Excerpt
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....