Волшебница Шалотт и другие стихотворения

Beneath them; and descending they were ware

That all the decks were dense with stately forms

Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream — by these

Three Queens with crowns of gold — and from them rose

A cry that shiver’d to the tingling stars,

And, as it were one voice, and agony

Of lamentation, like a wind, that shrills

All night in a waste land, where no one comes,

Or hath come, since the making of the world.

Then murmur’d Arthur, ‘Place me in the barge,’

And to the barge they came. There those three Queens

Put forth their hands, and took the King, and wept.

But she, that rose the tallest of them all

And fairest, laid his head upon her lap,

And loosed the shatter’d casque, and chafed his hands,

And call’d him by his name, complaining loud,

And dropping bitter tears against his brow

Striped with dark blood: for all his face was white

And colourless, and like the wither’d moon

Smote by the fresh beam of the springing east;

And all his greaves and cuisses dash’d with drops

Of onset; and the light and lustrous curls —

That made his forehead like a rising sun

High from the dais-throne — were parch’d with dust;

Or, clotted into points and hanging loose,

Mix’d with the knightly growth that fringed his lips.

So like a shatter’d column lay the King;

Not like that Arthur who, with lance in rest,

From spur to plume a star of tournament,

Shot thro’ the lists at Camelot, and charged

Before the eyes of ladies and of kings.

Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere,

‘Ah! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go?

Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes?

For now I see the true old times are dead,

When every morning brought a noble chance,

And every chance brought out a noble knight.

Such times have been not since the light that led

The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh.

But now the whole Round Table is dissolved

Which was an image of the mighty world;

And I, the last, go forth companionless,

And the days darken round me, and the years,

Among new men, strange faces, other minds.’