A Good Knight in Prison
SIR GUY, being in the court of a Pagan castle.

This castle where I dwell, it stands

A long way off from Christian lands,

A long way off my lady’s hands,

A long way off the aspen trees,

And murmur of the lime-tree bees.

But down the Valley of the Rose

My lady often hawking goes,

Heavy of cheer; oft turns behind,

Leaning towards the western wind,

Because it bringeth to her mind

Sad whisperings of happy times,

The face of him who sings these rhymes.

King Guilbert rides beside her there,

Bends low and calls her very fair,

And strives, by pulling down his hair,

To hide from my dear lady’s ken

The grisly gash I gave him, when

I cut him down at Camelot;

However he strives, he hides it not,

That tourney will not be forgot,

Besides, it is King Guilbert’s lot,

Whatever he says she answers not.

Now tell me, you that are in love,

From the king’s son to the wood-dove,

Which is the better, he or I?

For this king means that I should die

In this lone Pagan castle, where

The flowers droop in the bad air

On the September evening.

Look, now I take mine ease and sing,

Counting as but a little thing

The foolish spite of a bad king.

For these vile things that hem me in,

These Pagan beasts who live in sin,

The sickly flowers pale and wan,

The grim blue-bearded castellan,

The stanchions half worn-out with rust,

Whereto their banner vile they trust:

Why, all these things I hold them just

As dragons in a missal book,

Wherein, whenever we may look,

We see no horror, yea delight

We have, the colours are so bright;

Likewise we note the specks of white,

And the great plates of burnish’d gold.

Just so this Pagan castle old,

And everything I can see there,

Sick-pining in the marshland air,

I note: I will go over now,

Like one who paints with knitted brow,

The flowers and all things one by one,

From the snail on the wall to the setting sun.

Four great walls, and a little one

That leads down to the barbican,

Which walls with many spears they man,

When news comes to the castellan

Of Launcelot being in the land.

And as I sit here, close at hand

Four spikes of sad sick sunflowers stand;

The castellan with a long wand

Cuts down their leaves as he goes by,

Ponderingly, with screw’d-up eye,

And fingers twisted in his beard.

Nay, was it a knight’s shout I heard?

I have a hope makes me afeard:

It cannot be, but if some dream

Just for a minute made me deem<............