Beyond the Border, and as it goes north (or is it not 

 the Blue that as it comes south ?) Merlin is no more a 

 courtier but a wild soothsayer of the woods, 

 Queen Wanders or Gwannole or Guinevere is 

 tameless as a hawk, and Arthur himself, 

 though a hero and great among his kind, is of 

 the lineage of fire and sword. 



Where is Joyeuse Gard ? Some say it is 

 in the isle Avillion off the Breton shores : 

 some that it is in Avalon, under the sacred 

 hill of Glastonbury : some that it is wet with 

 the foam of Cornish Seas : others aver that it 

 lies in fathomless silence under the sundown 

 wandering wave and plunging tide. Another 

 legend tells that it leaned once upon the sea 

 from some lost haven under Berwick Law, 

 perhaps where North Berwick now is, or where 

 Dirleton looks across to Fidra, or where the 

 seamews on ruined Tantallon scream to the 

 Bass. 



Arthur himself has a sleeping-place (for 

 nowhere is he dead, but sleeps, awaiting a 

 trumpet-call) in 'a lost land' in Provence, in 

 Spain, under the waters of the Rhine. To-day 

 one may hear from Calabrian shepherd or 

 Sicilian fisherman that the Great King sleeps 

 in a deep hollow underneath the Straits of 

 Messina. And strangest of all (if not a new 

 myth of the dreaming imagination, for I have 



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