HIC JACET ARTHURUS REX QUONDAM REXQUE FUTURUS

[fajrdrako]

Since I featured an Arthurian poem yesterday, here's another one I have loved, by Francis Brett Young, 1994-1954. This poem got a new lease on fame when Rosemary Sutcliff included it in her novel, Sword at Sunset. The title means "Here lies Arthur, the Once and Future King", which is said to have been engraved on Arthur's tomb.

HIC JACET ARTHURUS REX QUONDAM REXQUE FUTURUS

Arthur is gone … Tristram in Careol
Sleeps, with a broken sword – And Yseult sleeps
Beside him, where the Westering Waters roll
Over drowned Lyonesse to the outer deeps

Lancelot is fallen … The ardent helms that shone
So knightly and the splintered lances rust
In the anonymous mould of Avalon:
Gawain and Garath and Galahad – all are dust!

Where do the vanes and towers of Camelot
And tall Tintagel crumble? Where do those tragic
Lovers and their bright eyed ladies rot?
We cannot tell, for lost is Merlin’s magic.

And Guinevere – Call her not back again
Lest she betray the loveliness time lent
A name that blends the rapture and the pain
Linked in the lonely nightingale’s lament

Nor pry too deeply, lest you should discover
The bower of Astolat a smokey hut
Of mud and wattle – find the knightliest lover
A braggart, and his lilymaid a slut;

And all that coloured tale a tapestry
Woven by poets. As the spider’s skeins
Are spun of its own substance, so have they
Embroidered empty legend – What remains?

This: That when Rome fell, like a writhen oak
That age had sapped and cankered at the root,
Resistant, from her topmost bough that broke
The miracle of one unwithering shoot

Which was the spirit of Britain – that certain men
Uncouth, untutored, of our island brood
Loved freedom better than their lives; and when
The tempest crashed around them, rose and stood

And charged into the storm’s black heart, with sword
Lifted, or lance in rest, and rode there helmed
With a strange majesty that the heathen horde
Remembered after all were overwhelmed;

And made of them a legend, to their chief,
Arthur, Ambrosius – no man knows his name –
Granting a gallantry beyond belief
And to his knights imperishable fame.

They were few … We know not in what manner
Or where or when they fell – whether they went
Riding into the dark Christ’s banner
Or died beneath the blood-red dragon of Gwent.

But this we know; that when the Saxon rout
Swept over them, the sun no longer shone
On Britain, and the last lights flickered out;
And men in the darkness murmured: Arthur is gone…

- Francis Brett Young

Comments

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I think I'm not into post-modern either. In fact I have been surprised at how many of the poems I have been plucking out of my memory for finding and posting are (a) American and (b) late 19th or early 20th century works. Was that a golden age for poetry in the US, or is it just a flourishing of poems that suit my taste? Francis Brett Young was British but from the right time. Wait till I get to T.S. Eliot, he was at least binational.

Give me old fashioned beautiful language and powerful emotion any time!

Absolutely! I also like poems that say rather clearly what they feel, rather than things with obscure imagery or meaning.