III
LONGER POEMS
THE VIGIL OF THALIARD
August 1891 - April 1892
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The Vigil of Thaliard
1 Where Time a sleeping dervish is Or printed legend of Romance Mid lilies and mid gold-roses Of mediaeval France, Where Life, a princely servitor Mid alien faces cast, Still wears in memory of her The trappings of the Past, Sweet Lily’s child, that golden grape Girl prince of Avelion, Thaliard by early plucking hap Star-reaching Prince’s son, Kept vigil by the impious pool Beyond the misty moaning sea To win from warlock’s weird misrule His soul’s sweet liberty.
2 For if throughout the monstrous night Unblest by ave or by creed By witched water Christian wight Do finger bead by bead His scarlet rosary of sins And leave his soul ajar, What hour the sleepy Evening pins Her bodice with a star, Until, the pitchy veil withdrawn That swathes the looming1 dune, The crowing trumpeter of dawn Blows addio to the moon, The awful record of his soul Shall by God’s finger blotted be, And o’er his drowned past shall roll Forgiveness like a sea.
1 yellow Page-173 3 The warden of the starry waste Who walks with orange-coloured lamp And weird eyes nursing fire, paced
Night’s silver-tented camp.
A flower by maiden culled, In Evening’s 1bosom lulled. The water seemed a damson crust With golden sugar poured, Or mirror caked with purple dust In lady’s closet stored. The hour like a weary snake Coiled slowly gliding serpentine Or drowsy nun perforce awake To pace a pillared shrine.
4 The roses shuddered in their sleep, The lilies drooped their silver fires, The reeds upon the humming steep Bowed low their tapering spires; For tho’ no sob pulsed in the air, No agony of wind, Down Heaven's moonlight-painted stair Trod angels who had sinned. Fireflies drizzled in the dark Like drops of burning rain, The glow-worm was a crawling spark, The pool a purple stain; The stars were grains of blazing sand, A haunted soul the shadowy lea, In forest-featured Broceliande Beyond the echoing sea.
1 twilit Page-174 5 Sir Thaliard by the phantom edge Heard rustling feet behind the trees And the weird water lapped the sedge With wistful symphonies: Sometimes a thrill of voices broke In runic tongues of old, Sometimes pale fingers seemed to stroke His curls of crisping gold: Thin laughter sobbed he knew not where Till God’s own candles paled, Or else out in the moonless air A golden infant wailed. Now in the moon’s enchanted wake Wild shadows ran a giant race, And now the golden glassing lake Was blotted with a face.
6 But when the naked moon rose clear Above the ruins of the day, Childe Thaliard saw a glinting spear Across the milky way. And when the white moon’s sliding feet One rank of stars had passed, Upon him smote the windy beat And terror of a blast. The tempest rippled thro’ the leaves, New wine of evening sucked, And at the water-lily sheaves With nervous fingers plucked. And in its wind-white arms it bore A helmeted1 and sceptred thing, The semblance of a man, that wore The glory of a king.
1 diademed Page-175 7 An argent cincture studded thick With opal and the blushing stone Fine wrought of texture Arabic About his middle shone: And in its buckled girth did sit, A fierce and cloudy star, Of temper fine as poet’s wit The Orient scimitar. Morocco gave his wrathful dart, The spring of widowed tears, Tempered in Afric’s sultry heart Or famous far Algiers. His barb was hued like cedar’s core In Aramaic 1 mountains born, Wild as the sea on storm-vexed shore And fronted as the morn.
8 Upon his kingly head the crown Was eloquent of Iran’s gold Dropping fine threads of glory down Upon the turban’s fold. His eyes were drops of smelted ore That in a foundry chase: His lips a cruel promise wore, A marble pride his face. As shows thro’ gold caparison Laburnum dusky-stemmed, Thro’ silks in Persian harem spun His gorgeous body gleamed. Or as a lithe and tropic snake That from some fine mosaic glares Or spotted panther by a lake Beneath the Indian stars.
1 Aramean Page-176 9 This Orient vision burning bright Snapped close his bridle silver-lined Between the moonlight and the night, The water and the wind. His cry sang like a stormy shower Upon a thundering sea: “O Thaliard, Thaliard, Britain’s flower, Wilt break a lance with me? The golden scythe of Mahomet Gleams crescent on my shield, My harvest upon thine is set, A cross in argent field. Prince-errant, prop of battle styled And flawless glass of chivalry, O Thaliard, Thaliard, golden childe, Wilt break a lance with me?”
10 As trailing thunder dies in heaven Thro’ silence trailed his latest word, And fire like the bearded levin Beneath his eyelids stirred. Child Thaliard saw the burning stars Vermilion grown like blood Thrice drew the serpent cross of Mars, Thrice clamoured where he stood. But Thaliard saw a milk-white star Grow large against the moon, Quelled by whose candid flames, afar Mars’ ruby paled in a swoon. “Not here,” he faltered like the wind, “Not here where murmurs poison sleep, When haunted memories grown half blind Their ghastly vigils keep.” Page-177 11 “Not here, when drifts past happy shores From mortal vision far withdrawn With lustrous sails and dripping oars The hull that brings the dawn. Seek me, but in the cloudy time When ruin blazons forth In sanguine hues the vaporous clime And champaigns of the North.” As wine that from the bubbling lips Of some fine beaker falls, This honeyed utterance largely slips Like murmurs in vast halls. The wimpled moon bent down her ear, And in the granaries of light The seedling splendours thrilled to hear, And all the east grew bright.
12 The phantom like a burning page Was furrowed with the ploughs of wrath, And thro’ his wintry orbs white rage Rolled like the dead sea-froth. His lance poised slanting like a ray Of ominous sunlight fell, Astarte in the milky way Saw death half-risen from hell: And soon the cold hooves of his horse On shivering lilies trod, Till, yellow anguish borrowing force, Childe Thaliard cried on God. The phantom, withering thro’ the bars. Of Being like transitory sound, Left but the murmur of the stars, Left but the hush profound. Page-178 13 And now the naked wanton moon Shed languorous glances on the lake Whose ripples sobbing from their swoon Grew golden for her sake: The amorous stars were faint with love; Earth’s awning seemed so light That Hesper like a flying dove Would tremble into sight. When Thaliard saw in drooping skies Large drops of beauty burn, A white-winged chorus did arise, The prayers that purely yearn. But Thaliard saw the curling deep With foamy moon-tints blaze and break, Till the slack spirit longed to steep. Rich fancies in the lake.
14 The penitent chorus of his prayers Were mingled with voluptuous speech Of daedal images and airs Luxurious wrapping each: A blue papyrus-leaf designed With fretted curls of fire, A purple page with coronet lined Or labyrinthine spire: The fiery-coloured bee of night With folded purple wing, Or solitary chrysolite Shut in an emerald ring: The vellum binding of a book, A scented volume spiced with Ind, A magic purse by Genie shook To loose a murmuring wind. Page-179 15 But hark! a wailing anguish woke The silence with a fiery sting: The foaming gulfs of clamour broke Around a fallen king: A distant moan of battle high Above a phantom land, And heron-weird a woman’s cry Went shrilling down the strand. While terror with a vulture’s force Was plucking at his throat, He heard the shrill hooves of a horse Prick echoes less remote. And like old accents Night may lend On lips long hushed in endless sleep, The voice of a familiar friend Came shuddering from the deep.
16 “Thaliard, awake; the smiling morn Forgets the cloud of yesterday: The sceptre from thy house is tom, Thy glory washed away. Amid the reeling battle trod, As a poppy in the mill, With white face lifted up to God, Thy sire lies very still. Pendragon’s spear has stung him dead, He sleeps among the slain; The glorious princes heap his bed, Like lilies in a plain. Thy brothers Galert and Gyneth Like toppling mountains whelmed I saw Beneath the shadowy winds of death In the rushing tide of war. Page-180 17 “Thy sister, fawn-eyed Guendolen, Haled captive from thy tottering hall, Lies helpless in the dragon’s den Luxurious Gawain’s thrall. His kisses tremble on her mouth Like moonbeams on a rose, For she is water to his drouth, He sunlight to her snows: Her flowering body to his love A pleasance-garden sweet; Her spirit, meeker than a dove, Fawns blindly at his feet. And with the pelting words of shame, Like delicate pigments bleared by storm, The gorgeous colouring of thy name Is losing gloss and form.
18 “The night-wind in thy yawning dome Has made her nest alive with song, The humming wasps of Aeolus roam, Low-flying in a throng: The thunder like a flying stork Clangs hoarsely but aloof, And lightning with his vermil fork Has written on thy roof. The lion lodges in thy gate, The werewolf is thy guest, The night-owl, like a sombre fate, Wails weirdly without rest. Thy deeds are grown a haunting rhyme, A fragment breaking from the past, An atom, which the meteor, Time, In his fiery flight has cast.” Page-181 19 With sobs of shuddering agony bled The silence as with stinging whips, But Thaliard felt slim fingers laid Upon his writhen lips. The soul’s redoubts flung each to each A ringing challenge round, To clench the ruby gates of speech On the corridors of sound. In dancing dithyrambs thro’ each vein A dizzy echo sang, While on the anvil of his brain The steely syllables rang: And from the avenues of the heart Thro’ which the river of being pours, The torpid life with a sudden start Recoiled upon its doors.
20 The voice was now a violin Shrill-winding, now a startled bat, And now as linnet’s warble thin, Now wailful as a gnat, But gathered volume as of yore Until with refluent tide, Like Ocean ebbing from her shore; The murmur ebbed and died. Like beauty losing maidenhood Astarte debonair. Undid the crocus-coloured snood That bound her glimmering hair. And up the ladder of the moon, As white smoke curls upon a glass, He saw with flakes of glory strewn A radiant figure pass. Page-182 21 Again the stealthy minutes crept On tiptoe to the breathless hour And loud suspense her riot kept Till budding doom should flower. The yellow moon, whom Heaven once more From silver cowl did shake, With golden letters scribbled o’er The purple-written lake. But when to Heaven’s polished breast Her rounded amulet clung Below in the blue palimpsest. A slit, a chasm sprung. A meteor from the purple brink, A vivid star no eye may lose, A pictured bowl of nectarous drink, An apparition rose.
22 And in the bridal pomp of hell Walked beauty hand in hand with sin, And Thought, the glorious infidel A helmed Paladin; When shuttering under cloudy bars Astarte’s radiant eye, God sowed with multitudinous stars His peacock in the sky, The diamonds perished from the deep;
The moon-tints from the edge, His locks of ruffled sedge. Imagination, like a sponge Wrung very pure of beauty, wept, As from his pores with a tired plunge His flakes of fancy leaped. Page-183 23 Astarte from her cloudy chair Paced with her troop of star-sweet girls; Unfilleted her glorious hair Hung loose in cowslip curls. And like the flower-song of a bee On April’s daffodil skirt, A whisper from the smiling sea In her crocus gown did flirt. The waters quivering to her wiles Among the rushes whipped, As thro’ the network of her smiles Her visible murmur slipped. But when they wooed her to repeat Her primrose-painted pilgrimage, She dipped the white palms of her feet In beds of bubbling sedge;
24 Her body lapped in cloth of gold A wave disguised in moonlight seemed, Whose every curve and curious fold With opal facets gleamed. Her nestling mass of rounded curls Were soft as velvet cloths Once fingered by Arabian girls Or piled in Syrian booths. She was an ebon-framèd lyre Where wind-waked murmurs dance, A tinted statue of Desire In studios of Romance. Her glowing cheeks just ripe with youth, The purple passion of her eyes; Half seemed a splendid mock at truth, A brilliant mesh of lies. Page-184 25 Below with balmy sobs that drank The must of life thro’ thirsty lips, Her pained bosom heaved and sank Like Ocean-cradled ships. And as bee-blossoms sapphire-looped, The humming waves that kiss, Her creamy forehead almost drooped Burthened with too much bliss. The artist Grace who limned her fair With moist and liberal brush Painted a glory in her hair And mixed a gorgeous blush To tint her cheeks with a flowery bloom, To touch her lips with scarlet fire, - An empire's beauty in small room, A vision of desire.
26 A fairy witch by painful charms Had burgeoned this refulgent flower, Embraced by wild and wanton arms In weird and midnight hour. She on the amber milk of bees By magic mother nursed, In laurel-sheltered libraries Cons rudiments accurst, The most familiar things of hell The mightiest names inherits, And learns what iron syllable Compels reluctant spirits. A perilous thorn on fire with bloom, A poppied spell, an empress snake, She rose, the alchemist of doom, The Lady of the Lake.
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