The Equinox (Volume I, Number III)

SIR PALAMEDES, THE SARACEN KNIGHT By simple faith, not heathen might, Catch him, and thus achieve the quest!” Then quoth that melancholy wight: “T will believe!” The hermit blessed His convert : on the horizon Appears the Beast. ‘To thee the rest!” He cries, to urge the good knight on. But no! Sir Palamedes grips The hermit by the woebegone Beard of him; then away he rips, Wood as a maniac, to the West, Where down the sun in splendour slips, And where the quarry of the quest Canters. They run lik e hippogriffs! Like men pursued, or swine possessed, Over the dizzy Cretan cliffs They smash. And lo! it comes to pass He sees in no dim hieroglyphs, In knowledge easy to amass, This hermit (while he drew his breath) Once dead is like a mangy ass. Bruised, broken, but not bound to death, He calls some passing fishermen To bear him. Presently he saith : 47