SIR PALAMEDES, THE SARACEN KNIGHT
A boy’s laugh and a maiden’s glance
Are sweet as paramours !
Stay! is there naught some wanton wight
May do to excite the glamoured knight?
Yea! the song takes a sea-wild swell ;
The dance moves in a mystic web;
Strange lights abound and terrible;
The life that flowed is out at ebb.
The lights are gone; the night is come;
The lads and lasses sink, awaiting
Some climax—oh, how tense and dumb
The expectant hush intoxicating!
Hush! the heart’s beat! Across the moor
Some dreadful god rides fast, be sure !
The listening Palamede bites through
His thin white lips—what hoofs are those?
Are they the Quest? How still and blue
The sky is! Hush—God knows—God knows !
Then on a sudden in the midst of them
Is a swart god, from hoof to girdle a goat,
Upon his brow the twelve-star diadem
And the King’s Collar fastened on his throat.
Thrill upon thrill courseth through Palamede.
Life, life, pure life is bubbling in his blood.
All youth comes back, all strength, all joy indeed
Flaming within that throbbing spirit-flood!
103