And mirthful
sayings, children of the place,
That have no meaning half a
league away:
Or lulling
random squabbles when they rise,
Chafferings and chatterings at the market-cross,
Rejoice, small man, in this small world of mine,
Yea, even in their hens and in their eggs--
O brother, saving this Sir Galahad,
Came ye on none but phantoms in your quest,
No man, no woman?'
Then Sir Percivale:
'All men, to one so bound by such a vow,
And women were as phantoms. O, my brother,
Why wilt thou shame me to
confess to thee
How far I faltered from my quest and vow?
For after I had lain so many nights
A bedmate of the snail and eft and snake,
In grass and burdock, I was changed to wan
And meagre, and the
vision had not come;
And then I chanced upon a
goodly town
With one great
dwelling in the middle of it;
Thither I made, and there was I disarmed
By
maidens each as fair as any flower:
But when they led me into hall, behold,
The Princess of that castle was the one,
Brother, and that one only, who had ever
Made my heart leap; for when I moved of old
A
slender page about her father's hall,
And she a
slendermaiden, all my heart
Went after her with
longing: yet we twain
Had never kissed a kiss, or vowed a vow.
And now I came upon her once again,
And one had
wedded her, and he was dead,
And all his land and
wealth and state were hers.
And while I tarried, every day she set
A
banquet richer than the day before
By me; for all her
longing and her will
Was toward me as of old; till one fair morn,
I walking to and fro beside a stream
That flashed across her
orchard underneath
Her castle-walls, she stole upon my walk,
And
calling me the greatest of all knights,
Embraced me, and so kissed me the first time,
And gave herself and all her
wealth to me.
Then I remembered Arthur's
warning word,
That most of us would follow wandering fires,
And the Quest faded in my heart. Anon,
The heads of all her people drew to me,
With supplication both of knees and tongue:
"We have heard of thee: thou art our greatest knight,
Our Lady says it, and we well believe:
Wed thou our Lady, and rule over us,
And thou shalt be as Arthur in our land."
O me, my brother! but one night my vow
Burnt me within, so that I rose and fled,
But wailed and wept, and hated mine own self,
And even the Holy Quest, and all but her;
Then after I was joined with Galahad
Cared not for her, nor anything upon earth.'
Then said the monk, 'Poor men, when yule is cold,
Must be content to sit by little fires.
And this am I, so that ye care for me
Ever so little; yea, and blest be Heaven
That brought thee here to this poor house of ours
Where all the brethren are so hard, to warm
My cold heart with a friend: but O the pity
To find thine own first love once more--to hold,
Hold her a
wealthy bride within thine arms,
Or all but hold, and then--cast her aside,
Foregoing all her
sweetness, like a weed.
For we that want the
warmth of double life,
We that are plagued with dreams of something sweet
Beyond all
sweetness in a life so rich,--
Ah,
blessed Lord, I speak too earthlywise,
Seeing I never strayed beyond the cell,
But live like an old
badger in his earth,
With earth about him everywhere, despite
All fast and
penance. Saw ye none beside,
None of your knights?'
'Yea so,' said Percivale:
'One night my
pathway swerving east, I saw
The pelican on the casque of our Sir Bors
All in the middle of the rising moon:
And toward him spurred, and hailed him, and he me,
And each made joy of either; then he asked,
"Where is he? hast thou seen him--Lancelot?--Once,"
Said good Sir Bors, "he dashed across me--mad,
And maddening what he rode: and when I cried,
'Ridest thou then so hotly on a quest
So holy,' Lancelot shouted, 'Stay me not!
I have been the sluggard, and I ride apace,
For now there is a lion in the way.'
So vanished."
'Then Sir Bors had
ridden on
Softly, and sorrowing for our Lancelot,
Because his former
madness, once the talk
And
scandal of our table, had returned;
For Lancelot's kith and kin so
worship him
That ill to him is ill to them; to Bors
Beyond the rest: he well had been content
Not to have seen, so Lancelot might have seen,
The Holy Cup of healing; and, indeed,
Being so clouded with his grief and love,
Small heart was his after the Holy Quest:
If God would send the
vision, well: if not,
The Quest and he were in the hands of Heaven.
'And then, with small adventure met, Sir Bors
Rode to the lonest tract of all the realm,
And found a people there among their crags,
Our race and blood, a
remnant that were left
Paynim amid their circles, and the stones
They pitch up straight to heaven: and their wise men
Were strong in that old magic which can trace
The wandering of the stars, and scoffed at him
And this high Quest as at a simple thing:
Told him he followed--almost Arthur's words--
A mocking fire: "what other fire than he,
Whereby the blood beats, and the
blossom blows,
And the sea rolls, and all the world is warmed?"
And when his answer chafed them, the rough crowd,
Hearing he had a difference with their priests,
Seized him, and bound and plunged him into a cell
Of great piled stones; and lying bounden there
In darkness through
innumerable hours
He heard the hollow-ringing heavens sweep
Over him till by miracle--what else?--
Heavy as it was, a great stone slipt and fell,
Such as no wind could move: and through the gap
Glimmered the streaming scud: then came a night
Still as the day was loud; and through the gap
The seven clear stars of Arthur's Table Round--
For, brother, so one night, because they roll
Through such a round in heaven, we named the stars,
Rejoicing in ourselves and in our King--
And these, like bright eyes of familiar friends,
In on him shone: "And then to me, to me,"
Said good Sir Bors, "beyond all hopes of mine,
Who
scarce had prayed or asked it for myself--
Across the seven clear stars--O grace to me--
In colour like the fingers of a hand
Before a burning taper, the sweet Grail
Glided and past, and close upon it pealed
A sharp quick thunder." Afterwards, a maid,
Who kept our holy faith among her kin
In secret, entering, loosed and let him go.'
To whom the monk: 'And I remember now
That pelican on the casque: Sir Bors it was
Who spake so low and sadly at our board;
And
mighty reverent at our grace was he:
A square-set man and honest; and his eyes,
An out-door sign of all the
warmth within,
Smiled with his lips--a smile beneath a cloud,
But heaven had meant it for a sunny one:
Ay, ay, Sir Bors, who else? But when ye reached
The city, found ye all your knights returned,
Or was there sooth in Arthur's prophecy,
Tell me, and what said each, and what the King?'
Then answered Percivale: 'And that can I,
Brother, and truly; since the living words
Of so great men as Lancelot and our King
Pass not from door to door and out again,
But sit within the house. O, when we reached
The city, our horses stumbling as they trode
On heaps of ruin, hornless unicorns,
Cracked basilisks, and splintered cockatrices,
And shattered talbots, which had left the stones
Raw, that they fell from, brought us to the hall.
'And there sat Arthur on the dais-throne,
And those that had gone out upon the Quest,
Wasted and worn, and but a tithe of them,
And those that had not, stood before the King,
Who, when he saw me, rose, and bad me hail,
Saying, "A
welfare in thine eye reproves
Our fear of some
disastrous chance for thee
On hill, or plain, at sea, or flooding ford.
So
fierce a gale made havoc here of late
Among the strange devices of our kings;
Yea, shook this newer, stronger hall of ours,
And from the
statue Merlin moulded for us
Half-wrenched a golden wing; but now--the Quest,
This
vision--hast thou seen the Holy Cup,
That Joseph brought of old to Glastonbury?"
'So when I told him all thyself hast heard,
Ambrosius, and my fresh but fixt resolve
To pass away into the quiet life,
He answered not, but,
sharply turning, asked
Of Gawain, "Gawain, was this Quest for thee?"
'"Nay, lord," said Gawain, "not for such as I.
Therefore I communed with a saintly man,
Who made me sure the Quest was not for me;
For I was much awearied of the Quest:
But found a silk
pavilion in a field,
And merry
maidens in it; and then this gale
Tore my
pavilion from the tenting-pin,
And blew my merry
maidens all about
With all
discomfort; yea, and but for this,
My twelvemonth and a day were pleasant to me."
'He ceased; and Arthur turned to whom at first
He saw not, for Sir Bors, on entering, pushed
Athwart the
throng to Lancelot, caught his hand,
Held it, and there, half-hidden by him, stood,
Until the King espied him,
saying to him,