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"And So Sir Palamides Departed With Great Heaviness"


        
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"And So Sir Palamides Departed With Great Heaviness"

from: Aldebaran (Pp. 27 - 28)  1917

"And So Sir Palamides Departed With Great Heaviness."
 Malory viii., 32.
Sick at the heart I ride
To seek death far and wide:
And I have little doubt
That in each battle-rout
I'll see the fighting out.

My arm is stout to ward
Any but Tristram's sword,--
It will not fail in the fight;
But the grief-haunted night
Knoweth my sorry plight.

Had it been mine to please
Her, I had conquered these:
Now my heart lieth dead,
And for the fight ahead
Body must do instead.

It will not do to win
If Tristram enters in,
But 'twill do for God's torment still,
And all His measureless ill,
And it will do to kill.

Yet it may hap indeed,
That in my utmost need,
When body too shall be
All broken utterly
Christ will remember me.