Collected Poems - Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Incomplete Poems 55
While terror with a vulture’s force
Was plucking at his throat,
He heard the shrill hooves of a horse
Prick echoes less remote.
And like old accents Night may lend
On lips long hushed in endless sleep,
The voice of a familiar friend
Came shuddering from the deep.
“Thaliard, awake; the smiling morn
Forgets the cloud of yesterday:
The sceptre from thy house is torn,
Thy glory washed away.
Amid the reeling battle trod,
As a poppy in the mill,
With white face lifted up to God,
Thy sire lies very still.
Pendragon’s spear has stung him dead,
He sleeps among the slain;
The glorious princes heap his bed,
Like lilies in a plain.
Thy brothers Galert and Gyneth
Like toppling mountains whelmed I saw
Beneath the shadowy winds of death
In the rushing tide of war.
“Thy sister, fawn-eyed Guendolen,
Haled captive from thy tottering hall,
Lies helpless in the dragon’s den
Luxurious Gawain’s thrall.
His kisses tremble on her mouth
Like moonbeams on a rose,
For she is water to his drouth,
He sunlight to her snows:
Her flowering body to his love
A pleasaunce-garden sweet;
Her spirit, meeker than a dove,
Fawns blindly at his feet.