Explore "Peredur, the Son of Evrawc" by Madison Cawein on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ Beyond the walls, past wood and twilight field, / The Usk slipped onward under wharf and wall / Of old Caerleon, rolling down, it seemed, -- / Incarnadined with splendor of the west, -- / The heathen blood of all of Arthur's wars. / So she had left him; and he stood alone / Within the carven casement, where a ray / Of sunset laid a bleeding spear athwart / The dark oak hall, and, on the arras gaunt / A crimson blade of battle red that dripped. --
/ And now life's bitterness took Peredur / By all his heart's strings, smiting. He would go, / Equipped for quest, through all the savagery / Of mountain and of forest. And this girl? -- / Forget her! and her game of shuttlecock, / Of battledore and shuttlecock with his heart, / This Angharad! this child the Court had spoiled! / Now he remembered how he once had ridd'n, / Spurring his piebald stallion down the square, / Upon the King's quest, and a girl had laughed / From some be-dragoned balcony of walls / That faced the gateway; and in passing he / Had glimpsed her beauty. It was she. And then / He thought how she had haunted him for days, / For weeks; and how, returning to Caerleon, / His long quest ended, how it thus befell: / Deep snow had fallen and the winter wood / Lay carpeted with silence. And he rode / Into a vista where a raven lay / Slain of a hawk; some blood-drops dyed the snow.