The Last Tournament

Excerpt

POET LAUREATE

   Dagonet, the fool, whom Gawain in his moods
 Had made mock-knight of Arthur's Table Round,
 At Camelot, high above the yellowing woods,
 Danced like a wither'd 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
 Clutch'd at the crag, and started thro' mid-air
 Bearing an eagle's nest: and thro' the tree
 Rush'd ever a rainy wind, and thro' 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 unscarr'd 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 honor 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 ye 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
 Arm'd for a day of glory before the King.

   But on the hither side of that loud morn
 Into the hall stagger'd, his visage ribb'd
 From ear to ear with dogwhip-weals, his nose
 Bridge-broken, one eye out, and one hand off,
 And one with shatter'd 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 marr'd Heaven's image in thee thus?"

   Then, sputtering thro' the hedge of splinter'd teeth,
 Yet strangers to the tongue, and with blunt stump
 Pitch-blacken'd sawing the air, said the maim'd 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 call'd upon thy name as one
 That doest right by gentle and by churl,
 Maim'd me and maul'd, and would outright have slain,
 Save that he sware me to a message, saying—
 'Tell thou the King and all his liars, that I
 Have 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 turn'd to Kay the seneschal,
 "Take thou my churl, and tend him curiously
 Like a king's heir, till all his hurts be whole....