She strummed her lute. He listened, and then laughed, "God's life! our Dagonet might teach me sense, The folly that I am!--What? have I slept A sennight in the taking of the moon, Or danced, sleep-footed, with the forest fays?-- One would imagine.... No!... O silken Lust, O Wantonness! whose soft, voluptuous skirts Trail sweet contamination through these halls! O lawless Love, whose evil influence Haunts and parades Caerleon corridors! O Vanity and Falsehood, throned within The faithless Court, here is another soul, Fresh, fragrant, like a wild-flower of the woods, Ready and willing to be plucked and worn, And placed among those soiled and hothouse flowers, You long have worn, Isolt and Gwenhwyvar! The forest flower, innocent as yet,-- The fairest, hence the more to be desired, The quickest, too, to wither,--whose sweet name Is Angharad!... Ho! page! my horse! my mail!-- God's wounds! my horse! my arms!--I will away!" And many knights he passed, nor saw; who asked What quest he rode. Inscrutable deeds behind His visor, and along his sullen spear Adventure bitter as a burning ray, Into the night he galloped with the stars. * * * * * And one lone night, two years thereafter,--lost Within a forest wilder than wild Dean; Where neither wind nor water shook the leaves, That hung as turned to stone above the moss And grass, that wrapped the scaly rocks, death-dry, And barren torrents; where he had not found Or man or hut, or slot of boar or deer, Through miles and miles of lamentable trees And twisted thorns; beneath the autumn moon,-- (Pale as a nun's face seen in cloistered walks)-- Above dead tree-tops, like the rugged rock Of melancholy cliffs, he saw wild walls Of some vague castle thrust gray battlements And hoary towers, like a wizard's dream. Great greedy weeds and burrs and briers packed Its moat and roadway: at the very gate Weeds higher than a man; their ancient stalks Devoured with the dust and spider-webs, Or smothered with the slime where croaked the toad. And Peredur against the portal rode, And with his spear-point beat upon its bolts A sounding minute. But no wolf-hound bayed; Only dull echoes of interior walls And hollow rock that arched the empty halls. And once again his truncheon shook the gate And roused a round-eyed owl that screamed and blinked, Like some fierce gargoyle, on the bartizan; And from a crevice, like an omen, hurled A frantic bat. And then he heard a grate, Concealed within the gloomy battlements, Slide slowly; and a lean, gaunt, red-haired youth, Lit with a link, addressed him. And he saw That famine had sunk hollows in his cheeks, And fixed gaunt misery in mouth and eyes. "What knight art thou?" he asked. "And whence dost come?"--