University of Virginia Library

May I not sing, then? Do I ask too much?
Pray you, forgive me, Father! Yet I ween
No longer since than summer I could touch
My citole to a tune could charm a queen
To hear and crown me for the lays I wove:
Though well I wot, the tune of “Time hath been,”
Fair Father Abbot, hath less might to move.—
Yea, steel is strong, and gold more strong than steel,
And love than gold, and art more strong than love,
Yet 'tis not strongest! Nay, I live to feel
That a king's envy is more strong than art.—
We,—I and King Alfonso of Castile,
Were lovers of one lady—wherefore start?
I am a homeless waif, and only claim
A few hours' house-room for a broken heart:
Yet, Father, 'tis of right I set my name
Where she hath set my love—before the king's;
For I am Arnaud de Merveil,—the same,
If aught remain the same of earthly things,
The same, none other—though I walk forlorn
And even the uplandish yeoman slights the strings
That shook five kingdoms now my robes are torn,
And deems a groat too lavish for my lay.
Father, I fain would rest me here till morn,
Being faint and footsore: pray you, let me stay!
By Him the Wandering Jew forbade to rest,
Send me not forth this night upon my way!
I crave no largess save to be your guest
For this one night—unless it be the prayer
Of these pure brethren for a soul distressed.—
I will requite you:—Mine are lays more rare
Than Bertrand ever babbled—Tush! I boast
And am a beggar!—Yet if thou canst spare
One half-hour from devotion, good mine host,
And these fair brethren—who perchance have strayed
No farther from the cloister than the coast,
And less are wont in gallant masquerade
Of courts and camps than thou and I to stand—
Will deign to hear such music as I made,
I will essay a tale could once command
The ears of queens and kings in hall and bower—
Ho, boy, there! Give the citole to my hand!

Once, I remember, by the Garden Tower
Were three king's daughters playing at the ball;
I crossed the lawn, and plucked a lily-flower
And waved it as I strode. They knew the call
And followed, laughing: one had slipped her shoe
And stayed to right it nigh the pleasaunce wall.

Then sang I how a king's son went to woo
The Lady of the Waste Lands by the Sea,
Unweeting of the weird whereby she threw
Each morn her womanhood aside, to be
Till evening glimmered over brake and thorn,
A milk-white hind under the greenwood tree.
And all a summer day with hound and horn
By ford and fell he chased that spotless hide;
Till, smit by shaft too sure, his love forlorn
Fled to a wild cell by the wailing tide
Mid spiky grass half-buried in the sand,
Where, peering through the casement-chink, he spied
A weeping breathless maiden, her right hand
Stanching an arrow-hurt on her round arm:
And in the sundown of that dreary strand,
Knew her he loved, and how he had wrought her harm,
And, shamed to threefold fondness by the feat,
Kissed her the kiss that snapped the baleful charm.

And then I sang them how a rustling fleet
Of cygnets sailing from the Norland fords
Stooped on a mountain mere one Mayday sweet,
Where, with a chanted charming of strange words,
The swan-skins fell from their white womanhood
Among the sunlit shallows. Then with swords
Men came to slay them, but the wailing brood
Donned once again their feathers and were gone
Into the sky, far from those men of blood,
Back to their Norland homestead—all save one,
That lost her swan-gear in the treacherous reeds,
And she so fair, so pitiful, that none
Of those rude sworders, swift to murderous deeds,
But fain would bear her to his town as bride.
And in their hearts, like wind among the gledes,
Love kindled wrath, and even from undern-tide,
Each fought on other till the sun was low:
And one alone among his peers who died
Was left to woo that Sister of the Snow.
And thus they wedded:—but upon a day
The swans again came sailing all arow,
And when they brought her wings to flee away,
There was no charm in love's sweet fellowships,
No kiss of spouse nor babe could bid her stay.
Then would I tell of one on haws and hips
Starving among the woods, an Outlaw bold,
To whom, the word sans pardon on his lips,
The fiend, Dame Venus, proffered wealth untold,
And fame and love at night to meet her there:
Withal she gave him drink from cups of gold,
And loosed a token from her golden hair:
He swore, but laughing at the oath he swore,
She turned and shrank into the wintry air.
And lo, at midnight, through the forest hoar,
When the dead walk and the sick moonbeam dims,
He came—but found the trysting-glade no more,
No more, no more! Din of unhallowed hymns
He heard, and once among the groaning trees
That blinding beauty, those majestic limbs
Flashed for a moment—then, like surging seas,
A rout of huntsmen not of earth swept past;
And in the morn, footing the peaceful leas,
The whistling charcoal-burner stopped aghast,
Stumbling upon a corpse—and straightway knew
What doom had dawned on that fond youth at last.
Yea, but the song my singing made all true
What time I summered by the sea i' the South
Last June, was that which silenced me and slew.
'Twas of a Princess, one in all men's mouth,
Fair Rosiphel—no rose so fair to see
In a queen's garden blooming after drouth—
The widowed king's one child of Armenye.
Yet, flower albeit of peerless maidenhood,
For wealth, wit, wisdom, worth and sovereignty,
A world to woo her, would she not be wooed.
Heiress of all things save a heart to move,
As if there ran no woman in her blood,
All lore she loved save lore alone of love.
Never was peer nor prince nor duke nor king
Might win such grace as even wear her glove
For token on his crest knight-erranting,
Yea, though he spent a realm for such a meed,
And all the treasure East or West could bring.
Coldly she bade her wooers all God-speed,
As if too careless or to smile or scorn:
Let lovers live or die she took no heed,
But loved, feared, hated none of woman born.
She recked not, she! One kingly-sceptred knight,
Who for her sake full oft had watched till morn,
Sought him a death more kindly in the fight:
“All die,” she said: “we, too, would fighting die”—
And went her ways and loved her own delight,
Daring love's noonday sun with phœnix-eye.

Till on a Springtide as she went a-Maying,
Joyous among her joyous company,
With singing, dancing, laughter and sweet playing
Some deal aweary, to a greenwood glade
Beside a brook she loitered, lonely straying
To rest her in the pleasaunce of the shade.
And at her feet she saw the bells of Spring,
And overhead horse-chestnut leaves that played
With open hands, and buffeted the wing
O' the warm May wind come wooing through the shaw.
And ever among she heard the mavis sing
Loud to his mate how Love is lord and law,
And cushats coo how Love will woo by kind:
And proud beneath the forest oaks she saw
The red deer royal-antlered by his hind,
And o'er his pastures green the moody bull
With muttered thunder tramping forth to find
His silky-dewlapped mate beside the pool.

Yea, all the Spring had blossomed in her veins
Ere on her eyne a show more beautiful
Than Springtide' self among those greenwood lanes
Dawned on a sudden. Lo, by twos and threes
On palfreys ambling gay with tasselled manes
And housings pranked with needled broideries,
Rode forth a bevy of fair dames, more fair
Than all kings' daughters in all palaces:—
So lovesome all, so queenly debonair,
She clean forgat to greet them ere they passed,
And only woke to wonder what they were
Who o'er the greensward rode so proud and fast,
In state so royal and so rich array,
All red-rose-garlanded from first to last,
With kirtles rose and white of costliest say
And copes of damasked green, all clad the same
To glove, and boot, and girdle glistening gay.

But while she marvelled, lo, another dame,
In tattered russet weed unseemly rent
And loose locks crownless through the greenwood came
Spurring a gaunt-ribbed jennet, as if bent
To follow that fair cavalcade in haste.
Wan was her face, and ever as she went
A coil of halters dangled at her waist;
Yet, stranger still than all that went before,
A golden bridle, rough with gem-work, graced
The golden bit her spavined stumbler bore.
Kindly, as one who could of courtesy,
The Princess spake: “Nay, spur not on so sore,
Sweet sister mine: no robbers' nest is nigh.
But prithee tell what be these dames so fair
Who ride our valleys in such sovereignty?”
That other answered: “These be they that bare
Spotless their maiden fame and wedded troth:
Who read aright their womanhood and sware
To Love our Lord and King the holy oath.—
Farewell, sweet friend:—my service calls me hence.”
“Nay, sister,” quoth the Princess; “we were loth
To lose thee thus, not knowing whom nor whence.
Gentle thou art, if I can read aright,
And by thy seeming void of all offence:
What chance hath brought thee to this sorry plight?
What be these halters? What thy service due?”

“Fair friend,” she said, “I, ere I left the light,
Was Princess of Cathay and Cambalu:
But I was slow to learn Love's kindly lore:
Nothing I recked of tender hearts and true,
But mateless aye my maiden chaplet wore:
Therefore in this ungentle guise I ride,
Meet penance of ungentle crime of yore,
And mourn in death too late my living pride.
And when these ladies in the lusty May
Troop proudly forth upon the greenwood side
To listen to the sweet birds' roundelay
And from the Springtide quaff fresh loveliness,
I in these tatters follow their array
To hold their stirrups and their steeds to dress,
And bear, for Love our Lord decreed the doom,
These halters as their humble hostleress.”

“Doth Love wreak vengeance then beyond the tomb?”
The Princess mused, but said: “I prithee tell
Why bears thy beast this bridle, or for whom?”
With that the damsel blushed, and a tear fell.
“Madam,” she said: “one fortnight ere my death
I 'gan repent me that I did rebel
So long 'gainst Him who giveth all things breath.
There was a Minstrel in my father's hall,
Around whose brow full oft I had twined a wreath
More kingly than the king's own coronal
For braver words and kinglier than the king's,
And deeds as kingly in the tilt withal.
Yet never, till his hand upon the strings
Waxed faint, and faint the voice that sang so sweet,
And o'er him fell the shadow of the wings
So soon to bear him where no pulses beat,
Did I begin to love him, or to know
'Twas mine own crime had woven his winding-sheet.
But when within the fortnight he lay low,
I bade them bury me, who wrought such ill,
Beside him in the grave—and died even so.
Wherefore hath Love our Lord, who knew my will,
And that my love, though late, was very truth,
Granted me thus to ride by holt and hill;
And gave for guerdon of my tardy ruth
This starry bridle which is all my weal.
Farewell! To Love give offering of thy youth!”
So rode she forth, and vanished: “Lo, I kneel,
Love, Lord, before thee, thine unworthiest slave,”
The Princess prayed, “Lord, grant me now thy heal,
So may I bear no halters in the grave!”

Such lay I sang last year, and one who heard,
No longer infidel to true-love, gave
To him who sang the lay her plighted word:—
Yseult de Beziers—Father mine, dost hear?
I say Yseult de Beziers hath preferred
Myself the Minstrel, or to prince or peer!
Yea, king Alfonso of Castile in vain
Whispered his witless wooings in her ear,
And vowed her half the palaces of Spain!
But kings are strong and cruel! He, this king,
Would give Navarre to-day to have me slain!
But durst not slay me! Look, this topaz ring
She bade him send in token he hath sworn
To harm me not nor kill, where'er I sing,
So nevermore I risk me to return
Within his marches nor nine leagues anear,
But dwell within the land where I was born—
She is Alfonso's love, and I—am here!