Hate, born of Wrath and mother red of Crime,
In Hell was whelped ere the hot hands of time,
Artificer of God, had coined one world
From formless forms of void and 'round it furled
Its lordly raiment of the day and night,
And germed its womb for seasons throed with might:
And Hell sent Hate to man to hate or use,
To serve itself by serving and amuse....
For her half brother Morgane had conceived
A morbid hatred; in that much she grieved,
Envious and jealous, for that high renown
And majesty the King for his fast crown
Thro' worship had acquired. And once he said,
"The closest kin to state are those to dread:
No honor such to crush: envenoming
All those kind tongues of blood that try to sing
Petition to the soul, while conscience quakes
Huddled, but stern to hearts whose cold pride takes."
And well she knew that Arthur: mightier
Than Accolon, without Excalibur
Were as a stingless hornet in the joust
With all his foreign weapons. So her trust
Smiled certain of conclusion; eloquent
Gave lofty heart bold hope that at large eyes
Piled up imperial dreams of power and prize.
And in her carven chamber, oaken dark,
Traceried and arrased, o'er the barren park
That dripped with Autumn,--for November lay
Swathed frostily in fog on every spray,--
Thought at her tri-arched casement lone, one night,
Ere yet came knowledge of that test of might.
Her lord in slumber and the castle dull
With silence or with sad wind-music full.
"And he removed?--fond fool! _he is removed!_
Death-dull from feet to hair and graveward shoved
From royalty to that degraded state
But purpler pomp! But, see! regenerate
Another monarch rises--Accolon!--
Love! Love! with state more ermined; balmy son
Of gods not men, and nobler hence to rule.
Sweet Love almighty, terrible to school
Harsh hearts to gentleness!--Then all this realm's
Iron-huskéd flower of war, which overwhelms
With rust and havoc, shall explode and bloom
An asphodel of peace with joy's perfume.
And then, sweet Launcelots and sweet Tristrams proud,
Sweet Gueneveres, sweet Isouds, now allowed
No pleasures but what wary, stolen hours
In golden places have their flaming flowers,
Shall have curled feasts of passion evermore.
Poor out-thrust Love, now shivering at the door,
No longer, sweet neglected, thou thrust off,
Insulted and derided: nor the scoff
Of bully Power, whose heart of insult flings
Off for the roar of arms the appeal that clings
And lifts a tearful, prayerful pitiful face
Up from his brutal feet: this shrine where grace
Lays woman's life for every sacrifice--
To him so little, yet of what pure price,
Her all, being all her all for love!--her soul
Life, honor, earth and firmamental whole
Of God's glad universe; stars, moon and sun;
Creation, death; life ended, life begun.
And if by fleshly love all Heaven's debarred,
Its sinuous revolving spheres instarred,
Then Hell were Heaven with love to those who knew
Love which God's Heaven encouraged--love that drew
Hips, head and hair in fiends' devouring claws
Down, down its pit's hurled sucking, as down draws,--
Yet lip to narrow lip with whom we love,--
A whirlwind some weak, crippled, fallen dove.
"Then this lank Urience? He who is lord.--
Where is thy worry? for, hath he no sword?
No dangerous dagger I, hid softly here
Sharp as an adder's fang? or for that ear
No instant poison which insinuates,
Tightens quick pulses, while one breathing waits,
With ice and death? For often men who sleep
On eider-down wake not, but closely keep
Such secrets in their graves to rot and rot
To dust and maggots;--of these--which his lot?"
Thus she conspired with her that rainy night
Lone in her chamber; when no haggard, white,
Wan, watery moon dreamed on the streaming pane,
But on the leads beat an incessant rain,
And sighed and moaned a weary wind along
The turrets and torn poplars stirred to song.
So grew her face severe as skies that take
Dark forces of full storm, sound-shod, that shake
With murmurous feet black hills, and stab with fire
A pine some moaning forest mourns as sire.
So touched her countenance that dark intent;
And to still eyes stern thoughts a passion sent,
As midnight waters luminous glass deep
Suggestive worlds of austere stars in sleep,
Vague ghostly gray locked in their hollow gloom.
Then as if some vast wind had swept the room,
Silent, intense, had raised her from her seat,
Of dim, great arms had made her a retreat,
Secret as love to move in, like some ghost,
Noiseless as death and subtle as sharp frost,
Poised like a light and borne as carefully,
Trod she the gusty hall where shadowy
The stirring hangings rolled a Pagan war.
And there the mail of Urience shone. A star,
Glimmering above, a dying cresset dropped
From the stone vault and flared. And here she stopped
And took the sword bright, burnished by his page,
And ruddy as a flame with restless rage.
Grasping this death unto the chamber where
Slept innocent her spouse she moved--an air
Twined in soft, glossy sendal; or a fit
Of faery song a wicked charm in it,
A spell that sings seductive on to death.
Then paused she at one chamber; for a breath
Listened: and here her son Sir Ewain slept,
He who of ravens a black army kept,
In war than fiercest men more terrible,
That tore forth eyes of kings who blinded fell.
Sure that he slept, to Urience stole and stood
Dim by his couch. About her heart hot blood
Caught strangling, then throbbed thudding fever up
To her broad eyes, like wine whirled in a cup.
Then came rare Recollection, with a mouth
Sweet as the honeyed sunbeams of the South
Trickling thro' perplexed ripples of low leaves;
To whose faint form a veil of starshine cleaves
Intricate gauze from memoried eyes to feet;--
Feet sandaled with crushed, sifted snows and fleet
To come and go and airy anxiously.
She, trembling to her, like a flower a bee
Nests in and makes an audible mouth of musk
Dripping a downy language in the dusk,
Laid lips to ears and luted memories of
Now hateful Urience:--Her maiden love,
That willing went from Caerlleon to Gore
One dazzling day of Autumn. How a boar,
Wild as the wonder of the blazing wood,
Raged at her from a cavernous solitude,
Which, crimson-creepered, yawned the bristling curse
Murderous upon her; how her steed waxed worse
And, snorting terror, fled unmanageable,
Pursued with fear, and flung her from the selle,
Soft slipping on a bank of springy moss
That couched her swooning. In an utter loss
Of mind and limbs she only knew twas thus--
As one who pants beneath an incubus:--
The boar thrust toward her a tusked snout and fanged
Of hideous bristles, and the whole wood clanged
And buzzed and boomed a thousand sounds and lights
Lawless about her brain, like leaves fierce nights
Of hurricane harvest shouting: then she knew
A fury thunder twixt it--and fleet flew
Rich-rooted moss and sandy loam that held
Dark-buried shadows of the wild, and swelled
Continual echoes with the thud of strife,
And breath of man and brute that warred for life;
And all the air, made mad with foam and forms,
Spun froth and wrestled twixt her hair and arms,
While trampled caked the stricken leaves or shred
Hummed whirling, and snapped brittle branches dead.
And when she rose and leaned her throbbing head,
Which burst its uncoifed rays of raven hair
Down swelling shoulders pure and faultless fair,
On one milk, marvelous arm of fluid grace,
Beheld the brute thing throttled and the face
Of angry Urience over, browed like Might,
One red, swoln arm, that pinned the hairy fright,
Strong as a god's, iron at the gullet's brawn;
Dug in his midriff, the close knees updrawn
Wedged deep the glutton sides that quaked and strove
A shaggy bulk, whose sharp hoofs horny drove.
Thus man and brute burned bent; when Urience slipped
One arm, the horror's tearing tusks had ripped
And ribboned redly, to the dagger's hilt,
Which at his hip hung long a haft gold-gilt;
Its rapid splinter drew; beamed twice and thrice
High in the sun its ghastliness of ice
Plunged--and the great boar, stretched in sullen death,
Weakened thro' wild veins, groaned laborious breath.
And how he brought her water from a well
That rustled freshness near them, as it fell
From its full-mantled urn, in his deep casque,
And prayed her quaff; then bathed her brow, a task
That had accompaning tears of joy and vows
Of love, sweet intercourse of eyes and brows,
And many clinging kisses eloquent.
And how, when dressed his arm, behind him bent
She clasped him on the same steed and they went
On thro' the gold wood toward the golden West,
Till on one low hill's forest-covered crest
Up in the gold his castle's battlements pressed.
And then she felt she'd loved him till had come
Fame of the love of Isoud, whom from home
Brought knightly Tristram o'er the Irish foam,
And Guenevere's for Launcelot of the Lake.
And then how passion from these seemed to wake
Longing for some great gallant who would slake--
And such found Accolon.
And then she thought
How far she'd fallen and how darkly fraught
With consequence was this. Then what distress
Were hers and his--her lover's; and success
How doubly difficult if Arthur slain,
King Urience lived to assert his right to reign.
So paused she pondering on the blade; her lips
Breathless and close as close cold finger tips
Hugged the huge weapon's hilt. And so she sighed,
"Nay! long, too long hast lived who shouldst have died
Even in the womb abortive! who these years
Hast leashed sweet life to care with stinging tears,
A knot thus harshly severed!--As thou art
Into the elements naked!"
O'er his heart
The long sword hesitated, lean as crime,
Descended redly once. And like a rhyme
Of nice words fairly fitted forming on,--
A sudden ceasing and the harmony gone,
So ran to death the life of Urience,
A strong song incomplete of broken sense.
There glowered the crimeful Queen. The glistening sword
Unfleshed, flung by her wronged and murdered lord;
And the dark blood spread broader thro' the sheet
To drip a horror at impassive feet
And blur the polished oak. But lofty she
Stood proud, relentless; in her ecstacy
A lovely devil; a crowned lust that cried
On Accolon; that harlot which defied
Heaven with a voice of pulses clamorous as
Steep storm that down a cavernous mountain pass
Blasphemes an hundred echoes; with like power
The inner harlot called its paramour:
Him whom King Arthur had commanded, when
Borne from the lists, be granted her again
As his blithe gift and welcome from that joust,
For treacherous love and her adulterous lust.
And while she stood revolving how her deed's
Concealment were secured,--a grind of steeds,
Arms, jingling stirrups, voices loud that cursed
Fierce in the northern court. To her athirst
For him her lover, war and power it spoke,
Him victor and so King; and then awoke
A yearning to behold, to quit the dead.
So a wild specter down wide stairs she fled,
Burst on a glare of links and glittering mail,
That shrunk her eyes and made her senses quail.
To her a bulk of iron, bearded fierce,
Down from a steaming steed into her ears,
"This from the King, a boon!" laughed harsh and hoarse;
Two henchmen beckoned, who pitched sheer with force,
Loud clanging at her feet, hacked, hewn and red,
Crusted with blood a knight in armor--dead;
Even Accolon, tossed with the mocking scoff
"This from the King!"--phantoms in fog rode off.
And what remains? From Camelot to Gore
That right she weeping fled; then to the shore,--
As that romancer tells,--Avilion,
Where she hath Majesty gold-crowned yet wan;
In darkest cypress a frail pitious face
Queenly and lovely; 'round sad eyes the trace
Of immemorial tears as for some crime:
They future fixed, expectant of the time
When the forgiving Arthur cometh and
Shall have to rule all that lost golden land
That drifts vague amber in forgotten seas
Of surgeless turquoise dim with mysteries.
And so was seen Morgana nevermore,
Save once when from the Cornwall coast she bore
The wounded Arthur from that last fought fight
Of Camlan in a black barge into night.
But oft some see her with a palfried band
Of serge-stoled maidens thro' the drowsy land
Of Autumn glimmer; when are sharply strewn
The red leaves, while broad in the east a moon
Swings full of frost a lustrous globe of gleams,
Faint on the mooning hills as shapes in dreams.
