As morning hears before it run The music of the mounting sun, And laughs to watch his trophies won From darkness, and her hosts undone, And all the night become a breath, Nor dreams that fear should hear and flee The summer menace of the sea, So hears our hope what life may be, And knows it not for death.
Each day that slays its hours and dies Weeps, laughs, and lightens on our eyes, And sees and hears not: smiles and sighs As flowers ephemeral fall and rise About its birth, about its way, And pass as love and sorrow pass, As shadows flashing down a glass, As dew-flowers blowing in flowerless grass, As hope from yesterday.
The blossom of the sunny dew That now the stronger sun strikes through Fades off the blade whereon it blew No fleetlier than the flowers that grew On hope’s green stem in life’s fierce light. Nor might the glory soon to sit Awhile on Balen’s crest alit Outshine the shadow of doom on it Or stay death’s wings from flight.
Dawn on a golden moorland side By holt and heath saw Balen ride And Launceor after, pricked with pride And stung with spurring envy: wide And far he had ridden athwart strange lands And sought amiss the man he found And cried on, till the stormy sound Rang as a rallying trumpet round That fires men’s hearts and hands.
Abide he bade him: nor was need To bid when Balen wheeled his steed Fiercely, less fain by word than deed To bid his envier evil speed, And cried, “What wilt thou with me?” Loud Rang Launceor’s vehement answer: “Knight, To avenge on thee the dire despite Thou hast done us all in Arthur’s sight I stand toward Arthur vowed.”
“Ay?” Balen said: “albeit I see I needs must deal in strife with thee, Light is the wyte thou layest on me; For her I slew and sinned not, she Was dire in all men’s eyes as death, Or none were lother found than I By me to bid a woman die: As lief were loyal men to lie, Or scorn what honour saith.”
As the arched wave’s weight against the reef Hurls, and is hurled back like a leaf Storm-shrivelled, and its rage of grief Speaks all the loud broad sea in brief, And quells the hearkening hearts of men, Or as the crash of overfalls Down under blue smooth water brawls Like jarring steel on ruining walls, So rang their meeting then.