Part 42 (1/2)
MASTER OLIVER
Dear lord, thou wouldst speak of the woe that weighs on thee.
KING PHARAMOND
Wouldst thou bear me aback to the strife and the battle?
Nay, hang up my banner: 'tis all pa.s.sed and over!
MASTER OLIVER
Speak but a little, lord! have I not loved thee?
KING PHARAMOND
Yea,--thou art Oliver: I saw thee a-lying A long time ago with the blood on thy face, When my father wept o'er thee for thy faith and thy valour.
MASTER OLIVER
Years have pa.s.sed over, but my faith hath not failed me; Spent is my might, but my love not departed.
Shall not love help--yea, look long in my eyes!
There is no more to see if thou sawest my heart.
KING PHARAMOND
Yea, thou art Oliver, full of all kindness!
Have patience, for now is the cloud pa.s.sing over-- Have patience and hearken--yet shalt thou be shamed.
MASTER OLIVER
Thou shalt s.h.i.+ne through thy shame as the sun through the haze When the world waiteth gladly the warm day a-coming: As great as thou seem'st now, I know thee for greater Than thy deeds done and told of: one day I shall know thee: Lying dead in my tomb I shall hear the world praising.
KING PHARAMOND
Stay thy praise--let me speak, lest all speech depart from me.
--There is a place in the world, a great valley That seems a green plain from the brow of the mountains, But hath knolls and fair dales when adown there thou goest: There are homesteads therein with gardens about them, And fair herds of kine and grey sheep a-feeding, And willow-hung streams wend through deep gra.s.sy meadows, And a highway winds through them from the outer world coming: Girthed about is the vale by a grey wall of mountains, Rent apart in three places and tumbled together In old times of the world when the earth-fires flowed forth: And as you wend up these away from the valley You think of the sea and the great world it washes; But through two you may pa.s.s not, the shattered rocks shut them.
And up through the third there windeth a highway, And its gorge is fulfilled by a black wood of yew-trees.
And I know that beyond, though mine eyes have not seen it, A city of merchants beside the sea lieth.---- I adjure thee, my fosterer, by the hand of my father, By thy faith without stain, by the days unforgotten, When I dwelt in thy house ere the troubles' beginning, By thy fair wife long dead and thy sword-smitten children, By thy life without blame and thy love without blemish, Tell me how, tell me when, that fair land I may come to!
Hide it not for my help, for my honour, but tell me, Lest my time and thy time be lost days and confusion!
MASTER OLIVER
O many such lands!--O my master, what ails thee?