The Living Dead

Honouring our poetic ancestors

Hic Jacet Arthurus 
Rex Quondam Rexque Futurus*

By Francis Brett Young (1884-1954)

 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 Gareth 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 there 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 when 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 so few . . . We know not in what manner

 Or where they fell - whether they went

 Riding into the dark under 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 darkness muttered: Arthur is gone . . .

*Here Lies Arthur, the Once and Future King

I confess — I'm a romantic, to the point of soppiness. I was still a teenager when I copied this into a notebook of poems I loved. (I came across it used as a sort of preface to an Arthurian novel by Rosemary Sutcliffe, Sword At Sunset.) Reading it again just now, I was moved to tears anew by the last five verses. This despite the fact that I hate war and am not British! You may allege that Aussies are sort of British too, but only tenuously these days — and anyway, I'm a Republican. But the Arthurian legend, in which I have been steeped since childhood, transcends such considerations for the very reasons Brett Young asserts.

In a way we are honouring two ancestors this time. Although the story of Arthur may be based on a real British chieftan who resisted invaders, we can't even be sure of that. We do know that most of the story, as it has come down to us, is a mish-mash of fictions from different sources. Nevertheless, it continues to inspire. Arthur, for all his failures — and failings — remains a hero figure. Each age reinvents him according to its own needs. He is an ancestor of our imaginations, father to all that is noble in our own characters — and he has always been a great inspirer of poets.

I am currently reading The Betrayal of Arthur by the late Australian fantasy novelist and academic Sara Douglass, which caused me to remember this old favourite poem. The book is an examination of the way the Arthurian story developed into the one we're familiar with today. (Douglass said she didn't want to make it dry and scholarly; she didn't.)

My favourite modern re-telling of the Arthur story will always be T. H. White's five-volume The Once and Future King, though Marion Zimmer Bradley's very different The Mists of Avalon comes close. And my favourite movie version is still Excalibur.

I love Brett Young's poem not only for its poetic and romantic qualities, but also because it manages to undermine the legend in a way that totally reasserts it. Quite a feat!

The link on the poet's name, above, leads you as usual to the Wikipedia article about him. I am indebted to a blog called The Wondering Minstrels (sic) for the text of the poem, saving me from having to transcribe it laboriously from my old notebook. There you will also find a more succinct biography, which nevertheless covers the details of his life and career.

He was best known as a popular novelist. Here is a link to his Amazon page.  He was quite the prolific poet too, and you can download a free ebook of his 1916-1918 poems from Gutenberg.com (many of the poems in it are to do with the First World War). Some of his poems can also be found at AllPoetry.

Wikipedia tells us: 'During the First World War he saw service in German East Africa in the Medical Corps, but was invalided out in 1918, and no longer able to practise medicine.'  I guess he got a close look at heroism in battle against daunting odds.

Unable to practise medicine, he decided to write full-time, which worked out well for him and his readers. Not only was he a successful novelist, some of whose books were made into movies, he achieved unusual commercial success as a poet.

Wikipedia also tells us: 'In 1944, near to the war's end, he published his epic poem The Island, recounting in verse the whole history of Britain from the Bronze Age to the Battle of Britain. The entire first edition of 23,500 sold out immediately, even in wartime conditions, and was then reprinted.' (Imagine!)

There is even an active Francis Brett Young Society in the UK, holding annual readings and outings; you can check the website.

Much of his poetry reads old-fashioned and sentimental to me now, but I think the piece I've chosen holds up very well. I don't expect I'll ever stop loving it.