| FOR longer war they came, and with a fury | 2100 |
| That only Modred’s opportunity, | |
| Seized in the dark of Britain, could have hushed | |
| And ended in a night. For Lancelot, | |
| When he was hurried amazed out of his rest | |
| Of a gray morning to the scarred gray wall | 2105 |
| Of Benwick, where he slept and fought, and saw | |
| Not yet the termination of a strife | |
| That irked him out of utterance, found again | |
| Before him a still plain without an army. | |
| What the mist hid between him and the distance | 2110 |
| He knew not, but a multitude of doubts | |
| And hopes awoke in him, and one black fear, | |
| At sight of a truce-waving messenger | |
| In whose approach he read, as by the Light | |
| Itself, the last of Arthur. The man reined | 2115 |
| His horse outside the gate, and Lancelot, | |
| Above him on the wall, with a sick heart, | |
| Listened: “Sir Gawaine to Sir Lancelot | |
| Sends greeting; and this with it, in his hand. | |
| The King has raised the siege, and you in France | 2120 |
| He counts no longer with his enemies. | |
| His toil is now for Britain, and this war | |
| With you, Sir Lancelot, is an old war, | |
| If you will have it so.”—“Bring the man in,” | |
| Said Lancelot, “and see that he fares well.” | 2125 |
| |
| All through the sunrise, and alone, he sat | |
| With Gawaine’s letter, looking toward the sea | |
| That flowed somewhere between him and the land | |
| That waited Arthur’s coming, but not his. | |
| “King Arthur’s war with me is an old war, | 2130 |
| If I will have it so,” he pondered slowly; | |
| “And Gawaine’s hate for me is an old hate, | |
| If I will have it so. But Gawaine’s wound | |
| Is not a wound that heals; and there is Modred— | |
| Inevitable as ruin after flood. | 2135 |
| The cloud that has been darkening Arthur’s empire | |
| May now have burst, with Arthur still in France, | |
| Many hours away from Britain, and a world | |
| Away from me. But I read this in my heart. | |
| If in the blot of Modred’s evil shadow, | 2140 |
| Conjecture views a cloudier world than is, | |
| So much the better, then, for clouds and worlds, | |
| And kings. Gawaine says nothing yet of this, | |
| But when he tells me nothing he tells all. | |
| Now he is here, fordone and left behind, | 2145 |
| Pursuant of his wish; and there are words | |
| That he would say to me. Had I not struck him | |
| Twice to the earth, unwillingly, for my life, | |
| My best eye then, I fear, were best at work | |
| On what he has not written. As it is, | 2150 |
| If I go seek him now, and in good faith, | |
| My faith may dig my grave. If so, then so. | |
| If I know only with my eyes and ears, | |
| I may as well not know.” | |
| |
| Gawaine, having scanned | 2155 |
| His words and sent them, found a way to sleep— | |
| And sleeping, to forget. But he remembered | |
| Quickly enough when he woke up to meet | |
| With his the shining gaze of Lancelot | |
| Above him in a shuttered morning gloom, | 2160 |
| Seeming at first a darkness that had eyes. | |
| Fear for a moment seized him, and his heart, | |
| Long whipped and driven with fever, paused and flickered, | |
| As like to fail too soon. Fearing to move, | |
| He waited; fearing to speak, he waited; fearing | 2165 |
| To see too clearly or too much, he waited; | |
| For what, he wondered—even the while he knew | |
| It was for Lancelot to say something. | |
| And soon he did: “Gawaine, I thought at first | |
| No man was here.” | 2170 |
| |
| “No man was, till you came. | |
| Sit down; and for the love of God who made you, | |
| Say nothing to me now of my three brothers. | |
| Gareth and Gaheris and Agravaine | |
| Are gone; and I am going after them; | 2175 |
| Of such is our election. When you gave | |
| That ultimate knock on my revengeful head, | |
| You did a piece of work.” | |
| |
| “May God forgive,” | |
| Lancelot said, “I did it for my life, | 2180 |
| Not yours.” | |
| |
| “I know, but I was after yours; | |
| Had I been Lancelot, and you Gawaine, | |
| You might be dead.” | |
| |
| “Had you been Lancelot, | 2185 |
| And I Gawaine, my life had not been yours— | |
| Not willingly. Your brothers are my debt | |
| That I shall owe to sorrow and to God, | |
| For whatsoever payment there may be. | |
| What I have paid is not a little, Gawaine.” | 2190 |
| |
| “Why leave me out? A brother more or less | |
| Would hardly be the difference of a shaving. | |
| My loose head would assure you, saying this, | |
| That I have no more venom in me now | |
| On their account than mine, which is not much. | 2195 |
| There was a madness feeding on us all, | |
| As we fed on the world. When the world sees, | |
| The world will have in turn another madness; | |
| And so, as I’ve a glimpse, ad infinitum. | |
| But I’m not of the seers: Merlin it was | 2200 |
| Who turned a sort of ominous early glimmer | |
| On my profane young life. And after that | |
| He falls himself, so far that he becomes | |
| One of our most potential benefits— | |
| Like Vivian, or the mortal end of Modred. | 2205 |
| Why could you not have taken Modred also, | |
| And had the five of us? You did your best, | |
| We know, yet he’s more poisonously alive | |
| Than ever; and he’s a brother, of a sort, | |
| Or half of one, and you should not have missed him. | 2210 |
| A gloomy curiosity was our Modred, | |
| From his first intimation of existence. | |
| God made him as He made the crocodile, | |
| To prove He was omnipotent. Having done so, | |
| And seeing then that Camelot, of all places | 2215 |
| Ripe for annihilation, most required him, | |
| He put him there at once, and there he grew. | |
| And there the King would sit with him for hours, | |
| Admiring Modred’s growth; and all the time | |
| His evil it was that grew, the King not seeing | 2220 |
| In Modred the Almighty’s instrument | |
| Of a world’s overthrow. You, Lancelot, | |
| And I, have rendered each a contribution; | |
| And your last hard attention on my skull | |
| Might once have been a benison on the realm, | 2225 |
| As I shall be, too late, when I’m laid out | |
| With a clean shroud on—though I’d liefer stay | |
| A while alive with you to see what’s coming. | |
| But I was not for that; I may have been | |
| For something, but not that. The King, my uncle, | 2230 |
| Has had for all his life so brave a diet | |
| Of miracles, that his new fare before him | |
| Of late has ailed him strangely; and of all | |
| Who loved him once he needs you now the most— | |
| Though he would not so much as whisper this | 2235 |
| To me or to my shadow. He goes alone | |
| To Britain, with an army brisk as lead, | |
| To battle with his Modred for a throne | |
| That waits, I fear, for Modred—should your France | |
| Not have it otherwise. And the Queen’s in this, | 2240 |
| For Modred’s game and prey. God save the Queen, | |
| If not the King! I’ve always liked this world; | |
| And I would a deal rather live in it | |
| Than leave it in the middle of all this music. | |
| If you are listening, give me some cold water.” | 2245 |
| |
| Lancelot, seeing by now in dim detail | |
| What little was around him to be seen, | |
| Found what he sought and held a cooling cup | |
| To Gawaine, who, with both hands clutching it, | |
| Drank like a child. “I should have had that first,” | 2250 |
| He said, with a loud breath, “before my tongue | |
| Began to talk. What was it saying? Modred? | |
| All through the growing pains of his ambition | |
| I’ve watched him; and I might have this and that | |
| To say about him, if my hours were days. | 2255 |
| Well, if you love the King and hope to save him, | |
| Remember his many infirmities of virtue— | |
| Considering always what you have in Modred, | |
| For ever unique in his iniquity. | |
| My truth might have a prejudicial savor | 2260 |
| To strangers, but we are not strangers now. | |
| Though I have only one spoiled eye that sees, | |
| I see in yours we are not strangers now. | |
| I tell you, as I told you long ago— | |
| When the Queen came to put my candles out | 2265 |
| With her gold head and her propinquity— | |
| That all your doubts that you had then of me, | |
| When they were more than various imps and harpies | |
| Of your inflamed invention, were sick doubts: | |
| King Arthur was my uncle, as he is now; | 2270 |
| But my Queen-aunt, who loved him something less | |
| Than cats love rain, was not my only care. | |
| Had all the women who came to Camelot | |
| Been aunts of mine, I should have been, long since, | |
| The chilliest of all unwashed eremites | 2275 |
| In a far land alone. For my dead brothers, | |
| Though I would leave them where I go to them, | |
| I read their story as I read my own, | |
| And yours, and—were I given the eyes of God— | |
| As I might yet read Modred’s. For the Queen, | 2280 |
| May she be safe in London where she’s hiding | |
| Now in the Tower. For the King, you only— | |
| And you but hardly—may deliver him yet | |
| From that which Merlin’s vision long ago, | |
| If I made anything of Merlin’s words, | 2285 |
| Foretold of Arthur’s end. And for ourselves, | |
| And all who died for us, or now are dying | |
| Like rats around us of their numerous wounds | |
| And ills and evils, only this do I know— | |
| And this you know: The world has paid enough | 2290 |
| For Camelot. It is the world’s turn now— | |
| Or so it would be if the world were not | |
| The world. ‘Another Camelot,’ Bedivere says; | |
| ‘Another Camelot and another King’— | |
| Whatever he means by that. With a lineal twist, | 2295 |
| I might be king myself; and then, my lord, | |
| Time would have sung my reign—I say not how. | |
| Had I gone on with you, and seen with you | |
| Your Gleam, and had some ray of it been mine, | |
| I might be seeing more and saying less. | 2300 |
| Meanwhile, I liked this world; and what was on | |
| The Lord’s mind when He made it is no matter. | |
| Be lenient, Lancelot; I’ve a light head. | |
| Merlin appraised it once when I was young, | |
| Telling me then that I should have the world | 2305 |
| To play with. Well, I’ve had it, and played with it; | |
| And here I’m with you now where you have sent me | |
| Neatly to bed, with a towel over one eye; | |
| And we were two of the world’s ornaments. | |
| Praise all you are that Arthur was your King; | 2310 |
| You might have had no Gleam had I been King, | |
| Or had the Queen been like some queens I knew. | |
| King Lot, my father—” | |
| |
| Lancelot laid a finger | |
| On Gawaine’s lips: “You are too tired for that.”— | 2315 |
| “Not yet,” said Gawaine, “though I may be soon. | |
| Think you that I forget this Modred’s mother | |
| Was mine as well as Modred’s? When I meet | |
| My mother’s ghost, what shall I do—forgive? | |
| When I’m a ghost, I’ll forgive everything … | 2320 |
| It makes me cold to think what a ghost knows. | |
| Put out the bonfire burning in my head, | |
| And light one at my feet. When the King thought | |
| The Queen was in the flames, he called on you: | |
| ‘God, God,’ he said, and ‘Lancelot.’ I was there, | 2325 |
| And so I heard him. That was a bad morning | |
| For kings and queens, and there are to be worse. | |
| Bedivere had a dream, once on a time: | |
| ‘Another Camelot and another King,’ | |
| He says when he’s awake; but when he dreams, | 2330 |
| There are no kings. Tell Bedivere, some day, | |
| That he saw best awake. Say to the King | |
| That I saw nothing vaster than my shadow, | |
| Until it was too late for me to see; | |
| Say that I loved him well, but served him ill— | 2335 |
| If you two meet again. Say to the Queen … | |
| Say what you may say best. Remember me | |
| To Pelleas, too, and tell him that his lady | |
| Was a vain serpent. He was dying once | |
| For love of her, and had me in his eye | 2340 |
| For company along the dusky road | |
| Before me now. But Pelleas lived, and married. | |
| Lord God, how much we know!—What have I done? | |
| Why do you scowl? Well, well,—so the earth clings | |
| To sons of earth; and it will soon be clinging, | 2345 |
| To this one son of earth you deprecate, | |
| Closer than heretofore. I say too much, | |
| Who should be thinking all a man may think | |
| When he has no machine. I say too much— | |
| Always. If I persuade the devil again | 2350 |
| That I’m asleep, will you espouse the notion | |
| For a small hour or so? I might be glad— | |
| Not to be here alone.” He gave his hand | |
| Slowly, in hesitation. Lancelot shivered, | |
| Knowing the chill of it. “Yes, you say too much,” | 2355 |
| He told him, trying to smile. “Now go to sleep; | |
| And if you may, forget what you forgive.” | |
| |
| Lancelot, for slow hours that were as long | |
| As leagues were to the King and his worn army, | |
| Sat waiting,—though not long enough to know | 2360 |
| From any word of Gawaine, who slept on, | |
| That he was glad not to be there alone.— | |
| “Peace to your soul, Gawaine,” Lancelot said, | |
| And would have closed his eyes. But they were closed. | |
