dots-menu
×

Home  »  The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse  »  96. From ‘The Holy Grail’

Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)

96. From ‘The Holy Grail’

I

BUT she, the wan sweet maiden, shore away

Clean from her forehead all that wealth of hair

Which made a silken mat-work for her feet;

And out of this she plaited broad and long

A strong sword-belt, and wove with silver thread

And crimson in the belt a strange device,

A crimson grail within a silver beam;

And saw the bright boy-knight, and bound it on him,

Saying, ‘My knight, my love, my knight of heaven,

O thou, my love, whose love is one with mine,

I, maiden, round thee, maiden, bind my belt.

Go forth, for thou shalt see what I have seen,

And break thro’ all, till one will crown thee king

Far in the spiritual city:’ and as she spake

She sent the deathless passion in her eyes

Thro’ him, and made him hers, and laid her mind

On him, and he believed in her belief.

Then came a year of miracle: O brother,

In our great hall there stood a vacant chair,

Fashion’d by Merlin ere he past away,

And carven with strange figures; and in and out

The figures, like a serpent, ran a scroll

Of letters in a tongue no man could read.

And Merlin call’d it ‘The Siege perilous,’

Perilous for good and ill; ‘for there,’ he said,

‘No man could sit but he should lose himself:’

And once by misadvertence Merlin sat

In his own chair, and so was lost; but he,

Galahad, when he heard of Merlin’s doom,

Cried, ‘If I lose myself, I save myself!’

II

…When the hermit made an end,

In silver armour suddenly Galahad shone

Before us, and against the chapel door

Laid lance, and enter’d, and we knelt in prayer.

And there the hermit slaked my burning thirst,

And at the sacring of the mass I saw

The holy elements alone; but he:

‘Saw ye no more? I, Galahad, saw the Grail,

The Holy Grail, descend upon the shrine:

I saw the fiery face as of a child

That smote itself into the bread, and went;

And hither am I come; and never yet

Hath what thy sister taught me first to see,

This Holy Thing, fail’d from my side, nor come

Cover’d, but moving with me night and day,

Fainter by day, but always in the night

Blood-red, and sliding down the blacken’d marsh

Blood-red, and on the naked mountain top

Blood-red, and in the sleeping mere below

Blood-red. And in the strength of this I rode,

Shattering all evil customs everywhere,

And past thro’ Pagan realms, and made them mine,

And clash’d with Pagan hordes, and bore them down,

And broke thro’ all, and in the strength of this

Come victor. But my time is hard at hand,

And hence I go; and one will crown me king

Far in the spiritual city; and come thou, too,

For thou shalt see the vision when I go.’

While thus he spake, his eye, dwelling on mine,

Drew me, with power upon me, till I grew

One with him, to believe as he believed.

Then, when the day began to wane, we went.

There rose a hill that none but man could climb,

Scarr’d with a hundred wintry watercourses—

Storm at the top, and when we gain’d it, storm

Round us and death; for every moment glanced

His silver arms and gloom’d: so quick and thick

The lightnings here and there to left and right

Struck, till the dry old trunks about us, dead,

Yea, rotten with a hundred years of death,

Sprang into fire: and at the base we found

On either hand, as far as eye could see,

A great black swamp and of an evil smell,

Part black, part whiten’d with the bones of men,

Not to be crost, save that some ancient king

Had built a way, where, link’d with many a bridge,

A thousand piers ran into the great Sea.

And Galahad fled along them bridge by bridge,

And every bridge as quickly as he crost

Sprang into fire and vanish’d, tho’ I yearn’d

To follow; and thrice above him all the heavens

Open’d and blazed with thunder such as seem’d

Shoutings of all the sons of God: and first

At once I saw him far on the great Sea,

In silver-shining armour starry-clear;

And o’er his head the Holy Vessel hung

Clothed in white samite or a luminous cloud.

And with exceeding swiftness ran the boat,

If boat it were—I saw not whence it came.

And when the heavens open’d and blazed again

Roaring, I saw him like a silver star—

And had he set the sail, or had the boat

Become a living creature clad with wings?

And o’er his head the Holy Vessel hung

Redder than any rose, a joy to me,

For now I knew the veil had been withdrawn.

Then in a moment when they blazed again

Opening, I saw the least of little stars

Down on the waste, and straight beyond the star

I saw the spiritual city and all her spires

And gateways in a glory like one pearl—

No larger, tho’ the goal of all the saints—

Strike from the sea; and from the star there shot

A rose-red sparkle to the city, and there

Dwelt, and I knew it was the Holy Grail,

Which never eyes on earth again shall see.