BECKET AND OTHER PLAYS

Résumé : " The last tall son of Lot and Bellicent, And tallest, Gareth, in a showerful spring Stared at the spate. A slender-shafted Pine Lost footing, fell, and so was whirled away. 'How he went down, ' said Gareth, 'as a false knight Or evil king before my lance if lance Were mine to use--O senseless cataract, Bearing all down in thy precipitancy- And yet thou art but swollen with cold snows And mine is living blood : thou dost His will, The Maker's, and not knowest, and I that know, Have strength and wit, in my good mother's hall Linger with vacillating obedience, Prisoned, and kept and coaxed and whistled to-- Since the good mother holds me still a child ! Good mother is bad mother unto me ! A worse were better ; yet no worse would I. Heaven yield her for it, but in me put force To weary her ears with one continuous prayer, Until she let me fly discaged to sweep In ever-highering eagle-circles up To the great Sun of Glory, and thence swoop Down upon all things base, and dash them dead, A knight of Arthur, working out his will, To cleanse the world. Why, Gawain, when he came With Modred hither in the summertime, Asked me to tilt with him, the proven knight. Modred for want of worthier was the judge. Then I so shook him in the saddle, he said, "Thou hast half prevailed against me, " said so--he-- Though Modred biting his thin lips was mute, For he is alway sullen : what care I ? '"