Arthur, King -- Homes and haunts -- England -- Cornwall (County); Cornwall (England : County) -- Antiquities, Celtic
for Iseult’s destined husband, afterwards experienced all the joys and
pangs of an unhallowed love which Dante himself could not refrain from
celebrating and condoning. The story abounds in mystic symbolism, or,
rather, that symbolism has been found in it; and the inevitable Sun-god
myth has been perceived in its details.
Tintagel, a picture in the waters, is at its best when the sky becomes
a rose above it, and the sun dipping into a golden bath leaves a track
gleaming like pearl across the shoaling sea. The waves as they rise
and fall make emerald and purple lines in moments of magic change, and
their crests of foam sparkle jewel-like with a thousand instantaneous
lights. Then “all the rippling green grows royal gold” as the sun,
like a splendid bubble, floats on the water’s edge. Round the pointed
brown rocks are fringes of white foam ever widening and contracting;
the oncoming waters with an exultant bound sometimes spring high in
fountains and then sink slowly and gently as if fairy spires were
dissolving in thinnest powder. Again, with a roar and an access of
strength, the waves return impetuously, raging and grinding, churned
as by some mighty hidden wheel into yeasty foam. Vista-like the long
bright track, now a deep red band, leads back to the inner chambers of
the sun, and the sea draws the orb into its dark, mysterious depths.
The waves lace themselves around the pinky-green islets, and the
verdant headlands, succeeding each other in almost interminable series
till the eye catches the gleam of the Lizard lights, begin to soften
mistily away behind the twilight veil. A little ship, far off, skims
over the sea-rim and disappears; a tiny cloud floats up like a loose
silken sail, silvery white. The seagulls and the choughs flit about the
broken arches of the castle, and shadows fall long and deep across the
deep ravinous path leading inland from the precipitous heights.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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