The Queen of the Hid Isle :: :: University of Virginia Library

The Queen of the Hid Isle

An Allegoric Poem

Douglas, Evelyn

THE QUEEN OF THE HID ISLE:

Scene III.

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Scene III.

—The Hall of Amanda's Castle. A banquet spread. Amanda, Hermadon, Clarimonde, Chauntval, Eulice seated. Jester seated on the steps of the dais. Soft music.
Aman.
Pour out the creamy beverage of blue grapes,
The purple ferment mantling with dim snow,

Our choicest wine, mellowed by ripest suns,
And stored a century in icy vaults
Under our castle. Spice the grace-cup well
In honour of this day's deliverance.
But none save virgin metal suits thy lips,
Our holy champion, nor shall lip of ours
Touch the gold rim ere thou with sacred kiss
Hast given an unction to the warmèd cup
For us who shall come after.

Chaun.
Nay, fair queen,

Chauntval offers his views upon Love.

Thou robbest him of half the sweet. Which couch,
Think you, a lover would the sooner kiss,
That where his love has slept or is to sleep?
Let the sweet brim be wet with thy fair lips;
I warrant thee our champion drinks no worse.

Herm.
Sweet lady, drink or drink not of the cup,

Hermadon has other views of Love.

I shall with no base lip or thought profane
Thy kiss upon it, nor love it best unkist.
Chaste to the chaste, and chaste lips oft have met
In holy chapels, by the altar's candles,
Under the smiling saints, as pure as they;
Nor can the Devil himself find room between
The close salute of holy hearts and hands.
Taste thou the cup.

Aman.
I pass it next to thee.

Herm.
And I, fair dame Eulice, must crave you grace
For courtesy that breeds discourtesy.

Jester.
Fair dame Eulice, sire, hath a liquorish mouth,
And knows not if to thank thee or to chide,
Who keepest back the wine and lipp'st the cup.

Aman.
Peace, mannerless; you make our guest to blush.

Jester.
So would Eulice, I warrant!

Aman.
Fair Eulice.

Eulice.
Thanks, queen; I am not thirsty. This for love.
There touched my lip.

Chaun.
I shall not miss the place.

Jester.
And afterward change plates with her, and pick

Jester reproveth Chauntval for coarse passion.

The clean-picked bones put by upon one side.
'Tis well for fools that God made women.

Chaun.
Why?

Jester.
They make all men so like us.

Chaun.
Then you lose
Your privileges.

Jester.
No, there's room for more;
And chiefly poets, gentle troubadour.

Chaun.
Friend, take the cup.

[Chauntval gives the cup to Clarimonde.

Jester.
See how he turns it round

Jester reproveth Clarimonde for absence of coarse passion.

To find a clean place. Fetch a napkin, sewer,
To wipe the love off for Sir Clarimonde!

Aman.
Sir Clarimonde shall pay us for his scorn
With his sweet voice; and thou, Sir Troubadour,
For that the knight drank after thee, shalt sing
After the knight. Fetch me a lute.

[Attendant brings in a lute and gives it to Clarimonde.
Clar.
Thanks, boy.
List, I will sing thee of the old fay knights
And ladies say, whom all men now deem dead
But I and some few more, whose lifelong quest
Is sworn upon the Holy Sepulchre
To find them.

The Ballad of Avalon.

Once in a dream I sailed afar,
Out on the ocean far away,
In a magic barque to the evening star,
Past burnished gates of the closing day,
Till I heard the surge and saw the spray
(White on the loadstone rocks it shone),
Heard trumpet blare and war-horse neigh
There in the castle of Avalon.

And I drave my skiff on the rocky bar,
And over the drawbridge took my way,
And in at the door, that stood ajar,
Gazed on the hall in the wan moon-ray.
There sat Ogier by Morgue the Fay,
And Huon, crowned, by Oberon,
And Oriande and the sad Isaie,
There in the castle of Avalon.

There Lancelot rests from scath and scar,
And hears in dreams the clarions bray,
And Arthur leaves the heathen war
To list to Tristram's virelay.
And there is the Hid Isle's queen, who lay
With Alexander of Macedon,
And lured stern Cæsar to her play,
There in the castle of Avalon.

L'ENVOY.
In jewelled arms and rich array
They sit, and let the years roll on.
Ye deem them dead: they live for aye,
There in the castle of Avalon.

Aman.
A sweet song. I were lief to deem it true.
But what is she, the queen of the Hid Isle?

Clar.
Somewhere across green leagues of sea, and hid

The quest of Clarimonde.

Upon a land of myrrh and ambergris,
In a network of labyrinthine streams,
There is a spot: men call it the Hid Isle,
For he who chances on it, and departs,
May never more trace back thereto. The hills,
The marshes, and the rivers, and all signs
Or landmarks seem to slip and shift each hour;
And in the isle there dwells a lady fay
Who hath eternal life. Men speak of her
As wedded to the lord of Macedon,
And after to the good knight Cæsar. Thither,
To win that lady fay and deathless life,
My quest is sworn.

Jester.
I wish thee a good journey.

The Jester disbelieves in the existence of Beauty.

Lo, here's one bound for nowhere all his days!

Clar.
Thrice have I been in Spain, in Africa,

Clarimonde hath hitherto failed in the quest.

And Britain, and in Asia farther east
Than Babylon, nigh which, in a weird wood,
Sir Huon, whom I sang of, met the dwarf
Whose hair is yellow at three hundred years,
The fairy Oberon; and I have seen
High ventures in the realm of infidels,
But found no magic dame nor hidden isle.

Herm.
How know you if the lady be for you?

Perchance she hath her choice. Perchance there be
Who see, and who see not, with glamourous eyes,
To know enchantment from dull sense.

Clar.
Sir Knight,
I know not if I be of chosen men,
Nor if these eyes would know her if they saw.
But this I know—by seeking 'tis we find
If we are fit to find: and still I seek,
And, if by any manner toil I may,
Find her I will.

Herm.
And doth thy spirit-sense

Whereof Hermadon pointeth the cause, a poet is born, not made.

Tell thee no surer tidings? They who fare
Upon this highest quest should throughly search
Their purgèd souls if they be fit or no.
Then, welling from the unfathomable soul,
The quickening fount of fire shall surge, and mount
With swift reverberant answer—Thou art fit,
Thou chosen; go thou straight to the Hid Isle.
The hills are fast; the path is smooth as day;
Thou canst not miss thy road. But otherwise
Forswear the venture. Wherefore waste thy days
Wandering in pathless voids of sea and land?

Thou shalt not reach the isle. Thy soul's impure,
Not with impurity of fleshly deeds
(Which thou wert better have), but quenched with doubt,
That blinds her visual beams. Thou art of earth,
And all thy plodding shall avail thee nought.

Jester.
Here's one fool bound for nowhere, and another
Ready to show the way. My trade grows common.

Clar.
Art thou too of us? Or hast won the goal
To speak so surely? Stint thy warnings, friend.
Thou canst not keep the quest so to thyself;
We must go onward though we may not win.

Aman.
And thou, Sir Troubadour, hast thou no song?

Chaun.
Reach me the lute, fill me a cup of wine,

Chauntval offers his views on Art.

Rose-red or of the proper grapy hue.
I must have fire-wells in my veins to sing!
Let tingling wine in riotous ferment romp
And rage along the swollen channels first,
Enter my brain, and fill it with vague sound,
Like multitudinous cities heard afar
O'er moonlit seas. Who with unpurpled lips
Sings waterish songs of spiritual Avalons,
I hold no poet, though he be true knight.
My strain shall be of women and of wine,

Of close embraces under blushing moons
In rose-gardens or by the fabled Nile,
With full-fleshed beauties; of the mountains trod
By madding Mænads naked to the waist,
That strew the ridges with their lovers' bones;
Or I will sing you a sweet song I heard
In Syria. 'Twas a Turkish damsel sang it,
Whose fingers, stained with soft alkenna tints,
Beat on the timbrel, a wild dancing-girl,
Chief of the Almai. 'Tis of a youth
Unto a sweet Circassian infidel
Reading the Alkoran, too much for sport,
Too little in faith and love. I have it! Thus:—

Young Aladinist of visionary glories,
Brushing with thy golden curls the Alkoran,
Say what dreamest thou, what strange sweet stories
Of the houris and the soul of man?
Wouldst thou with the houris too be reckoned,
Paradise were near:
Men would die if you but beckoned,
Cassalmire!

Dreamst of lamp-lit gardens in enchanted valleys,
Pillars of amandola and agate stone,

Starry vistas, glimpses of gold alleys,
Avenues of arches diamond-strown,
Tinsel foliage of rattling metals,
Gold and copper sere,
Flowers that sprout with jasper petals,
Cassalmire?

Roofed arcades, long labyrinths of crystal porches,
Babylonian gardens swaying by gold chains,
Fumes of ambergris and sandal torches,
Melody of immeasurable strains,
Rivers rustling o'er green grail of beryl,
Slipping over sheer
Glassy diamond crags of peril,
Cassalmire?

Round thy palace palms arise and tree-ferns feather,
Gorgeous tropics chant by day and roar by night;
Scarlet orchids chain the trunks together,
Arches of loose-trellised parasite.
Silken skeins of creepers droop and cluster,
Cactus-prickles rear
Tassels of vermilion lustre,
Cassalmire!

Glossy glaucous leaves shot through with silver patches,
Hung like burning lamps with globes of green-gold fruit:
Swaying nests, where the wild halcyon hatches
Her high hopes beyond low Care's pursuit:
Brims of rivers starred with golden aster,
Flat leaves on the mere,
Waxen cups and alabaster,
Cassalmire!

Bee-like birds, that ruffle through the thorny tangles
Emerald feathers shot with dazzling coral gleams,
Crests of saffron specked with orange spangles,
Bright as beamy rainbows, swift as dreams;
Ever through the dusk air they illumine,
Like chameleons clear,
Shifting colour, glinting, glooming,
Cassalmire!

Give me wings that I may follow thy swift vision,
For I fail and faint behind thee on thy flight:
Lift me hence up into thine Elysian,
Into thinner ether, stranger light.

I would see what lightning-fronted seraph,
Winged with thought and fear,
Stoops for thee across Al Araaf,
Cassalmire!

Aman.
And thou, Sir Stranger Knight, my champion,
I crave thee of thy courtesy a song.
But be it somewhat other than thy speech,
Less like a mist-enfolden mountain-peak
Ensanguined with the blood of dawn and eve,
A beauteous sword sheathed up in mystery
And scabbarded with spiritual words,
More savouring of earth and earthly love,
That we, who are of earth and not of heaven,
And quickened with earth's love, may fathom it.

Herm.
The stream tastes ever of its source, fair queen,

Hermadon's views of Art.

The river of the stream, and you shall find
Both icy from their native mountain-snow,
Or tepid from their bubbling mineral-wells.
My song (or no song else) with current clear,

Above all, it must be sincere for good or for evil.

Doubt it not, lady, shall flow from my heart,
As silver or as tawny as the fount

Is pure or turbid, no whit more or less,
Save as it gather soil from either bank
Through mire and marish, or, as with new blood,
Be fed with life by tributary streams,
And lightened by the moonbeams and the stars.
My song shall savour of my destiny
In this strange world, and of that other life
Before the womb, before oblivion.
Have patience with me if my song be sad.

There came a river out of the high snow:

But the purest Art is impossible in a corrupt age.

There came a knight down from another world:
Most diamond-clear, it paced with even flow:
And close he kept his heart's warm petals furled.

The flowers were gladdened as with tears of God:
Men lifted up their hearts from the dead dust:
It left an Eden wheresoe'er it trod:
He made love's Paradise in wastes of lust.

But as the banks be, such the stream must grow;
And as the world is, so the heart shall be:
With death and pestilence it marked its flow:
He through the world spread the world's misery.

Aman.
Is then the world so evil no pure thing
Can live in it and yet keep pure? so cruel
It turns to cruel the most pitiful?

Herm.
Nay, queen, for thou art in it.

Chaun.
Deftly flattered!
The earth begins to taint thee, and small harm!
For to what end this monstrous severance
Of flesh and spirit?

Herm.
Sir, there be in whom
Spirit and flesh, and flesh with spirit wed
So closely, each by other purified,
That through them throbs one single rhythmic life
With organ-tones and loftiest majesty:
But as the world is, so the heart becomes;
And each man hath his world, the which in some
Makes sharp division 'twixt the soul and flesh,
Filling the one with cruelty and remorse,
A maniac with the soul for manacle
To guide and bind it.

Chaun.
I know nought of this.

Herm.
The happier thou.

Clar.
The quest hath taught it me.

Aman.
Come, friends, our talk grows sad and serious.
Follow me to the gardens. Bring the lute.
And you, sir seneschal, your choicest wine
Place in cool flagons 'neath the twilight trees
In the frescades, kept safe from sun or moon.
We will be merry. Come, Sir Hermadon!