thro’,
To search a meaning for the song,
Perforce will still revert to you;
Nor finds a closer truth than this
All-graceful head, so richly curl’d,250
And evermore a costly kiss
The prelude to some brighter world.
IV
For since the time when Adam first
Embraced his Eve in happy hour,
And every bird of Eden burst255
In carol, every bud to flower,
What eyes, like thine, have waken’d hopes?
What lips, like thine, so sweetly join’d?
Where on the double rosebud droops
The fullness of the pensive mind;260
Which all too dearly self-involved,
Yet sleeps a dreamless sleep to me;
A sleep by kisses undissolved,
That lets thee neither hear nor see:
But break it. In the name of wife,265
And in the rights that name may give,
Are clasp’d the moral of thy life,
And that for which I care to live.
EPILOGUE
So, Lady Flora, take my lay,
And, if you find a meaning there,270
O whisper to your glass, and say,
‘What wonder, if he thinks me fair?’
What wonder I was all unwise,
To shape the song for your delight
Like long-tail’d birds of Paradise,275
That float thro’ Heaven, and cannot light?
Or old-world trains, upheld at court
By Cupid-boys of blooming hue—
But take it—earnest wed with sport,
And either sacred unto you.280
[1] quinquenniads] periods of five years.
MORTE D’ARTHUR
So all day long the noise of battle roll’d
Among the mountains by the winter sea;
Until King Arthur’s table, man by man,
Had fall’n in Lyonnesse about their Lord,
King Arthur: then, because his wound was deep,5
The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him,
Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights,
And bore him to a chapel nigh the field,
A broken chancel with a broken cross,
That stood on a dark strait of barren land.10
On one side lay the Ocean, and on one
Lay a great water, and the moon was full.
Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere:
‘The sequel of to-day unsolders all
The goodliest fellowship of famous knights15
Whereof this world holds record. Such a sleep
They sleep—the men I loved. I think that we
Shall never more, at any future time,
Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds,
Walking about the gardens and the halls20
Of Camelot, as in the days that were.
I perish by this people which I made,—
Tho’ Merlin sware that I should come again
To rule once more—but let what will be, be,
I am so deeply smitten thro’ the helm25
That without help I cannot last till morn.
Thou therefore take my brand Excalibur,
Which was my pride: for thou rememberest how
In those old days, one summer noon, an arm
Rose up from out the bosom of the lake,30
Clothed in white samite[1], mystic, wonderful,
Holding the sword—and how I row’d across
And took it, and have worn it, like a king:
And wheresoever I am sung or told
In aftertime, this also shall be known:35
But now delay not: take Excalibur,
And fling him far into the middle mere:
Watch what thou seëst, and lightly bring me word.’
To him replied the bold Sir Bedivere:
‘It is not meet, Sir King, to leave thee thus,40
Aidless, alone, and smitten thro’ the helm.
A little thing may harm a wounded man.
Yet I thy hest will all perform at full,
Watch what I see, and lightly bring thee word.’
So saying, from the ruin’d shrine he stept45
And in the moon athwart the place of tombs,
Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men,
Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang
Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping down
By zig-zag paths, and juts of pointed rock,50
Came on the shining levels of the lake.
There drew he forth the brand Excalibur,
And o’er him, drawing it, the winter moon,
Brightening the skirts of a long cloud, ran forth
And sparkled keen with frost against the hilt:55
For all the haft twinkled with diamond sparks,
Myriads of topaz-lights, and jacinth-work
Of subtlest jewellery. He gazed so long
That both his eyes were dazzled, as he stood,
This way and that dividing the swift mind,60
In act to throw: but at the last it seem’d
Better to leave Excalibur conceal’d
There in the many-knotted waterflags,
That whistled stiff and dry about the marge.
So strode he back slow to the wounded King.65
Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere:
‘Hast thou perform’d my mission which I gave?
What is it thou hast seen? or what hast heard?’
And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere:
‘I heard the ripple washing in the reeds,70
And the wild water lapping on the crag.’
To whom replied King Arthur, faint and pale:
‘Thou hast betray’d thy nature and thy name,
Not rendering true answer, as beseem’d
Thy fëalty, nor like a noble knight:75
For surer sign had follow’d, either hand,
Or voice, or else a motion of the mere.
This is a shameful thing for men to lie.
Yet now, I charge thee, quickly go again
As thou art lief and dear, and do the thing80
I had thee, watch, and lightly bring me word.’
Then went Sir Bedivere the second time
Across the ridge, and paced beside the mere,
Counting the dewy pebbles, fix’d in thought;
But when he saw the wonder of the hilt,85
How curiously and strangely chased, he smote
His palms together, and he cried aloud,
‘And if indeed I cast the brand away,
Surely a precious thing, one worthy note,
Should thus be lost for ever from the earth,90
Which might have pleased the eyes of many men.
What good should follow this, if this were done?
What harm, undone? deep harm to disobey,
Seeing obedience is the bond of rule.
Were it well to obey then, if a king demand95
An act unprofitable, against himself?
The King is sick, and knows not what he does.
What record, or what relic of my lord
Should be to aftertime, but empty breath
And rumours of a doubt? but were this kept,100
Stored in some treasure-house of mighty kings,
Some one might show it at a joust of arms,
Saying, “King Arthur’s sword, Excalibur,
Wrought by the lonely maiden of the Lake.
Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps105
Upon the hidden bases of the hills.”
So might some old man speak in the aftertime
To all the people, winning reverence.
But now much honour and much fame were lost.’
So spake he, clouded with his own conceit,110
And hid Excalibur the second time,
And so strode back slow to the wounded King.
Then spoke King Arthur, breathing heavily:
‘What is it thou hast seen? or what hast heard?’
And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere:115
‘I heard the water lapping on the crag,
And the long ripple washing in the reeds.’
To whom replied King Arthur, much in wrath:
‘Ah, miserable and unkind, untrue,
Unknightly, traitor-hearted! Woe is me!120
Authority forgets a dying king,
Laid widow’d of the power in his eye
That bow’d the will. I see thee what thou art,
For thou, the latest-left of all my knights,
In whom should meet the offices of all,125
Thou wouldst betray me for the precious hilt;
Either from lust of gold, or like a girl
Valuing the giddy pleasure of the eyes.
Yet, for a man may fail in duty twice,
And the third time may prosper, get thee hence:130
But, if thou spare to fling Excalibur,
I will arise and slay thee with my hands.’
Then quickly rose Sir Bedivere, and ran,
And, leaping down the ridges lightly, plunged
Among the bulrush-beds, and clutch’d the sword,135
And strongly wheel’d and threw it. The great brand
Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon,
And flashing round and round, and whirl’d in an arch,
Shot like a streamer of the northern morn,
Seen where the moving isles of winter shock140
By night, with noises of the northern sea.
So flash’d and fell the brand Excalibur:
But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,
And caught him by the hilt, and brandish’d him145
Three times, and drew him under in the mere.
And lightly went the other to the King.
Then spoke King Arthur, drawing thicker breath:
‘Now see I by thine eyes that this is done.
Speak out: what is it thou hast heard, or seen?’150
And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere:
‘Sir King, I closed mine eyelids, lest the gems
Should blind my purpose, for I never saw,
Nor shall see, here or elsewhere, till I die,
Not tho’ I live three lives of mortal men,155
So great a miracle as yonder hilt.
Then with both hands I flung him, wheeling him;
But when I look’d again, behold an arm,
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,
That caught him by the hilt, and brandish’d him160
Three times, and drew him under in the mere.’
And answer made King Arthur, breathing hard:
‘My end draws nigh; ’tis time that I were gone.
Make broad thy shoulders to receive my weight,
And bear me to the margin; yet I fear165
My wound hath taken cold, and I shall die.’
So saying, from the pavement he half rose,
Slowly, with pain, reclining on his arm,
And looking wistfully with wide blue eyes
As in a picture. Him Sir Bedivere170
Remorsefully regarded thro’ his tears,
And would have spoken, but he found not words,
Then took with care, and kneeling on one knee,
O’er both his shoulders drew the languid hands,
And rising bore him thro’ the place of tombs.175
But, as he walk’d, King Arthur panted hard,
Like one that feels a nightmare on his bed
When all the house is mute. So sigh’d the King,
Muttering and murmuring at his ear, ‘Quick, quick!
I fear it is too late, and I shall die.’180
But the other swiftly strode from ridge to ridge,
Clothed with his breath, and looking, as he walk’d,
Larger than human on the frozen hills.
He heard the deep behind him, and a cry
Before. His own thought drove him like a goad.185
Dry clash’d his harness in the icy caves
And barren chasms, and all to left and right
The bare black cliff clang’d round him, as he based
His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang
Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels—190
And on a sudden, lo! the level lake,
And the long glories of the winter moon.
Then saw they how there hove a dusky barge,
Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern,
Beneath them; and descending they were ware195
That all the decks were dense with stately forms
Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream—by these
Three Queens with crowns of gold—and from them rose
A cry that shiver’d to the tingling stars,
And, as it were one voice, an agony200
Of lamentation, like a wind, that shrills
All night in a waste land, where no one comes,
Or hath come, since the making of the world.
Then murmur’d Arthur, ‘Place me in the barge,’
And to the barge they came. There those three Queens205
Put forth their hands, and took the King, and wept.
But she, that rose the tallest of them all
And fairest, laid his head upon her lap,
And loosed the shatter’d casque, and chafed his hands,
And call’d him by his name, complaining loud,210
And dropping bitter tears against his brow
Striped with dark blood: for all his face was white
And colourless, and like the wither’d moon
Smote by the fresh beam of the springing east;
And all his greaves[2] and cuisses[3] dash’d with drops215
Of onset; and the light and lustrous curls—
That made his forehead like a rising sun
High from the dais-throne—were parch’d with dust;
Or, clotted into points and hanging loose,
Mix’d with the knightly growth that fringed his lips.220
So like a shatter’d column lay the King;
Not like that Arthur who, with lance in rest,
From spur to plume a star of tournament,
Shot thro’ the lists at Camelot, and charged
Before the eyes of ladies and of kings.225
Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere,
‘Ah! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go?
Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes?
For now I see the true old times are dead,
When every morning brought a noble chance,230
And every chance brought out a noble knight.
Such times have been not since the light that led
The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh.
But now the whole ROUND TABLE is dissolved
Which was an image of the mighty world;235
And I, the last, go forth companionless,
And the days darken round me, and the years,
Among new men, strange faces, other minds.’
And slowly answered Arthur from the barge:
‘The old order changeth, yielding place to new,240
And God fulfils Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me?
I have lived my life, and that which I have done
May He within Himself make pure! but thou,245
If thou shouldst never see my face again,
Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats250
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.255
But now farewell. I am going a long way
With these thou seëst—if indeed I go—
(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt)
To the island-valley of Avilion;
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,260
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadow’d, happy, fair with orchard-lawns
And bowery hollows crown’d with summer sea,
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.’
So said he, and the barge with oar and sail265
Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan
That, fluting a wild carol ere her death,
Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood
With, swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere
Revolving many memories, till the hull270
Look’d one black dot against the verge of dawn,
And on the mere the wailing died away.
Alfred Tennyson, 1809-92.
[1] samite] rich silk fabric.
[2] greaves] armour for the leg below the knee.
[3] cuisses] armour for protecting the front part of the thigh.
THE DEATH OF KING OLAF
(From The Saga of King Olaf).
XVII
KING SVEND OF THE FORKED BEARD
Loudly the sailors cheered
Svend of the Forkèd Beard,
As with his fleet he steered
Southward to Vendland;
Where with their courses hauled5
All were together called,
Under the Isle of Svald
Near to the mainland.
After Queen Gunhild’s death,
So the old Saga saith,10
Plighted King Svend his faith
To Sigrid the Haughty;
And to avenge his bride,
Soothing her wounded pride,
Over the waters wide15
King Olaf sought he.
Still on her scornful face,
Blushing with deep disgrace,
Bore she the crimson trace
Of Olaf’s gauntlet;20
Like a malignant star,
Blazing in heaven afar,
Red shone the angry scar
Under her frontlet.
Oft to King Svend she spake,25
