170
Faster surely than it should,
From the fever in his blood!
All the spring-time of his love
Is already gone and past,
And instead thereof is seen 175
Its winter, which endureth still--
Tyntagel on its surge-beat hill,
The pleasaunce-walks, the weeping queen,
The flying leaves, the straining blast,
And that long, wild kiss--their last. deg. deg.180
And this rough December-night,
And his burning fever-pain,
Mingle with his hurrying dream,
Till they rule it, till he seem
The press'd fugitive again, 185
The love-desperate banish'd knight
With a fire in his brain
Flying o'er the stormy main.
--Whither does he wander now?
Haply in his dreams the wind 190
Wafts him here, and lets him find
The lovely orphan child deg. again deg. deg.192
In her castle by the coast;
The youngest, fairest chatelaine, deg. deg.194
Whom this realm of France can boast, 195
Our snowdrop by the Atlantic sea,
Iseult of Brittany.
And--for through the haggard air,
The stain'd arms, the matted hair
Of that stranger-knight ill-starr'd, deg. deg.200
There gleam'd something, which recall'd
The Tristram who in better days
Was Launcelot's guest at Joyous Gard deg.-- deg.203
Welcomed here, deg. and here install'd, deg.204
Tended of his fever here, 205
Haply he seems again to move
His young guardian's heart with love
In his exiled loneliness,
In his stately, deep distress,
Without a word, without a tear. 210
--Ah! 'tis well he should retrace
His tranquil life in this lone place;
His gentle bearing at the side
Of his timid youthful bride;
His long rambles by the shore 215
On winter-evenings, when the roar
Of the near waves came, sadly grand,
Through the dark, up the drown'd sand,
Or his endless reveries
In the woods, where the gleams play 220
On the grass under the trees,
Passing the long summer's day
Idle as a mossy stone
In the forest-depths alone,
The chase neglected, and his hound 225
Couch'd besid