Dagonet,the fool,whom Gawain in his mood Had made mock-knight of Arthur's Table Round,At Camelot,high above the yellowing woods,Danced like a withered leaf before the hall.
And toward him from the hall,with harp in hand,And from the crown thereof a carcanet Of ruby swaying to and fro,the prize Of Tristram in the jousts of yesterday,Came Tristram,saying,'Why skip ye so,Sir Fool?'
For Arthur and Sir Lancelot riding once Far down beneath a winding wall of rock Heard a child wail.A stump of oak half-dead,From roots like some black coil of carven snakes,Clutched at the crag,and started through mid air Bearing an eagle's nest:and through the tree Rushed ever a rainy wind,and through the wind Pierced ever a child's cry:and crag and tree Scaling,Sir Lancelot from the perilous nest,This ruby necklace thrice around her neck,And all unscarred from beak or talon,brought A maiden babe;which Arthur pitying took,Then gave it to his Queen to rear:the Queen But coldly acquiescing,in her white arms Received,and after loved it tenderly,And named it Nestling;so forgot herself A moment,and her cares;till that young life Being smitten in mid heaven with mortal cold Past from her;and in time the carcanet Vext her with plaintive memories of the child:
So she,delivering it to Arthur,said,'Take thou the jewels of this dead innocence,And make them,an thou wilt,a tourney-prize.'
To whom the King,'Peace to thine eagle-borne Dead nestling,and this honour after death,Following thy will!but,O my Queen,I muse Why ye not wear on arm,or neck,or zone Those diamonds that I rescued from the tarn,And Lancelot won,methought,for thee to wear.'
'Would rather you had let them fall,'she cried,'Plunge and be lost--ill-fated as they were,A bitterness to me!--ye look amazed,Not knowing they were lost as soon as given--Slid from my hands,when I was leaning out Above the river--that unhappy child Past in her barge:but rosier luck will go With these rich jewels,seeing that they came Not from the skeleton of a brother-slayer,But the sweet body of a maiden babe.
Perchance--who knows?--the purest of thy knights May win them for the purest of my maids.'
She ended,and the cry of a great jousts With trumpet-blowings ran on all the ways From Camelot in among the faded fields To furthest towers;and everywhere the knights Armed for a day of glory before the King.
But on the hither side of that loud morn Into the hall staggered,his visage ribbed From ear to ear with dogwhip-weals,his nose Bridge-broken,one eye out,and one hand off,And one with shattered fingers dangling lame,A churl,to whom indignantly the King,'My churl,for whom Christ died,what evil beast Hath drawn his claws athwart thy face?or fiend?
Man was it who marred heaven's image in thee thus?'
Then,sputtering through the hedge of splintered teeth,Yet strangers to the tongue,and with blunt stump Pitch-blackened sawing the air,said the maimed churl,'He took them and he drave them to his tower--Some hold he was a table-knight of thine--
A hundred goodly ones--the Red Knight,he--
Lord,I was tending swine,and the Red Knight Brake in upon me and drave them to his tower;And when I called upon thy name as one That doest right by gentle and by churl,Maimed me and mauled,and would outright have slain,Save that he sware me to a message,saying,"Tell thou the King and all his liars,that IHave founded my Round Table in the North,And whatsoever his own knights have sworn My knights have sworn the counter to it--and say My tower is full of harlots,like his court,But mine are worthier,seeing they profess To be none other than themselves--and say My knights are all adulterers like his own,But mine are truer,seeing they profess To be none other;and say his hour is come,The heathen are upon him,his long lance Broken,and his Excalibur a straw."'
Then Arthur turned to Kay the seneschal,'Take thou my churl,and tend him curiously Like a king's heir,till all his hurts be whole.
The heathen--but that ever-climbing wave,Hurled back again so often in empty foam,Hath lain for years at rest--and renegades,Thieves,bandits,leavings of confusion,whom The wholesome realm is purged of otherwhere,Friends,through your manhood and your fealty,--now Make their last head like Satan in the North.
My younger knights,new-made,in whom your flower Waits to be solid fruit of golden deeds,Move with me toward their quelling,which achieved,The loneliest ways are safe from shore to shore.
But thou,Sir Lancelot,sitting in my place Enchaired tomorrow,arbitrate the field;For wherefore shouldst thou care to mingle with it,Only to yield my Queen her own again?
Speak,Lancelot,thou art silent:is it well?'
Thereto Sir Lancelot answered,'It is well:
Yet better if the King abide,and leave The leading of his younger knights to me.
Else,for the King has willed it,it is well.'
Then Arthur rose and Lancelot followed him,And while they stood without the doors,the King Turned to him saying,'Is it then so well?
Or mine the blame that oft I seem as he Of whom was written,"A sound is in his ears"?
The foot that loiters,bidden go,--the glance That only seems half-loyal to command,--A manner somewhat fallen from reverence--
Or have I dreamed the bearing of our knights Tells of a manhood ever less and lower?
Or whence the fear lest this my realm,upreared,By noble deeds at one with noble vows,From flat confusion and brute violences,Reel back into the beast,and be no more?'
He spoke,and taking all his younger knights,Down the slope city rode,and sharply turned North by the gate.In her high bower the Queen,Working a tapestry,lifted up her head,Watched her lord pass,and knew not that she sighed.
Then ran across her memory the strange rhyme Of bygone Merlin,'Where is he who knows?
From the great deep to the great deep he goes.'
