Collected Poems

The Vigil of Thaliard

Where Time a sleeping dervish is
Or printed legend of Romance
Mid lilies and mid gold roses
    Of mediaeval France,
Where Life, a faithful servitor
    Mid alien faces cast,
Still wears in memory of her
    The trappings of the Past,
Sweet Lily's child, that golden grape
    Girl prince of Avelion,
Thaliard by early-plucking hap
    Star-reaching Mador's son,
Kept vigil by the impious pool
Beyond the misty moaning sea
To win from warlock's weird misrule
    His soul's sweet liberty.

For if throughout the monstrous night
Unblest by ave or by creed
By witchèd water Christian wight
    Do finger bead by bead
His scarlet rosary of sins
    And leave his soul ajar,
What hour the sleepy Evening pins
    Her bodice with a star,
Until, the pitchy veil withdrawn
    That swathes the looming dune,
The crowing trumpeter of dawn
    Blows addio to the moon,
The awful record of his soul
Shall by God's finger blotted be,
And o'er his drownèd past shall roll
    Forgiveness like a sea.

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The warden of the starry waste
Who walks with orange-coloured lamp
And weird eyes nursing fire, paced
    Night's silver-tented camp.
The rose-lipped golden-footed day,
    A flower by maiden culled,
Beneath star-blossomed arras lay
    In Evening's bosom lulled.
The water seemed a damson crust
    With golden sugar poured,
Or mirror caked with purple dust
    In lady's closet stored.
The hour like a weary snake
Coiled slowly gliding serpentine
Or drowsy nun perforce awake
    To pace a pillared shrine.

The roses shuddered in their sleep,
The lilies drooped their silver fires,
The reeds upon the humming steep
    Bowed low their tapering spires;
For tho' no sob pulsed in the air,
    No agony of wind,
Down Heaven's moonlight-painted stair
    Trod angels who had sinned.
Fireflies drizzled in the dark
    Like drops of burning rain,
The glow-worm was a crawling spark,
    The pool a purple stain,
The stars were grains of blazing sand,
A haunted soul the shadowy lea,
In forest-featured Broceliande
    Beyond the echoing sea.

Sir Thaliard by the phantom edge
Heard rustling feet behind the trees
And the weird water lapped the sedge
    With wistful symphonies:

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Sometimes a thrill of voices broke
    In runic tongues of old,
Sometimes pale fingers seemed to stroke
    His curls of crisping gold:
Thin laughter sobbed he knew not where
    Till God's own candles paled,
Or else out in the moonless air
    A goblin infant wailed.
Now in the moon's enchanted wake
Wild shadows ran a giant race,
And now the golden glassing lake
    Was blotted with a face.

But when the naked moon rose clear
Above the ruins of the day,
Childe Thaliard saw a glinting spear
    Across the milky way.
And when the white moon's sliding feet
    One rank of stars had passed,
Upon him smote the windy beat
    And terror of a blast.
The tempest rippled thro' the leaves,
    New wine of evening sucked,
And at the water-lily sheaves
    With nervous fingers plucked.
And in its wind-white arms it bore
A diademed and sceptred thing,
The semblance of a man, that wore
    The glory of a king.

An argent cincture studded thick
With opal and the blushing stone
Fine wrought of texture Arabic
    About his middle shone:
And in its buckled girth did sit,
    A fierce and cloudy star,
Of temper fine as poet's wit
    The Orient scimitar.

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Morocco gave his wrathful dart,
    The spring of widowed tears,
Tempered in Afric's sultry heart
    Or famous far Algiers.
His barb was hued like cedar's core
In Aramean mountains born,
Wild as the sea on storm-vexed shore
    And fronted as the morn.

Upon his kingly head the crown
Was eloquent of Iran's gold
Dropping fine threads of glory down
    Upon the turban's fold.
His eyes were drops of smelted ore
    That in a foundry chase:
His lips a cruel promise wore,
    A marble pride his face.
As shows thro' gold caparison
    Laburnum dusky-stemmed,
Thro' silks in Persian harem spun
    His gorgeous body gleamed.
Or as a lithe and tropic snake
That from some fine mosaic glares,
Or spotted panther by a lake
    Beneath the Indian stars.

This Orient vision burning-bright
Snapped close his bridle silver-lined
Between the moonlight and the night,
    The water and the wind.
His cry sang like a stormy shower
    Upon a thundering sea:
"O Thaliard, Thaliard, Britain's flower,
    Wilt break a lance with me?
The golden scythe of Mahomet
    Gleams crescent on my shield:
My harvest upon thine is set,
    A cross in argent field.

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Prince-errant, prop of battle styled
And flawless glass of chivalry,
O Thaliard, Thaliard, golden childe,
    Wilt break a lance with me?"

As trailing thunder dies in heaven
Thro' silence trailed his latest word,
And fire like the bearded levin
    Beneath his eyelids stirred.
Childe Thaliard saw the burning stars
    Vermilion grown like blood,
Thrice drew the serpent cross of Mars,
    Thrice clamoured where he stood.
But Thaliard saw a milkwhite star
    Grow large against the moon,
Quelled by whose candid flames, afar
    Mars' ruby paled in a swoon.
"Not here" he faltered like the wind,
"Not here, where murmurs poison sleep,
When haunted memories grown half blind
    Their ghastly vigils keep.

"Not here, when drifts past happy shores
From mortal vision far withdrawn
With lustrous sails and dipping oars
    The hull that brings the dawn,
Seek me, but in the cloudy time
    When ruin blazons forth
In sanguine hues the vaporous clime
    And champaigns of the north."
As wine that from the bubbling lips
    Of some fine beaker falls,
This honeyed utterance largely slips
    Like murmurs in vast halls.
The wimpled moon bent down her ear,
And in the granaries of light
The seedling splendours thrilled to hear,
    And all the east grew bright.

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The phantom like a burning page
Was furrowed with the ploughs of wrath,
And thro' his wintry orbs white rage
    Rolled like the dead sea-froth.
His lance poised slanting like a ray
    Of ominous sunlight fell.
Astarte in the milky way
    Saw death half-risen from hell:
And soon the cold hooves of his horse
    On shivering lilies trod,
Till, yellow anguish borrowing force,
    Childe Thaliard cried on God.
The phantom, withering thro' the bars
Of Being like transitory sound,
Left but the murmur of the stars,
    Left but the hush profound.

And now the naked wanton moon
Shed languorous glances on the lake
Whose ripples sobbing from their swoon
    Grew golden for her sake:
The amorous stars were faint with love;
    Earth's awning seemed so light
That Hesper like a flying dove
    Would tremble into sight.
When Thaliard saw in drooping skies
    Large drops of beauty burn,
A white-winged chorus did arise,
    The prayers that purely yearn.
But Thaliard saw the curling deep
With foamy moon-tints blaze and break,
Till the slack spirit longed to steep
    Rich fancies in the lake.

The penitent chorus of his prayers
Were mingled with voluptuous speech
Of daedal images and airs
    Luxurious wrapping each:

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A blue papyrus-leaf designed
    With fretted curls of fire,
A purple page with coronet lined
    Or labyrinthine spire:
The fiery-coloured bee of night
    With folded purple wing,
Or solitary chrysolite
    Shut in an emerald ring:
The vellum binding of a book,
A scented volume spiced with Ind,
A magic purse by Genie shook
    To loose a murmuring wind.

And in the bridal pomp of hell
Walked Beauty hand-in-hand with sin,
And Thought, the glorious infidel,
    A helmèd Paladin;
When shutting under cloudy bars
    Astarte's radiant eye,
God sowed with multitudinous stars
    His peacock in the sky.
The diamonds perished from the deep,
    The moon-tints from the edge,
The wrinkled water smoothed in sleep
    His locks of ruffled sedge.
Imagination, like a sponge
Wrung very pure of beauty, wept,
As from his pores with a tired plunge
    His flakes of fancy leaped.

But hark! a wailing anguish woke
The silence with a fiery sting:
The foaming gulfs of clamour broke
    Around a fallen king:
A distant moan of battle high
    Above a phantom land,
And heron-weird a woman's cry
    Went shrilling down the strand.

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While terror with a vulture's force
    Was plucking at his throat,
He heard the shrill hooves of a horse
    Prick echoes less remote.
And like old accents Night may lend
On lips long hushed in endless sleep,
The voice of a familiar friend
    Came shuddering from the deep.

"Thaliard, awake; the smiling morn
Forgets the cloud of yesterday:
The sceptre from thy house is torn,
    Thy glory washed away.
Amid the reeling battle trod,
    As a poppy in the mill,
With white face lifted up to God,
    Thy sire lies very still.
Pendragon's spear has stung him dead,
    He sleeps among the slain;
The glorious princes heap his bed,
    Like lilies in a plain.
Thy brothers Galert and Gyneth
Like toppling mountains whelmed I saw
Beneath the shadowy winds of death
    In the rushing tide of war.

"Thy sister, fawn-eyed Guendolen,
Haled captive from thy tottering hall,
Lies helpless in the dragon's den
    Luxurious Gawain's thrall.
His kisses tremble on her mouth
    Like moonbeams on a rose,
For she is water to his drouth,
    He sunlight to her snows:
Her flowering body to his love
    A pleasaunce-garden sweet;
Her spirit, meeker than a dove,
    Fawns blindly at his feet.

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And with the pelting words of shame,
Like delicate pigments bleared by storm,
The gorgeous colouring of thy name
    Is losing gloss and form.

"The night-wind in thy yawning dome
Has made her nest alive with song,
The humming wasps of Aeolus roam
    Low-flying in a throng:
The thunder like a flying stork
    Clangs hoarsely but aloof,
And lightning with his vermil fork
    Has written on thy roof.
The lion lodges in thy gate,
    The were-wolf is thy guest,
The night-owl, like a sombre fate,
    Wails weirdly without rest.
Thy deeds are grown a haunting rhyme,
A fragment breaking from the past,
An atom, which the meteor, Time,
    In his fiery flight has cast."

With sobs of shuddering agony bled
The silence as with stinging whips,
But Thaliard felt slim fingers laid
    Upon his writhen lips.
The soul's redoubts flung each to each
    A ringing challenge round,
To clench the ruby gates of speech
    On the corridors of sound.
In dancing dithyrambs thro' each vein
    A dizzy echo sang,
While on the anvil of his brain
    The steely syllables rang:
And from the avenues of the heart
Thro' which the river of being pours,
The torpid life with a sudden start
    Recoiled upon its doors.

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The voice was now a violin
Shrill-winding, now a startled bat,
And now as linnet's warble thin,
    Now wailful as a gnat,
But gathered volume as of yore
    Until with refluent tide,
Like Ocean ebbing from her shore
    The murmur ebbed and died.
Like beauty losing maidenhood
    Astarte debonnair
Undid the crocus-coloured snood
    That bound her glimmering hair.
And up the ladder of the moon,
As white smoke curls upon a glass,
He saw with flakes of glory strewn
    A radiant figure pass.

Astarte from her cloudy chair
Paced with her troop of star-sweet girls;
Unfilleted, her glorious hair
    Hung loose in cowslip curls.
And like the flower-song of a bee
    On April's daffodil skirt,
A whisper from the smiling sea
    In her crocus gown did flirt.
The waters quivering to her wiles
    Among the rushes whipped,
As thro' the net-work of her smiles
    Her visible murmur slipped.
But when they wooed her to repeat
Her primrose painted pilgrimage,
She dipped the white palms of her feet
    In beds of bubbling sedge.

Again the stealthy minutes crept
On tiptoe to the breathless hour
And loud suspense her riot kept
    Till budding doom should flower.

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The yellow moon, whom Heaven once more
    From silver cowl did shake,
With golden letters scribbled o'er
    The purple-written lake.
But when to Heaven's polished breast
    Her rounded amulet clung
Below in the blue palimpsest
    A slit, a chasm sprung.
A meteor from the purple brink,
A vivid star no eye may lose,
A pictured bowl of nectarous drink,
    An apparition rose.

Her body lapped in cloth of gold
A wave disguised in moonlight seemed,
Whose every curve and curious fold
    With opal facets gleamed.
Her nestling mass of rounded curls
    Were soft as velvet cloths,
Once fingered by Arabian girls
    Or piled in Syrian booths.
She was an ebon-framèd lyre
    Where wind-waked murmurs dance,
A tinted statue of Desire
    In studios of Romance.
Her glowing cheeks just ripe with youth,
The purple passion of her eyes,
Half seemed a splendid mock at truth,
    A brilliant mesh of lies.

Below with balmy sobs that drank
The must of life thro' thirsty lips,
Her pained bosom heaved and sank
    Like Ocean-cradled ships.
And as bee-blossoms sapphire-looped,
    The humming waves that kiss,
Her creamy forehead almost drooped
    Burthened with too much bliss.

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The artist Grace who limned her fair
    With moist and liberal brush,
Painted a glory in her hair
    And mixed a gorgeous blush
To tint her cheeks with flowery bloom,
To touch her lips with scarlet fire,—
An empire's beauty in small room,
    A vision of desire.

A fairy witch by painful charms
Had burgeoned this refulgent flower,
Embraced by wild and wanton arms
    In weird and midnight hour.
She on the amber milk of bees
    By magic mother nursed,
In laurel-sheltered libraries
    Cons rudiments accurst,
The most familiar things of hell,
    The mightiest names inherits,
And learns what iron syllable
    Compels reluctant spirits.
A perilous thorn on fire with bloom,
A poppied spell, an empress snake,
She rose, the alchemist of doom,
    The Lady of the Lake.

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