Robbins Library Digital Projects Announcement: We are currently working on a large-scale migration of the Robbins Library Digital Projects to a new platform. This migration affects The Camelot Project, The Robin Hood Project, The Crusades Project, The Cinderella Bibliography, and Visualizing Chaucer.

While these resources will remain accessible during the course of migration, they will be static, with reduced functionality. They will not be updated during this time. We anticipate the migration project to be complete by Summer 2025. 

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us directly at robbins@ur.rochester.edu. We appreciate your understanding and patience.
Robbins Library Digital Projects > Camelot Project > Bon-Accord > The Questing Host

The Questing Host


With sad thoughts drifting into dreams, with tired heart,
I turn from the white candles and the open page,
And on worn tapestries of immemorial age
See knight and saint and lady play their part.

Among the tall, straight, woven trees and turrets gray,
These hunt the leaping deer, and these make silent love;
And one ecstatic maid beneath a haloed dove,
With white face bends upon a book to pray.

And near them hover in the still, dream-haunted room,
The spirits of forgotten times, the host of night:
Helen's red lips and glorious eys are faded quite,
And Palomide beneath his shadowy plume

Rides through gaunt spectral woods upon his hopeless quest;
Unnumbered phantoms of old heroes hurry by;
The candles flicker, the dreams vanish, and I cry;
"Not even in dreams is any peace or rest."