Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough Part 45

How shall he tremble lest her heart should tire?

--It is not so; his danger and his war, His days of triumph, and his years of care, She knows them not--yet shall she know some day The love that in his lonely longing lay.

What, Faithful--do I lie, that overshot My dream-web is with that which happeneth not?

Nay, nay, believe it not!--love lies alone In loving hearts like fire within the stone: Then strikes my hand, and lo, the flax ablaze!

--Those tales of empty striving, and lost days Folk tell of sometimes--never lit my fire Such ruin as this; but Pride and Vain-desire, My counterfeits and foes, have done the deed.

Beware, beloved! for they sow the weed Where I the wheat: they meddle where I leave, Take what I scorn, cast by what I receive, Sunder my yoke, yoke that I would dissever, Pull down the house my hands would build for ever.

_Scene: In a Forest among the Hills of a Foreign Land.

KING PHARAMOND, MASTER OLIVER_.

KING PHARAMOND

Stretch forth thine hand, foster-father, I know thee, And fain would be sure I am yet in the world: Where am I now, and what things have befallen?

Why am I so weary, and yet have wrought nothing?

MASTER OLIVER

Thou hast been sick, lord, but thy sickness abateth.

KING PHARAMOND

Thou art sad unto weeping: sorry rags are thy raiment, For I see thee a little now: where am I lying?

MASTER OLIVER

On the sere leaves thou liest, lord, deep in the wild wood

KING PHARAMOND

What meaneth all this? was I not Pharamond, A worker of great deeds after my father, Freer of my land from murder and wrong, Fain of folks' love, and no blencher in battle?

MASTER OLIVER

Yea, thou wert king and the kindest under heaven.

KING PHARAMOND

Was there not coming a Queen long desired, From a land over sea, my life to fulfil?

MASTER OLIVER

Belike it was so--but thou leftst it untold of.

KING PHARAMOND

Why weepest thou more yet? O me, which are dreams, Which are deeds of my life mid the things I remember?

MASTER OLIVER

Dost thou remember the great council chamber, O my king, and the lords there gathered together With drawn anxious faces one fair morning of summer, And myself in their midst, who would move thee to speech?

KING PHARAMOND

A brawl I remember, some wordy debating, Whether my love should be brought to behold me.

Sick was I at heart, little patience I had.

MASTER OLIVER

Hast thou memory yet left thee, how an hour thereafter We twain lay together in the midst of the pleasance 'Neath the lime-trees, nigh the pear-tree, beholding the conduit?

KING PHARAMOND

Fair things I remember of a long time thereafter-- Of thy love and thy faith and our gladness together

MASTER OLIVER

And the thing that we talked of, wilt thou tell me about it?

KING PHARAMOND

We twain were to wend through the wide world together Seeking my love--O my heart! is she living?

MASTER OLIVER

G.o.d wot that she liveth as she hath lived ever.

KING PHARAMOND