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?”
