Accolon of Gaul, with Other Poems. Cawein Madison Julius

s Cawein

      Accolon of Gaul, with Other Poems

      PRELUDE

      WHY, dreams from dreams in dreams remembered! naught

      Save this, alas! that once it seemed I thought

      I wandered dim with someone, but I knew

      Not who; most beautiful and good and true,

      Yet sad through suffering; with curl-crowned brow,

      Soft eyes and voice; so white she haunts me now: —

      And when, and where? – At night in dreamland.

      She

      Led me athwart a flower-showered lea

      Where trammeled puckered pansy and the pea;

      Spread stains of pale-rod poppies rinced of rain,

      So gorged with sun their hurt hearts ached with pain;

      Heaped honeysuckles; roses lavishing beams,

      Wherein I knew were huddled little dreams

      Which laughed coy, hidden merriment and there

      Blew quick gay kisses fragrancing the air.

      And where a river bubbled through the sward

      A mist lay sleepily; and it was hard

      To see whence sprung it, to what seas it led,

      How broadly spread and what it was it fled

      So ceasless in its sighs, and bickering on

      Into romance or some bewildering dawn

      Of wisest legend from the storied wells

      Of lost Baranton, where old Merlin dwells,

      Nodding a white poll and a grand, gray beard

      As if some Lake Ladyé he, listening, heard,

      Who spake like water, danced like careful showers

      With blown gold curls thro' drifts of wild-thorn flowers;

      Loose, lazy arms in graceful movement tossed,

      Float flower-like down a woodland vista, lost

      In some peculiar note that wrings a tear

      Slow down his withered cheek. And then steals near

      Her sweet, lascivious brow's white wonderment,

      And gray rude eyes, and hair which hath the scent

      Of the wildwood Brécéliand's perfumes

      In Brittany; and in it one red bloom's

      Blood-drop thrust deep, and so "Sweet Viviane!"

      All the glad leaves lisp like a young, soft rain

      From top to top, until a running surge

      The dark, witch-haunted solitude will urge,

      That shakes and sounds and stammers as from sleep

      Some giant were aroused; and with a leap

      A samite-gauzy creature, glossy white,

      Showers mocking kisses fast and, like a light

      Beat by a gust to flutter and then done,

      From Brécéliande and Merlin she is gone.

      But still he sits there drowsing with his dreams;

      A wondrous cohort hath he; many as gleams

      That stab the moted mazes of a beech;

      And each grave dream hath its own magic speech

      To sting to tears his old eyes heavy – two

      Hang, tangled brilliants, in his beard like dew:

      And still faint murmurs of courts brave and fair,

      And forms of Arthur and proud Guenevere,

      Grave Tristram and rare Isoud and stout Mark,

      Bold Launcelot, chaste Galahad the dark

      Of his weak mind, once strong, glares up with, then,

      – The instant's fostered blossoms – die again.

      A roar of tournament, a rippling stir

      Of silken lists that ramble into her,

      That white witch-mothered beauty, Viviane,

      The vast Brécéliande and dreams again.

      Then Dagonet, King Arthur's fool, trips there,

      A waggish cunning; glittering on his hair

      A tinsel crown; and then will slightly sway

      Thick leaves and part, and there Morgane the Fay

      With haughty wicked eyes and lovely face

      Studies him steady for a little space.

I

      "

      THOU askest with thy studious eyes again,

      Here where the restless forest hears the main

      Toss in a troubled sleep and moan. Ah, sweet,

      With joy and passion the kind hour's replete;

      And what wild beauty here! where roughly run

      Huge forest shadows from the westering sun,

      The wood's a subdued power gentle as

      Yon tame wild-things, that in the moss and grass

      Gaze with their human eyes. Here grow the lines

      Of pale-starred green; and where yon fountain shines

      Urned in its tremulous ferns, rest we upon

      This oak-trunk of God's thunder overthrown

      Years, years agone; not where 'tis rotted brown

      But where the thick bark's firm and overgrown

      Of clambering ivy blackly berried; where

      Wild musk of wood decay just tincts the air,

      As if some strange shrub on some whispering way,

      In some dewed dell, while dreaming of one May,

      In longing languor weakly tried to wake

      One sometime blossom and could only make

      Ghosts of such dead aromas as it knew,

      And shape a specter, budding thin as dew,

      To haunt these sounding miles of solitude.

      Troubled thou askest, Morgane, and the mood,

      Unfathomed in thine eyes, glows rash and deep

      As that in some wild-woman's found on sleep

      By some lost knight upon a precipice,

      Whom he hath wakened with a laughing kiss.

      As that of some frail, elfin lady white

      As if of watery moonbeams, filmy dight,

      Who waves diaphanous beauty on some cliff

      That drowsing purrs with moon-drenched pines; but if

      The lone knight follow, foul fiends rise and drag

      Him crashing down, while she, tall on the crag,

      Triumphant mocks him with glad sorcery

      Till all the wildwood echoes shout with glee.

      As that bewildering mystery of a tarn,

      Some mountain water, which the mornings scorn

      To anadem with fire and leave gray;

      To which some champion cometh when the Day

      Hath tired of breding on his proud, young head

      Flame-furry blooms and, golden chapletéd,

      Sits rosy, trembling with full love for Night,

      Who cometh sandaled; dark in crape; the light

      Of