ty of Pain
Bidding the golden echoes westward wend,

Chimed in accordant undertone again:
Though every grey old tower rose like a tomb
To mock the glory of the shoreless main

They could but strike such discords as illume
The music with strange gleams of utter light
And hallow all the valley's rosy gloom.

And there, though greyly sinking out of sight
Before the wonders of the sky and sea,
Back through the valley, back into the night,

While mystery melted into mystery,
The City still rebuffed the far sweet West
That dimmed her sorrows with infinity;

Yet sometimes yearning o'er the sea's bright breast
To that remote Avilion would she gaze
Where all lost loves and weary warriors rest.

Then she remembered, through that golden haze,
(Oh faint as flowers the rose-white waves resound)
Her Arthur whom she loved in the dead days,

And how he sailed to heal him of his wound,
And how he lives and reigns eternally
Where now that unknown love is throned and crowned

Who laid his bleeding head against her knee
And loosed the bitter breast-plate and unbound
His casque and brought him strangely o'er the sea,

And how she reigns beside him on that shore
For ever (Yrma, queen, bend down to me)
And they twain have no sorrow any more.

III

They have forgotten all that vanished away
When life's dark night died into death's bright day
They have forgotten all except the gleam
Of light when once he kissed her in a dream
Once on the lips and once upon the brow
In the white orb of God's transcendent Now;
And even then he knew that, long before,
Their eyes had met upon some distant shore;
Yea; that most lonely and immortal face
Which dwells beyond the dreams of time and space
Bowed down to him from out the happy place
And whispered to him, low and sweet and low
_In other worlds I loved you, long ago_;
And then he knew his love could never die
Because his queen was throned beyond the sky
And called him to his own immortal sphere
Forgetting Launcelot and Guinevere.

So Yrma reigns with Arthur, and they know
They loved on earth a million years ago;
And watched the sea-waves wistfully westward wend;
And heard a voice whispering in their flow,
And calling through the silent sunset-glow,
_Love t