Gareth and Lynette

       Table of Contents

      The last tall son of Lot and Bellicent,

       And tallest, Gareth, in a showerful spring

       Stared at the spate. A slender-shafted Pine

       Lost footing, fell, and so was whirled away.

       ‘How he went down,’ said Gareth, ‘as a false knight

       Or evil king before my lance if lance

       Were mine to use — O senseless cataract,

       Bearing all down in thy precipitancy —

       And yet thou art but swollen with cold snows

       And mine is living blood: thou dost His will,

       The Maker’s, and not knowest, and I that know,

       Have strength and wit, in my good mother’s hall

       Linger with vacillating obedience,

       Prisoned, and kept and coaxed and whistled to —

       Since the good mother holds me still a child!

       Good mother is bad mother unto me!

       A worse were better; yet no worse would I.

       Heaven yield her for it, but in me put force

       To weary her ears with one continuous prayer,

       Until she let me fly discaged to sweep

       In ever-highering eagle-circles up

       To the great Sun of Glory, and thence swoop

       Down upon all things base, and dash them dead,

       A knight of Arthur, working out his will,

       To cleanse the world. Why, Gawain, when he came

       With Modred hither in the summertime,

       Asked me to tilt with him, the proven knight.

       Modred for want of worthier was the judge.

       Then I so shook him in the saddle, he said,

       “Thou hast half prevailed against me,” said so — he —

       Though Modred biting his thin lips was mute,

       For he is alway sullen: what care I?’

      And Gareth went, and hovering round her chair

       Asked, ‘Mother, though ye count me still the child,

       Sweet mother, do ye love the child?’ She laughed,

       ‘Thou art but a wild-goose to question it.’

       ‘Then, mother, an ye love the child,’ he said,

       ‘Being a goose and rather tame than wild,

       Hear the child’s story.’ ‘Yea, my well-beloved,

       An ’twere but of the goose and golden eggs.’

      And Gareth answered her with kindling eyes,

       ‘Nay, nay, good mother, but this egg of mine

       Was finer gold than any goose can lay;

       For this an Eagle, a royal Eagle, laid

       Almost beyond eye-reach, on such a palm

       As glitters gilded in thy Book of Hours.

       And there was ever haunting round the palm

       A lusty youth, but poor, who often saw

       The splendour sparkling from aloft, and thought

       “An I could climb and lay my hand upon it,

       Then were I wealthier than a leash of kings.”

       But ever when he reached a hand to climb,

       One, that had loved him from his childhood, caught

       And stayed him, “Climb not lest thou break thy neck,

       I charge thee by my love,” and so the boy,

       Sweet mother, neither clomb, nor brake his neck,

       But brake his very heart in pining for it,

       And past away.’

      To whom the mother said,