by C. S. Lewis
Man’s doom and his Redeeming and the wreck of man.
Therefore it was in Advent that the Quest began;
In wail of wind the flower of the Britons all
Went out, and desolation was in Arthur’s hall,10
And stillness in the City of Legions. Then the Queen
Expected their returning when the woods were green;
But leaves grew large, and heaviness of August lay
Upon the woods. Then Guinever began to say,
‘Autumn will bring them home again.’ But autumn passed
With all its brown solemnities, and weathers fast
Came driving down the valley of the Usk with hail
At Advent, and the hearts of men began to fail,
And Lucan said, ‘If summer brings the heathen men
From over-seas, or trouble of Picts beyond the wall,20
Britain will break. The Sangrail has betrayed us all,
According to the prophecy Pelles the king
Once made, that at the moving of this holy thing
Our strength would fail.’ But Arthur, who was daily less
Of speech, through all these winter days, gave answer,1 ‘Yes.
I know it, and I knew it when they rode away.’
The year turned round and bettered, and the coloured May
Crept up the valley of the Usk, and softening green
Rounded the form of forests. But this year the Queen
Said nothing of the knight’s return; and it became30
A custom in that empty court never to name
The fear all felt, and not to listen any more
For rumours, nor to watch the roads, nor pace the shore;
Patience, most like conspiracy, had hushed them all,
Women, old men, and boys.
That year was heavy fall
Of snows. And when amid its silence Gawain, first
Defeat from the long Quest, came riding home, their thirst
For news he could not or he would not satisfy.
He was unlike the Gawain they had known, with eye40
Unfrank, and voice ambiguous, and his answers short.
Gulfs of unknowing lay between him and the court,
Unbreakable misunderstandings. To the King,
He answered, No; he had not seen the holy thing.
And, No; he had heard no news of Launcelot and the rest,
But, for his own part, he was finished with the Quest
And now asked leave to journey North and see his own
Estates. And this was granted, and he went, alone,
Leaving a hollow-heartedness in every man
And, in the Queen, new fear. Then, with the spring, began50
The home-coming of heroes from the Quest, by twos
And threes, unlike their expectations, without news,
A dim disquiet of defeated men, and all
Like Gawain, changed irrelevant in Arthur’s hall,
Strange to their wives, unwelcome to the stripling boys.
Ladies of Britain mourned the losing of their joys:
‘What have they eaten, or in what forgetful land
Were their adventures? Now they do not understand
Our speech. They talk to one another in a tongue
We do not know. Strange sorrows and new jests, among60
Themselves, they have. The Sangrail has betrayed us all.’
So leaf by leaf the old fellowship of Arthur’s hall
Felt Autumn’s advent. New divisions came, and new
Allyings: till, of all the Table Round, those few
Alone who had not ridden on the dangerous Quest
Now bore the name of courteous and were loved the best
Mordred, or Kai, or Calburn, or Agravaine.
And the Queen understood it all. And the drab pain,
Now for two years familiar in her wearied side,
Stirred like a babe within her. Every nerve woke wide70
To torture, with low-moaning pity of self, with tears2
At dawn, with3 midnight jealousies; and dancing fears
Touched with their stabs and quavers and low lingerings
Her soul, as a musician plays the trembling strings;
And loud winds from the cruel countries of despair
Came roaring through her, breaking down, and laying bare,
Till naked to the changing of the world she stood
At Advent. And no tidings now could do her good
Forever; the heart failing in her breast for fear
—Of Launcelot dead—of Launcelot daily drawing near80
And bringing her the sentence that she knew not of,
The doom, or the redeeming, or the change of love.
Yet, like a thief surprising her, the moment came
At last, of his returning. The tormented flame
Leaned from the candle guttering in the noisy gloom
Of wind and rain, where Guinever amid her room
Stood with scared eyes at midnight on the windy floor,
Thinking, forever thinking. From beyond her door
Came foot of sentry and change of countersign; and then
A murmur of their rough-mouthed talk between the men90
She heard, that in one moment like an arrow flew
Into the deepest crimson of her heart and slew
Hopes and half-doubts and self-deceits; and told the Queen
That Launcelot already had returned—had been
Three days now in the city and sent to her no word.
The rain was gone, the sky was pale, when next she stirred,
Having no memory of the passing of that night,
And in her cold, small fingers took her pen to write,
And wrote five words, and sent it by her aged nurse.
Then the cold hours began their march again, not worse,100
Not better, never-ending. And that night he came,
Out of the doorway’s curtained darkness to the flame
Of candlelight and firelight. And the curtains fell
Behind him, and they stood alone, with all to tell,
Not like that Launcelot tangled in the boughs of May
Long since, nor like the Guinever he kissed that day,
But he was pale, with pity in his face writ wide,
And she a haggard woman, holding to her side
A pale hand pressed, asking ‘What is it?’ Slowly then
He came to her and took her by the hand, as men110
Take tenderly a daughter’s or a mother’s hand
To whom they bring bad news she will not understand.
So Launcelot led the Queen and made her sit: and all
This time he saw her shoulders move and her tears fall,
And he himself wept not, but sighed. Then, like a man
Who ponders, in the fire he gazed; and so began
Presently, looking always in the fire, the tale
Of his adventures seeking for the Holy Grail.
. . . How Launcelot and his shining horse had gone together
So far that at the last they came to springy weather;120
The sharpened buds like lances were on every tree,
The little hills went past him like the waves of the sea,
The white, new castles, blazing on the distant fields
Were clearer than the painting upon new-made4 shields.
Under high forests many days he rode, and all
The birds made shrill with marriage songs their shadowy hall
Far overhead. But afterwards the sun withdrew,
And into barren countries, having all gone through
The fair woods and the fortunate, he came at last.
He sees about him noble beeches overcast.130
And aged oaks revealing to the rainless sky
Shagg’d nakedness of roots uptorn. He passes by
Forsaken wells and sees the buckets red with rust
Upon the chains. Dry watercourses filled with dust
> He crosses over; and villages on every side
Ruined he sees, and jaws of houses gaping wide,
And abbeys showing ruinously the peeling gold
In roofless choirs and, underneath, the churchyard mould
Cracking and far subsiding into dusty caves
That let the pale light in upon5 the ancient graves.140
All day he journeys in a land of ruin and bones
And rags; and takes his rest at night among the stones
And broken things; till, after many leagues he found
A little stone-built hermitage in barren ground.
And at his door the hermit stands, so pined and thin
The bone-face is scarce hidden by the face of skin.
‘Now fair, sweet friend,’ says Launcelot, ‘Tell me, I pray
How all this countryside has fallen into decay?’
The good man does not look on Launcelot at all,
But presently his loud, high voice comes like the call150
Of a sad horn that blows to prayer in Pagan lands:
‘This is the daughter of Babylon who gnaws her hands
For thirst and hunger. Nine broad realms in this distress
Are lying for the sake of one man’s heedlessness
Who came to the King Fisherman, who saw the Spear
That burns with blood, who saw the Sangrail drawing near,
Yet would not ask for whom it served. Until there come
The Good Knight who will kneel and see, yet not be dumb,
But ask, the Wasted Country shall be still accursed
And the spell upon the Fisher King be unreversed,160
Who now lies sick and languishing and near to death.’
So far the hermit’s voice pealed on: and then his breath
Rattled within the dry pass of his throat: his head
Dropped sideways, and the slender trunk stands upright, dead,
And tall against the lintel of the narrow door.
And Launcelot alighted there, and in the floor
Of that low house scraped in the dust a shallow grave
And laid the good man in it, praying God to save
His soul; and for himself such grace as may prevail
To come to the King Fisherman and find the Grail.170
Then up he climbed and rode again, and from his breath
The dust was cleared, and from his mind the thought of death,
And in the country of ruin and rags he came so far
That over the grey moorland, like a shining star,
He sees a valley, emerald with grass, and gleam
Of water, under branches, from a winding stream,
A respite in the6 wilderness, a pleasant place,
Struck with the sun. His charger sniffs and mends his pace,
And down7 they go, by labyrinthine8 paths, until
They reach the warm green country, sheltered by the hill.180
Jargon of birds angelical warbles above,
And Launcelot throws his mail’d hood back, and liquid love
Wells in his heart. He looks all round the quartered sky
And wonders in what region Camelot may lie
Singing ‘The breezes here have passed my lady’s mouth
And stol’n a paradisal fragrance of the South.’
Singing ‘All gentle hearts should worship her and sing
The praises of her pity and Fair-Welcoming.’
So carolling he trotted under lights and shadows
Of trembling woods, by waterfalls and sunny meadows,190
And still he wandered, following where the water flows
To where, at the blue water’s edge, a shrine arose
On marble pillars slender, with no wall between;
Through every arch the blueness of the sky was seen.
And underneath the fragile dome three narrow beds
Of lilies raised in windless air their silver heads.
Beside them sat a damosel, all clothed in bright,
Pale, airy clothes, and all her countenance filled with light,
And parted lips as though she had just ceased to sing.
Launcelot thinks he never has seen a fairer thing,200
And checks his horse, saluting her. ‘God send you bliss.
Beautiful one! I pray you tell, what place is this?’
The damsel said, ‘The corseints in the praise of whom
This tomb is built are yet far distant from the tomb.
Here, when the Wasted Country is no longer dry,
The three best knights of Christendom shall come to lie.’
Launcelot remembers often to have heard them named
And guesses who is one of them: so half ashamed,
He asks her, with his eyes cast down, ‘What knights are these?’
And waits; and then lifts up his eyes again, and sees210
No lady there: an empty shrine, and on the grass
No print of foot, where in grey dew the blackbirds pass.
Then came on high a disembodied voice and gave
Solitude tongue. ‘A grave for Bors,’ it cried, ‘A grave
For Percivale, a grave for Galahad: but not
For the Knight recreant of the Lake, for Launcelot!’
Then came clear laughter jingling in the air like bells
On horses’ manes, thin merriment of that which dwells
In light and height, unaging and beyond the sense
Of guilt and grieving, merciless with innocence.220
And presently he catches up his horse’s head
And rides again, still following where the water led.
The sun rose high: the shadow of the horse and man
Came from behind to underneath them and began
To lengthen out in front of them. The river flowed
Wider and always slower and the valley road
Was soft with mud, and winding, like a worm, between
Wide swamps and warm entanglement of puddles green;
And multitude of buzzing and of stinging flies
Came round his sweated forehead and his horse’s eyes;230
The black turf squeaked and trembled at the iron hoofs.
Then Launcelot looks and sees a huddle of flat roofs
Upon a little island in the steaming land,
A low, red, Roman manor-house; and close at hand
A lady, riding softly on a mule, who came
Towards him, and saluted him, and told her name,
The Queen of Castle Mortal; but to Launcelot
Somewhat like Morgan the enchantress, and somewhat
Like Guinever, her countenance and talking seemed;
And golden, like a dragon’s back, her clothing gleamed9240
And courteously she prayed him, ‘Since the night is near
Turn now and take your lodging in my manor here.’
‘Lady, may God repay you,’ says the Knight, and so
Over the bridge, together, to the gate they go
And enter in. Young servitors enough he found
That kneeled before the lady, and came pressing round;
One took his helm, another took his spear, a third
Led off his horse; and chamberlains and grooms were stirred
To kindle fires and set him at the chimney side,
And clothe him in a long-sleeved mantle, soft and wide.250
They go to dine. And presently her people all
Were gone away, he saw not where; and in the hall
He and the Lady sat alone. And it was night;
More than a hundred candles burned both still and bright.
His hostess makes great joy for him, and many a cup
Of strong wine, red as blood, she drinks; then rises up
And prays him bear her company and look on all
The marvels of her manor house. So out of hall,
Laughing, she leads him to the chapel-door: and when
That door was opened, fragrance such as dying men26
0
Imagine in immortal countries, blown about
Heaven’s meadows from the tree of life, came floating out.
No man was in the chapel, but he sees a light
There too of many hundred candles burning bright.
She led him in, and up into the choir, and there
He saw three coffins all of new cut stone, and fair
With flowers and knots, and full of spices to the brim
And from them came the odour that by now makes dim
His sense with deathly sweetness. But the heads of all
Those coffins passed beneath three arches in the wall.270
On these he gazes; then on her. The sweet smell curls
About their brains. Her body is shaking like a girl’s
Who loves too young; she has a wide and swimming eye;
She whispers him, ‘The three best knights of earth shall lie
Here in my house’; and yet again, ‘Lo, I have said,
The three best knights.’ But Launcelot holds down his head,
And will not speak. ‘What knights are these?’ she said. And ‘Nay.’
He answered, ‘If you name them not, I dare not say.’
She laughed aloud—‘A coffin for Sir Lamorake,
For Tristram; in the third lies Launcelot du Lake.’280
He crossed himself and questioned her when these should die.
She answered, ‘They shall all be living when they lie
Within these beds; and then—behold what will be done
To all, or even to two of them, or even to one,
Had I such grace.’ She lifts her hand and turns a pin
Set on the wall. A bright steel blade drops down within
The arches, on the coffin-necks, so razor-keen
That scarce a movement of the spicey dust was seen
Where the edge sank. ‘Ai! God forbid that you should be
The murderer of good knights,’ said Launcelot. And she290
Said, ‘But for endless love of them I mean to make
Their sweetness mine beyond recovery and to take
That joy away from Morgan and from Guinever
And Nimue and Isoud and Elaine, and here
Keep those bright heads and comb their hair and make them lie
Between my breasts and worship them until I die.’
THE NAMELESS ISLE
In a spring season I sailed away
Early at evening of an April night.
Master mariner of the men was I,
Eighteen in all. And every day
We had weather at will. White-topped the seas
Rolled, and the rigging rang like music
While fast and fair the unfettered wind
Followed. Sometimes fine-sprinkling rain
Over our ship scudding sparkled for a moment
