The Song of the Winter King

 

The Song of the Winter King

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Hair of crystal and hands of ice –

The snow sieves down above him,

He shakes in his palm two silver dice,

And whoever sees him loves him.

Now one of the dice is marked with a cross,

The other is marked with a ring –

And the cross is the seal of paradise

Where the holy angels sing,

But the ring is the seal of the fairy queen,

Queen Morgan is her name,

Who dresses in red and elfin green

 And rules all fair Elfhame.

She and her train come riding by

In cloaks as red as blood:

She lashes her seamed and grunting sow

With a switch of elder wood:

‘O young snow king, shake down your dice,

Find what the chance shall be!’

He shakes them once, he shakes them twice,

He shakes them three times three –

O silver, silver fall the moon

And golden fall the sun –

The nine bright planets in the sky

Leaped as Queen Morgan won.

Hair of crystal, hands of ice,

The white snow falls about him.

He drops from his palm the silver dice:

Queen Morgan cannot doubt him.

She leads him up, she leads him down,

Over the Seven Days,

Where toothed heads grin from every pool

And quickfire beacons blaze,

Under the hill, the hollow hill,

The peaty darkness waits:

She leads him down the fairy road

Behind the narrow gates,

She seats him by a dropping pool

Where ghostly fishes glide:

‘And here you’ll stay for evermore

By the dark fountain side.’

Hair of crystal and hands of ice,

He counts the fishes’ scales,

He strokes their armoured, slimy sides,

Tickles their filmy tails.

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Now Mary Queen of Paradise

One day came riding by

Her robe was made of fine new wool

Bright as a summer sky.

Light as a loaf she sat upon

A milky-mouthed young lamb

As big as any dappled horse

That pulls the plough for man.

She saw the double land lie warm

Under the standing sun –

All the white spires of Castle Cloud

In the blue distance shone.

Long, long the heath before her stretched,

The clear miles shook with heat,

Anemones like drops of blood

Sprang up beneath her feet,

And where she passed, the grinning heads

Plopped back into the water.

Said she, ‘I would the Queen of Fays

Were one of Heaven’s daughters!’

And all the harebells rang for her:

She left the lamb to graze,

Went strolling on the hollow hills

Behind the Seven Days

And spied the dice like burning ice,

Smoking where they lay.

Swift through the golden grate she steps

And down the golden stair:

All the white daisies craned their necks

To see her enter there;

Under the hollow hills she passed

And called the young king’s name.

Before the echoes copied her,

The fairy challenge came:

Queen Morgan as a cloud of bees –

Then a red bitch, but lame –

Last as a lady tall and proud

To rival Mary’s fame.

‘Why have you come, you Queen of Heaven

Within this land of mine?

You may not steal the silver king,

For he is none of thine.

‘He shook the dice and fell to me:

Body and life and soul,

And here he’ll sit for evermore

By the dark fountain’s bowl.

‘He shook the dice and fell to me:

I won the winter king.

He shall be mine for evermore,

Till these dumb fishes sing.’

‘You won his life but not his soul,’

Tall Mary answered free,

‘For that was bought with iron cold

Upon a hawthorn tree.

‘Keep what you can, but for my part,

What I can do, I will’ –

Shakes in her hand the crossways dice

Thrice, thrice beneath the hill –

And shadows fly, and blazing light

Leaps for the young king’s sake:

‘Until the fishes sing, you sleep –

But then you shall awake.’

Hair of crystal, hands of ice

The snow sieves down above him.

Stone in the crystal cave he lies,

And nobody sees or loves him,

And he dreams no dream, but the fishes dream

Of the day they will wake the king –

When they poke their red snouts out of the pool

And open their mouths and sing.

© Katherine Langrish

 


Illustrations

Knight in pen and ink by Aubrey Beardsley, illustration from the Morte d'Arthur, 1909, V&A
Other illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley: facsimile edition of his Morte d'Arthur, Dent 1990.