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    The Golden Helm and Other Verse
    The Golden Helm and Other Verse
    The Golden Helm and Other Verse
    Ebook101 pages1 hour

    The Golden Helm and Other Verse

    By Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 26, 2013
    The Golden Helm and Other Verse

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      Book preview

      The Golden Helm and Other Verse - Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

      THE GOLDEN HELM

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at http://www.gutenberg.org/license.

      Title: The Golden Helm

      and Other Verse

      Author: Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

      Release Date: February 08, 2013 [EBook #42052]

      Language: English

      Character set encoding: UTF-8

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLDEN HELM ***

      Produced by Al Haines.

      [image]

      Cover

      THE

      GOLDEN HELM

      AND OTHER VERSE

      BY

      WILFRID WILSON GIBSON

      LONDON

      ELKIN MATHEWS, VIGO STREET

      1903

      TO

      HOWARD PEASE

      BY THE SAME WRITER

      URLYN THE HARPER AND OTHER SONG

      THE QUEEN'S VIGIL AND OTHER SONG

      Thanks are due to Messrs. Smith, Elder, & Co., for permission to reprint The King's Death, The Three Kings, and the first part of Averlaine and Arkeld, from The Cornhill Magazine; to the editor of Macmillan's Magazine for leave to reprint In the Valley; to the editor of The Saturday Review for leave to reprint Notre Dame de la Belle-Verrière; and to the editors of The Pilot, The Outlook, The Pall Mall Gazette, Country Life, The Week's Survey, and The Broadsheet, for like courtesy with regard to a number of The Songs of Queen Averlaine.

      Contents

      The Torch

      The Unknown Knight

      The King's Death

      The Knight of the Wood

      Notre Dame de la Belle-Verrière

      In the Valley

      The Vision: a Christmas Mystery

      The Three Kings

      The Songs of Queen Averlaine

      The Golden Helm

      The Torch

      Through skies blown clear by storm, o'er storm-spent seas,

      Day kindled pale with promise of full noon

      Of blue unclouded; no night-weary wind

      Ruffled the slumberous, heaving deeps to white,

      Though round the Farne Isles the waves never sink

      In foamless sleep--about the pillared crags

      For ever circling with unresting spray.

      At dawn's first glimmer, from his island-cell--

      Rock-hewn, secure from tempest--Oswald came

      With slow and weary step, white-faced and worn

      With night-long vigil for storm-perilled souls.

      His anxious eye with sharp foreboding bright--

      He scanned the treacherous flood; the long froth-trail

      That marks the lurking reefs; the jag-toothed chasms

      Which, foaming, gape at night beneath the keel--

      The mouth of hell to storm-bewildered ships:

      But no scar-stranded vessel met his glance.

      Relieved, he drank the glistering calm of morn,

      With nostril keen and warm lips parted wide;

      While, gradually, the sun-enkindled air

      Quickened his pallid cheek with youthful flame,

      Though lonely years had silvered his dark head,

      And round his eyes had woven shadow-meshes.

      Clearly he caught the ever-clamorous cries

      Of guillemot and puffin from afar,

      Where, canopied by hovering, white wings,

      They crowded naked pinnacles of rock.

      He watched, with eyes of glistening tenderness,

      The brooding eider--Cuthbert's sacred bird,

      That bears among the isles his saintly name--

      Breast the calm waves; a black, wet-gleaming fin

      Cleft the blue waters with a foaming jag,

      Where, close behind the restless herring-herd,

      With ravening maw of death, the porpoise sped.

      Oswald, light-tranced, dreamed in the sun awhile;

      Till, suddenly, as some old sorrow starts,

      Though years have glided by with soothing lull,

      The gust of ancient longing rent his bliss:

      His narrow isle, as by some darkling spell,

      More narrow shrank; the gulls' unceasing cries

      Grew still more fretful; and his hermit-life

      A sea-scourged desolation to him seemed.

      The holy tree of peace--which he had dreamt

      Would flourish in the wilderness afresh,

      Upspringing ever in new ecstasy

      Of branching beauty and white blooms of truth,

      Till its star-tangling crest should cleave the sky,

      And angels rustle through its topmost boughs--

      Seemed sapless, rootless. Through his quivering limbs

      His famine-wasted youth to life upleapt

      With passionate yearning for humanity:

      The stir of towns; the jostling of glad throngs;

      Welcoming faces and warm-clasping hands;

      Yea, even for the lips and eyes of Love

      He hungered with keen pangs of old desire:

      And, if for him these might not be, he craved

      At least the exultation of swift peril--

      The red-foamed riot of delirious strife

      That rears a bloody crest o'er peaceful shires,

      And, slaying, in a swirl of slaughter dies.

      With brow uplifted and strained, pulsing throat,

      And salt-parched lips out-thrust, unto the sun

      He stretched beseeching hands, as though he sought

      To snatch some glittering disaster thence.

      One moment radiant thus; and then once more

      His arms dropped listless, and he slowly shrank

      Within his sea-stained habit, cowering dark

      Amid the azure blaze of sea and sky.

      Then, stirring, with impatient step he moved

      Across the isle to where the rocky shore,

      Forming a little, crag-encircled bay,

      Sloped steeply to the level of the sea;

      But, as he neared the edges of the tide,

      Startled, he paused, as, marvelling, he saw

      A woman on the shelving, wet, black rock,

      Lying, forlorn, among the storm-wrack, white

      And motionless; still wet, her raiment clung

      About her limbs, and with her wet, gold hair

      Green sea-weed tangled. Oswald on her looked

      Amazed, as one who, in a sea-born trance,

      Discovers the lone spirit of the storm,

      Self-spent at last, and sunk in dreamless slumber

      Within some caverned gloom. Coldly he watched

      The little waves creep up the glistening rock,

      And, faltering, slide once more into the deep,

      As though they feared to waken her: at length,

      When one, more venturous, about her stole,

      And moved her heavy hair as if with life,

      He shuddered; and a lightning-knowledge struck

      His heart with fear; and in a flash he knew

      That no sea-phantom couched before him lay,

      But some frail fellow-creature, tempest-tost,

      Hung yet in peril on the edge of death,

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