



Produced by Al Haines.




[Illustration: Cover]




                                  THE
                              GOLDEN HELM
                            AND OTHER VERSE


                                   BY
                         WILFRID WILSON GIBSON



                                 LONDON
                       ELKIN MATHEWS, VIGO STREET
                                  1903




                                   TO
                              HOWARD PEASE




                          _BY THE SAME WRITER_

                   _URLYN THE HARPER AND OTHER SONG_
                   _THE QUEEN'S VIGIL AND OTHER SONG_




Thanks are due to Messrs. Smith, Elder, & Co., for permission to reprint
"The King's Death," "The Three Kings," and the first part of "Averlaine
and Arkeld," from _The Cornhill Magazine_; to the editor of _Macmillan's
Magazine_ for leave to reprint "In the Valley"; to the editor of _The
Saturday Review_ for leave to reprint "Notre Dame de la Belle-Verriere";
and to the editors of _The Pilot, The Outlook, The Pall Mall Gazette,
Country Life, The Week's Survey_, and _The Broadsheet_, for like
courtesy with regard to a number of "The Songs of Queen Averlaine."




                                Contents

The Torch
The Unknown Knight
The King's Death
The Knight of the Wood
Notre Dame de la Belle-Verriere
In the Valley
The Vision: a Christmas Mystery
The Three Kings
The Songs of Queen Averlaine
The Golden Helm




                               The Torch


Through skies blown clear by storm, o'er storm-spent seas,
Day kindled pale with promise of full noon
Of blue unclouded; no night-weary wind
Ruffled the slumberous, heaving deeps to white,
Though round the Farne Isles the waves never sink
In foamless sleep--about the pillared crags
For ever circling with unresting spray.
At dawn's first glimmer, from his island-cell--
Rock-hewn, secure from tempest--Oswald came
With slow and weary step, white-faced and worn
With night-long vigil for storm-perilled souls.
His anxious eye with sharp foreboding bright--
He scanned the treacherous flood; the long froth-trail
That marks the lurking reefs; the jag-toothed chasms
Which, foaming, gape at night beneath the keel--
The mouth of hell to storm-bewildered ships:
But no scar-stranded vessel met his glance.
Relieved, he drank the glistering calm of morn,
With nostril keen and warm lips parted wide;
While, gradually, the sun-enkindled air
Quickened his pallid cheek with youthful flame,
Though lonely years had silvered his dark head,
And round his eyes had woven shadow-meshes.
Clearly he caught the ever-clamorous cries
Of guillemot and puffin from afar,
Where, canopied by hovering, white wings,
They crowded naked pinnacles of rock.
He watched, with eyes of glistening tenderness,
The brooding eider--Cuthbert's sacred bird,
That bears among the isles his saintly name--
Breast the calm waves; a black, wet-gleaming fin
Cleft the blue waters with a foaming jag,
Where, close behind the restless herring-herd,
With ravening maw of death, the porpoise sped.
Oswald, light-tranced, dreamed in the sun awhile;
Till, suddenly, as some old sorrow starts,
Though years have glided by with soothing lull,
The gust of ancient longing rent his bliss:
His narrow isle, as by some darkling spell,
More narrow shrank; the gulls' unceasing cries
Grew still more fretful; and his hermit-life
A sea-scourged desolation to him seemed.
The holy tree of peace--which he had dreamt
Would flourish in the wilderness afresh,
Upspringing ever in new ecstasy
Of branching beauty and white blooms of truth,
Till its star-tangling crest should cleave the sky,
And angels rustle through its topmost boughs--
Seemed sapless, rootless.  Through his quivering limbs
His famine-wasted youth to life upleapt
With passionate yearning for humanity:
The stir of towns; the jostling of glad throngs;
Welcoming faces and warm-clasping hands;
Yea, even for the lips and eyes of Love
He hungered with keen pangs of old desire:
And, if for him these might not be, he craved
At least the exultation of swift peril--
The red-foamed riot of delirious strife
That rears a bloody crest o