| Lyonnesse (the sailing of Arthur) "He gazed so long that both his eyes were dazzled as he stood This way and that dividing the swift mind, In act to throw: but last it seemed better to leave him concealed There in the many-knotted waterflags, that whistled Stiff and dry about the marge So strode he back slowly to the King." - The Idylls, The Passing - Tennyson, 1869 And then, on the light breaking o'er his reserve, Awoke and cried, "Ho! Who spake? Was't in dream? Dream and dream only? Guinevere, come to my bedside, these cries - they are mine? Have I said such abominations without retaining such sense of presence? My lady, by my troth, I shan't allow such heterous prose I must away - Lyonnesse, I am off." At the tide's recede the walls rise to the whitecapped poles, unseen but for his knowing gaze - the King, he cognessed And league by league the tide revealed what it lorded o'er in slumber and the King beheld such an aweful sight - it was, he spake, "As though Ariyajdh had turned on her flowering fields And left naught but what greeted her on her arrival from Londres on that first morn Youthful light had stolen from the sunrise And alighted upon her figure." The King spoke in quivering tones to Guinevere; This great Heaven's winter had belied him, Beseeched such troth that what man but the King, not yet on guard, Wept openly at the prospect "Fie! What can await in the fields of sapphire where my guardian Keeps pace with the rise and falle of Her breast - Such sweetness on the wind that no winter Could stiffen Her gentle breaths." But in err lay the King; Lyonnesse had fallen from grace into the Devonian coast and been left to suffer the hollow battering of the sea that had such grace given her. The comradeship left Muniecher Court Hungering on each breath that brought Lyonnesse to the bow And past Land's End threw into the gentle winds the vessel Not was any cry heard from the gentle souls, nor the heathens, As the mist set aside and admitted the Eqaterin to the open waters; she set about rescinding her promise, But as the white waters whipped about the stern A head rose o'er the ocean, black as darkest darkness, And cast her t'other shores. Lyonnesse, at last closing, Bore her arms with fruit and nectar And called south'ard the fellowship Following, flung into the middle mere, withdrawn. The King, at last to know the winter moon, Abouting his own carrier into the eastward winds Was at once stolen from his perch and carried not to his lady's hand But into the shadows rising slowly over Lyonnesse' remains And o'er him, mirroring the scene, stood the wint'ry eyes of her presence. The King was taken by the myriad of wond'rous wealth: All the world shone with diamond strikes and jewelry Of topaz, mercury, gold and myrrh, such splendour that did the King lose his place in time to find himself set upon by the angry tides And glide to his newfound dominice in Lyonesse' hearth, Her name to be adrift on his tongue for all time. |