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King Ban

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An Arthurian Miscellany

These three held flight upon the leaning lands

At undern, past the skirt of misty camps

Sewn thick from Benwick to the outer march--

King Ban, and, riding wrist by wrist, Ellayne,

And caught up with his coloured swathing-bands

Across her arm, a hindrance in the reins,

A bauble slipt between the bridle-ties,

The three months' trouble that was Launcelot.

For Claudas leant upon the land, and smote

This way and that way, as a pestilence

Moves with vague patience in the unclean heat

This way and that way; so the Gaulish war

Smote, moving in the marches. Then King Ban

Shut in one girdled waist of narrow stones

His gold and all his men, and set on them

A name, the name of perfect men at need,

And over them a seneschal, the man

Most inward and entailed upon his soul,

That next his will and in his pulses moved

As the close blood and purpose of his heart,

And laid the place between his hands, and rode

North to the wild rims of distempered sea

That, crossed to Logres, his face might look red [sic]

The face of Arthur, and therein light blood

Even to the eyes and to the circled hair

For shame of failure in so near a need,

Failure in service of so near a man.

Because that time King Arthur would not ride,

But lay and let his hands weaken to white

Among the stray gold of a lady's head.

His hands unwedded: neither could bring help

To Ban that helped to rend his land for him

From the steel wrist of spoilers, but the time

A sleep like yellow mould had overgrown,

A pleasure sweet and sick as marsh-flowers.

Therefore about his marches rode King Ban

With eyes that fell between his hands to count

The golden inches of the saddle-rim,

Strange with rare stones; and in his face there rose

A doubt that burnt it with red pain and fear

All over it, and plucked upon his heart,

The old weak heart that loss had eaten through,

Remembering how the seneschal went back

At coming out from Claudas in his tent;

And how they bound together, chin by chin,

Whispered and wagged, and made lean room for words,

And a sharp mutter fed the ears of them.

And he went in and set no thought thereon

To waste; fear had not heart to fear indeed,

The king being old, since any fear in such

Is as a wound upon the fleshly sense

That drains a parcel of his time thereout,

Therefore he would not fear that as it fell

This thing should fall. For Claudas the keen thief

For some thin rounds and wretched stamps of gold

Had bought the tower and men and seneschal,

Body and breath and blood, yea, soul and shame.

They knew not this, at halt upon a hill.

Only surmise was dull upon the sense

And thin conjecture sickened in the speech;

So they fell silent, riding in the hills.

There on a little terrace the good king

Reined, and looked out. Far back the white lands lay;

The wind went in them like a broken man,

Lamely; the mist had set a bitter lip

To the rimmed river, and the moon burnt blank.

But outward from the castle of King Ban

There blew a sound of trouble, and there clomb

A fire that thrust an arm across the air,

Shook a rent skirt of dragging flame, and blanched

The grey flats to such cruel white as shone

Iron against the shadow of the sky

Blurred out with its blind stars; for as the sea

Gathers to lengthen a bleached edge of foam

Whole weights of windy water, and the green

Brine flares and hisses as the heap makes up,

Till the gaunt wave writhes, trying to breathe,

Then turns, and all the whited rims of steel

Lean over, and the hollowed round roars in

And smites the pebble forward in the mud,

And grinds the shingle in cool whirls of white,

Clashed through and crossed with blank assault of foam,

Filled with hard thunder and drenched dregs of sand--

So leant and leapt the many-mouthd fire,

So curled upon the walls, dipt, crawled, smote, clung,

Caught like a beast that catches on the flesh,

Waxed hoar with sick default, shivered across,

Choked out, a snake unfed.

Thereat King Ban

Trembled for pain in all his blood, and death

Under the heart caught him and made his breath

Wince, as a worm does, wounded in the head;

And fear began upon his flesh, and shook

The chaste and inly sufferance of it

Almost to ruin; a small fire and keen

Eating in muscle and nerve and hinge of joint

Perilous way; so bitter was the blow

Made on his sense by treason and sharp loss.

Then he fell weeping tears, with blood in them,

Like that red sweat that stained Gethsemane

With witness, when the deadly kiss had put

Shame on the mouth of Judas; and he cried,

Crying on God, and made out words and said:

Fair lord, sweet lord, most pleasant to all men,

To me so pleasant in clean days of mine

That now are rained upon with heavy rain,

Soiled with grey grime and with the dusty years,

Because in all those tourneys and hot things

I had to do with, in all riding times

And noise of work, and on smooth holidays

Sitting to see the smiting of hard spears,

And spur-smiting of steeds and wrath of men,

And gracious measure of the rounded game,

I held you in true honour and kept white

The hands of my allegiance as a maid's,

Being whole of faith and perfect in the will.

Therefore I pray you, O God marvellous,

See me how I am stricken among men,

And how the lip I fed with plenteousness

And cooled with wine of liberal courtesy

Turns a snake's life to poison me and clings--
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