My love through flesh hath wrought into my life
So far, that my doom is, I love thee still.
Let no man dream but that I love thee still.
Perchance, and so thou purify thy soul,
And so thou lean on our fair father Christ,
Hereafter in that world where all are pure
We two may meet before high God, and thou
Wilt spring to me, and claim me thine, and know
I am thine husband-not a smaller soul,
Nor Lancelot, nor another.
Leave me that, Now must I hence. Through the thick night I hear the trumpet blow: They summon me their King to lead mine hosts Far down to that great battle in the west, Where I must strike against my sister's son, Leagued with the lords of the White Horse and knights Once mine, and strike him dead, and meet myself Death, or I know not what mysterious doom. And thou remaining here wilt learn the event; But hither shall I never come again,
I charge thee, my last hope.
Never lie by thy side, see thee no more,—
Farewell!"
And while she grovelled at his fect,
She felt the King's breath wander o'er her neck;
And, in the darkness, o'er her fallen head
Perceived the waving of his hands that blest.
Then, listening till those armed steps were gone,
Rose the pale Queen, and in her anguish found
The casement: "Peradventure," so she thought,
“If I might see his face, and not be seen.”
And, lo, he sat on horseback at the door!
And near him the sad nuns with each a light
Stood, and he gave them charge about the Queen,
To guard and foster her for evermore.
And while he spake to these his helm was lowered,
To which for crest the golden dragon clung
Of Britain; so she did not see the face,
Which then was as an angel's; but she saw,
Wet with the mists and smitten by the lights,
The Dragon of the great Pendragonship
Blaze, making all the night a steam of fire.
And even then he turned; and more and more
The moony vapour rolling round the King,
Who seemed the phantom of a giant in it,
Enwound him fold by fold, and made him grey
And greyer, till himself became as mist
Before her, moving ghost-like to his doom.
Then she stretched out her arms and cried aloud,
"O Arthur!" there her voice brake suddenly;
Then as a stream that spouting from a cliff
Fails in mid air, but gathering at the base
Re-makes itself, and flashes down the vale—
Went on in passionate utterance.
"Gone-my lord!
Gone through my sin to slay and to be slain!
And he forgave me, and I could not speak.
Farewell! I should have answered his farewell.
His mercy choked me. Gone, my lord the King,
My own true lord !-how dare I call him mine?
The shadow of another cleaves to me,
And makes me one pollution: he, the King,
Called me polluted: shall I kill myself?
What help in that? I cannot kill my sin,
If soul be soul; nor can I kill my shame;
No, nor by living can I live it down.
The days will grow to weeks, the weeks to months, The months will add themselves and make the years, The years will roll into the centuries,
And mine will ever be a name of scorn.
I must not dwell on that defeat of fame.
Let the world be; that is but of the world.
What else? what hope? I think there was a hope,
Except he mocked me when he spake of hope;
His hope he called it; but he never mocks,
For mockery is the fume of little hearts.
And blessed be the King, who hath forgiven
My wickedness to him, and left me hope
That in mine own heart I can live down sin
And be his mate hereafter in the heavens
Before high God. Ah, great and gentle lord,
Who wast, as is the conscience of a saint
Among his warring senses, to thy knights—
To whom my false, voluptuous pride, that took
Full easily all impressions from below,
Would not look up, or half-despised the height
To which I would not or I could not climb-
I thought I could not breathe in that fine air,
That pure severity of perfect light—
I wanted warmth and colour which I found
In Lancelot-now I see thee what thou art,
Thou art the highest and most human too,
Not Lancelot, nor another. Is there none
Will tell the King I love him though so late?
Now-ere he goes to the great battle? none:
Myself must tell him in that purer life,
But now it were too daring. Ah, my God,
What might I not have made of thy fair world,
Had I but loved thy highest creature here?
It was my duty to have loved the highest:
It surely was my profit had I known:
It would have been my pleasure had I seen.
XXXIX.—THE BURIAL OF JACOB.
Mr. Burns is author of "The Vision of Prophecy, and other poems."
It is a solemn cavalcade, and slow,
That comes from Egypt; never had the land,
Save when a Pharaoh died, such pomp of woe
Beheld; never was bier by such a band
Of princely mourners followed, and the grand
Gloom of that strange funereal armament
Saddened the wondering cities as it went.
In Goshen he had died, that region fair
Which stretches east from Nilus to the wave
Of the great Gulf; and since he could not bear
To lay his ashes in an alien grave,
He charged his sons to bear them to the cave Where slumbered all his kin, that from life's cares And weariness his dust might rest with theirs.
For seventy days through Egypt ran the cry
Of woe, for Joseph wept: and now there came
Along with him the rank and chivalry
Of Pharaoh's court,-the flower of Egypt's fame; High captains, chief estates, and lords of name, The prince, the priest, the warrior, and the sage, Made haste to join in that sad pilgrimage.
The hoary elders in their robes of state
Were there, and sceptred judges; and the sight Of their pavilions pitched without the gate
Was pleasant; chariots with their trappings bright
Stood round,-till all were met, and every rite
Was paid; then at a signal the array
Moved with a heavy splendour on its way.
Its very gloom was gorgeous; and the sound
Of brazen chariots, and the measured feet
Of stately pacing steeds upon the ground,
Seemed, by its dead and dull monotonous beat,
A burden to that march of sorrow meet;
With music Pharaoh's minstrels would have come
Had Joseph wished,-'twas better they were dumb
They pass by many a town then famed or feared,
But quite forgotten now; and over ground
Then waste, on which in after time were reared
Cities whose names were of familiar sound
For centuries,-Bubastus, and renowned
Pelusium, whose glories in decay
Gorged the lean desert with a splendid prey.
The fiery sons of Ishmael, as they scour
The stony glens of Paran with their hordes,
Watch their array afar, but dread their power:
Here first against mankind they drew their swords
In open warfare; as the native lords
Of the wild region held their free career,
And fenced the desert with the Arab spear.
But unmolested now the mourners pass,
Till distant trees, like signs of land, appear, And pleasantly they feel the yielding grass Beneath their feet, and in the morning clear They see with joy the hills of Canaan near; The camels scent the freshness of the wells, Far hidden in the depth of leafy dells.
At length they reach a valley opening fair
With harvest field and homestead in the sweep
Of olive-sprinkled hills, where they prepare
The solemn closing obsequies to keep;
For an appointed time they rest, and weep
With ceaseless lamentation, and the land
Rings with a grief it cannot understand.
The rites thus duly paid, they onward went
Across the eastern hills, and rested not
Till, slowly winding up the last ascent,
They see the walls of Hebron, and the spot
To him they bore so dear and unforgot,
Where the dark cypress and the sycamore
Weave their deep shadows round the rock-hewn door
Now Jacob rests where all his kindred are,-
The exile from the land in which of old
His fathers lived and died, he comes from far
To mix his ashes with their mortal mould.
There where he stood with Esau, in the cold
Dim passage of the vault, with holy trust
His sons lay down the venerable dust.
They laid him close by Leah, where she sleeps
Far from her Syrian home, and never knows
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