Madison Cawein - Accolon of Gaul, with Other Poems

WHY, dreams from dreams in dreams remembered! naught
Save this, alas! that once it seemed I thought
I wandered dim with someone, but I knew
Not who; most beautiful and good and true,
Yet sad through suffering; with curl-crowned brow,
Soft eyes and voice; so white she haunts me now: —
And when, and where? – At night in dreamland.
She
Led me athwart a flower-showered lea
Where trammeled puckered pansy and the pea;
Spread stains of pale-rod poppies rinced of rain,
So gorged with sun their hurt hearts ached with pain;
Heaped honeysuckles; roses lavishing beams,
Wherein I knew were huddled little dreams
Which laughed coy, hidden merriment and there
Blew quick gay kisses fragrancing the air.
And where a river bubbled through the sward
A mist lay sleepily; and it was hard
To see whence sprung it, to what seas it led,
How broadly spread and what it was it fled
So ceasless in its sighs, and bickering on
Into romance or some bewildering dawn
Of wisest legend from the storied wells
Of lost Baranton, where old Merlin dwells,
Nodding a white poll and a grand, gray beard
As if some Lake Ladyé he, listening, heard,
Who spake like water, danced like careful showers
With blown gold curls thro' drifts of wild-thorn flowers;
Loose, lazy arms in graceful movement tossed,
Float flower-like down a woodland vista, lost
In some peculiar note that wrings a tear
Slow down his withered cheek. And then steals near
Her sweet, lascivious brow's white wonderment,
And gray rude eyes, and hair which hath the scent
Of the wildwood Brécéliand's perfumes
In Brittany; and in it one red bloom's
Blood-drop thrust deep, and so "Sweet Viviane!"
All the glad leaves lisp like a young, soft rain
From top to top, until a running surge
The dark, witch-haunted solitude will urge,
That shakes and sounds and stammers as from sleep
Some giant were aroused; and with a leap
A samite-gauzy creature, glossy white,
Showers mocking kisses fast and, like a light
Beat by a gust to flutter and then done,
From Brécéliande and Merlin she is gone.
But still he sits there drowsing with his dreams;
A wondrous cohort hath he; many as gleams
That stab the moted mazes of a beech;
And each grave dream hath its own magic speech
To sting to tears his old eyes heavy – two
Hang, tangled brilliants, in his beard like dew:
And still faint murmurs of courts brave and fair,
And forms of Arthur and proud Guenevere,
Grave Tristram and rare Isoud and stout Mark,
Bold Launcelot, chaste Galahad the dark
Of his weak mind, once strong, glares up with, then,
– The instant's fostered blossoms – die again.
A roar of tournament, a rippling stir
Of silken lists that ramble into her,
That white witch-mothered beauty, Viviane,
The vast Brécéliande and dreams again.
Then Dagonet, King Arthur's fool, trips there,
A waggish cunning; glittering on his hair
A tinsel crown; and then will slightly sway
Thick leaves and part, and there Morgane the Fay
With haughty wicked eyes and lovely face
Studies him steady for a little space.

"
THOUaskest with thy studious eyes again,
Here where the restless forest hears the main
Toss in a troubled sleep and moan. Ah, sweet,
With joy and passion the kind hour's replete;
And what wild beauty here! where roughly run
Huge forest shadows from the westering sun,
The wood's a subdued power gentle as
Yon tame wild-things, that in the moss and grass
Gaze with their human eyes. Here grow the lines
Of pale-starred green; and where yon fountain shines
Urned in its tremulous ferns, rest we upon
This oak-trunk of God's thunder overthrown
Years, years agone; not where 'tis rotted brown
But where the thick bark's firm and overgrown
Of clambering ivy blackly berried; where
Wild musk of wood decay just tincts the air,
As if some strange shrub on some whispering way,
In some dewed dell, while dreaming of one May,
In longing languor weakly tried to wake
One sometime blossom and could only make
Ghosts of such dead aromas as it knew,
And shape a specter, budding thin as dew,
To haunt these sounding miles of solitude.
Troubled thou askest, Morgane, and the mood,
Unfathomed in thine eyes, glows rash and deep
As that in some wild-woman's found on sleep
By some lost knight upon a precipice,
Whom he hath wakened with a laughing kiss.
As that of some frail, elfin lady white
As if of watery moonbeams, filmy dight,
Who waves diaphanous beauty on some cliff
That drowsing purrs with moon-drenched pines; but if
The lone knight follow, foul fiends rise and drag
Him crashing down, while she, tall on the crag,
Triumphant mocks him with glad sorcery
Till all the wildwood echoes shout with glee.
As that bewildering mystery of a tarn,
Some mountain water, which the mornings scorn
To anadem with fire and leave gray;
To which some champion cometh when the Day
Hath tired of breding on his proud, young head
Flame-furry blooms and, golden chapletéd,
Sits rosy, trembling with full love for Night,
Who cometh sandaled; dark in crape; the light
Of her good eyes a marvel; her vast hair
Tortuous with stars, – as in some shadowy lair
The eyes of hunted wild things burn with rage, —
And on large bosoms doth his love assuage.

"He, coming thither in that haunted place,
Stoops low to quaff cool waters, when his face
Meets gurgling fairy faces in a ring
That jostle upward babbling; beckoning
Him deep to wonders secret built of old
By some dim witch: 'A city walled with gold,
With beryl battlements and paved with pearls,
Slim, lambent towers wrought of foamy swirls
Of alabaster, and that witch to love,
More beautiful to love than queens above.' —
He pauses troubled, but a wizard power,
In all his bronzen harness that mad hour
Plunges him – whither? what if he should miss
Those cloudy beauties and that creature's kiss?
Ah, Morgane, that same power Accolon
Saw potent in thine eyes and it hath drawn
Him deep to plunge – and to what breathless fate? —
Bliss? – which, too true, he hath well quaffed of late!
But, there! – may come what stealthy-footed Death
With bony claws to clutch away his breath!
And make him loveless to those eyes, alas! —
Fain must I speak that vision; thus it was:

"In sleep one plucked me some warm fleurs-de-lis,
Larger than those of earth; and I might see
Their woolly gold, loose, webby woven thro', —
Like fluffy flames spun, – gauzy with fine dew.
And 'asphodels!' I murmured; then, 'these sure
The Eden amaranths, so angel pure
That these alone may pluck them; aye and aye!
But with that giving, lo, she passed away
Beyond me on some misty, yearning brook
With some sweet song, which all the wild air took
With torn farewells and pensive melody
Touching to tears, strange, hopeless utterly.
So merciless sweet that I yearned high to tear
Those ingot-cored and gold-crowned lilies fair;
Yet over me a horror which restrained
With melancholy presence of two pained
And awful, mighty eyes that cowed and held
Me weeping while that sad dirge died or swelled
Far, far on endless waters borne away:
A wild bird's musick smitten when the ray
Of dawn it burned for graced its drooping head,
And the pale glory strengthened round it dead;
Daggered of thorns it plunged on, blind in night,
The slow blood ruby on its plumage white.

"Then, then I knew these blooms which she had given
Were strays of parting grief and waifs of Heaven
For tears and memories; too delicate
For eyes of earth such souls immaculate!
But then – my God! my God! thus these were left!
I knew then still! but of that song bereft —
That rapturous wonder grasping after grief —
Beyond all thought – weak thought that would be thief."
And bowed and wept into his hands and she
Sorrowful beheld; and resting at her knee
Raised slow her oblong lute and smote its chords;
But ere the impulse saddened into words
Said: "And didst love me as thy lips have spake
No visions wrought of sleep might such love shake.
Fast is all Love in fastness of his power,
With flame reverberant moated stands his tower;
Not so built as to chink from fact a beam
Of doubt and much less of a doubt from dream;
Such , the alchemic fires of Love's desires,
Which hug this like a snake, melt to gold wires
To chord the old lyre new whereon he lyres."
So ceased and then, sad softness in her eye
Sang to his dream a questioning reply: