I
In hawthorn-time the heart grows light,The world is sweet in sound and sight,Glad thoughts and birds take flower and flight,The heather kindles toward the light,The whin is frankincense and flame.And be it for strife or be it for loveThe falcon quickens as the doveWhen earth is touched from heaven aboveWith joy that knows no name.
And glad in spirit and sad in soulWith dream and doubt of days that rollAs waves that race and find no goalRode on by bush and brake and boleA northern child of earth and sea.The pride of life before him layRadiant: the heavens of night and dayShone less than shone before his wayHis ways and days to be.
And all his life of blood and breathSang out within him: time and deathWere even as words a dreamer saithWhen sleep within him slackeneth,And light and life and spring were one.The steed between his knees that sprang,The moors and woods that shone and sang,The hours where through the spring’s breath rang,Seemed ageless as the sun.
But alway through the bounteous bloomThat earth gives thanks if heaven illumeHis soul forefelt a shadow of doom,His heart foreknew a gloomier gloomThan closes all men’s equal ways,Albeit the spirit of life’s light springWith pride of heart upheld him, kingAnd lord of hours like snakes that stingAnd nights that darken days.
And as the strong spring round him grewStronger, and all blithe winds that blewBlither, and flowers that flowered anewMore glad of sun and air and dew,The shadow lightened on his soulAnd brightened into death and diedLike winter, as the bloom waxed wideFrom woodside on to riversideAnd southward goal to goal.
Along the wandering ways of Tyne,By beech and birch and thorn that shineAnd laugh when life’s requickening wineMakes night and noon and dawn divineAnd stirs in all the veins of spring,And past the brightening banks of Tees,He rode as one that breathes and seesA sun more blithe, a merrier breeze,A life that hails him king.
And down the softening south that knowsNo more how glad the heather glows,Nor how, when winter’s clarion blowsAcross the bright Northumbrian snows,Sea-mists from east and westward meet,Past Avon senseless yet of songAnd Thames that bore but swans in throngHe rode elate in heart and strongIn trust of days as sweet.
So came he through to Camelot,Glad, though for shame his heart waxed hot,For hope within it withered notTo see the shaft it dreamed of shotFair toward the glimmering goal of fame,And all King Arthur’s knightliest thereApproved him knightly, swift to dareAnd keen to bid their records bearSir Balen’s northern name.
Sir Balen of NorthumberlandGat grace before the king to standHigh as his heart was, and his handWrought honour toward the strange north strandThat sent him south so goodly a knight.And envy, sick with sense of sin,Began as poisonous herbs beginTo work in base men’s blood, akinTo men’s of nobler might.
And even so fell it that his doom,For all his bright life’s kindling bloomAnd light that took no thought for gloom,Fell as a breath from the opening tombFull on him ere he wist or thought.For once a churl of royal seed,King Arthur’s kinsman, faint in deedAnd loud in word that knew not heed,Spake shame where shame was nought.
“What doth one here in CamelotWhose birth was northward? Wot we notAs all his brethren borderers wotHow blind of heart, how keen and hot,The wild north lives and hates the south?Men of the narrowing march that knowsNought save the strength of storms and snows,What would these carles where knighthood blowsA trump of kinglike mouth?”
Swift from his place leapt Balen, smoteThe liar across his face, and wroteHis wrath in blood upon the bloatBrute cheek that challenged shame for noteHow vile a king-born knave might be.Forth sprang their swords, and Balen slewThe knave ere well one witness knewOf all that round them stood or drewWhat sight was there to see.
Then spake the great king’s wrathful willA doom for six dark months to fillWherein close prison held him, stillAnd steadfast-souled for good or ill.But when those weary days lay deadHis lordliest knights and barons spakeBefore the king for Balen’s sakeGood speech and wise, of force to breakThe bonds that bowed his head.