And what remains?--From Camelot to Gore That night she, wailing, fled; thence, to the shore,-- As old romances tell,--of Avalon; Where she hath majesty gold-crowned and wan: Clothed dark in cypress, still her lovely face Is young and queenly; sweeter though in grace, And softer for the sorrow there; the trace Of immemorial tears as for some crime, Attempted or committed at some time, Some old, unhappy time of long ago, That haunts her eyes and fills them with its woe: Sad eyes, dark, future-fixed, expectant of That far-off hour awaited of her love, When the forgiving Arthur cometh and Shall rule, dim King, o'er all that golden land, That Isle of Avalon, where none grows old, Where spring is ever, and never a wind blows cold; That lifts its mountains from forgotten seas Of surgeless turquoise deep with mysteries.-- And so was seen Morgana nevermore, Save once, when from the Cornwall coast she bore The wounded Arthur from that last fought fight Of Camlan in a black barge into night. But some may see her, with a palfried band Of serge-stoled maidens, through the drowsy land Of autumn glimmer,--when are sadly strewn The red leaves, and, broad in the east, the moon Hangs, full of frost, a lustrous globe of gleams,-- Faint on the mooning hills as shapes in dreams. PEREDUR, THE SON OF EVRAWC Beyond the walls, past wood and twilight field, The Usk slipped onward under wharf and wall Of old Caerleon, rolling down, it seemed,-- Incarnadined with splendor of the west,-- The heathen blood of all of Arthur's wars. So she had left him; and he stood alone Within the carven casement, where a ray Of sunset laid a bleeding spear athwart The dark oak hall, and, on the arras gaunt A crimson blade of battle red that dripped.-- And now life's bitterness took Peredur By all his heart's strings, smiting. He would go, Equipped for quest, through all the savagery Of mountain and of forest. And this girl?-- Forget her! and her game of shuttlecock, Of battledore and shuttlecock with his heart, This Angharad! this child the Court had spoiled! Now he remembered how he once had ridd'n, Spurring his piebald stallion down the square, Upon the King's quest, and a girl had laughed From some be-dragoned balcony of walls That faced the gateway; and in passing he Had glimpsed her beauty. It was she. And then He thought how she had haunted him for days, For weeks; and how, returning to Caerleon, His long quest ended, how it thus befell: Deep snow had fallen and the winter wood Lay carpeted with silence. And he rode Into a vista where a raven lay Slain of a hawk; some blood-drops dyed the snow. He lost himself in quaint comparisons Of how the sifted drift was as her skin; The raven's feathers as her heavy hair;