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Vernon Watkins’ “Camelot” · The Daily Poem

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  [music]
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  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Wednesday, October 28, 2026.
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  SPEAKER_00: Today's poem is by the Welsh poet Vernon Watkins.
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  SPEAKER_00: He was a friend of Dylan Thomas,
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  SPEAKER_00: and Thomas called him the superior talent,
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  SPEAKER_00: and he is indeed severely underrated today.
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  SPEAKER_00: I understand why...
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  SPEAKER_00: A world and a century in the grips of modernist poetry would prefer,
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  SPEAKER_00: Thomas maybe, but I hope that there is a Watkins resurgence at some point.
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  SPEAKER_00: Today's poem is called Camelot.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's obviously a rich connection between Arthurian legend and Wales
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  SPEAKER_00: in particular,
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  SPEAKER_00: and Watkins makes great use of those characters and images and themes in much
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  SPEAKER_00: of his poetry.
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  SPEAKER_00: This is one of my favorite of his Arthurian poems because it is haunting.
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  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't romanticize the romance of the Arthurian tales and especially the story
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  SPEAKER_00: of Guinevere and Lancelot, which is full of, in equal measure, beauty and tragedy.
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  SPEAKER_00: In fact, for a great many centuries, the Arthurian mythos did not exist.
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  SPEAKER_00: Contained a story of actual adultery between Lancelot and Queen Guinevere.
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  SPEAKER_00: They were tormented, perhaps by love for one another.
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  SPEAKER_00: And at one point, it even costs Lancelot the opportunity to receive the Holy Grail.
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  SPEAKER_00: And at that point, he is moved to contrition.
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  SPEAKER_00: He makes a beautiful confession and makes vows to guard his mind and And his heart
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  SPEAKER_00: with a new kind of vigilance.
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  SPEAKER_00: But then the French came along and they continued developing the Arthurian legends
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  SPEAKER_00: and composed and added the tale of Lancelot and Guinevere's ultimate failure.
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  SPEAKER_00: This was not original to the mythos,
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  SPEAKER_00: but for better or worse,
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  SPEAKER_00: it has become accepted into it and is in some cases one of
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  SPEAKER_00: the more memorable aspects of it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Dante, in his Inferno,
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  SPEAKER_00: chastens readers who sympathize with a love that would lead to that kind
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  SPEAKER_00: of transgression and betrayal and would pity them not for their suffering but
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  SPEAKER_00: for their loss of one another.
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  SPEAKER_00: And Watkins seems to capture some of that here.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's an echo of Edenic paradise in Camelot.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's this dual association of Guinevere with Eve as wife and Eve as mother.
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  SPEAKER_00: She's connected to the natural world.
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  SPEAKER_00: She has
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  SPEAKER_00: There are natural instincts and emotions that are upheld and even celebrated
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  SPEAKER_00: in this poem,
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  SPEAKER_00: but it is also full of deaths that are mourned as a kind of falling off of the order
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  SPEAKER_00: that ought to have been.
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  SPEAKER_00: The meter of the poem helps reinforce that.
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  SPEAKER_00: It contains a variety of lines.
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  SPEAKER_00: There are these long iambic lines,
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  SPEAKER_00: shorter iambic lines,
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  SPEAKER_00: and then these uneven lines that have a kind of orphaned syllable at the end.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's a beautiful tapestry here, but the ends are uneven.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's unraveling.
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  SPEAKER_00: Here's the poem.
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  SPEAKER_00: Camelot.
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  SPEAKER_00: She that was a queen stood here where the kestrel hovers.
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  SPEAKER_00: He was resting by the weir.
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  SPEAKER_00: He and she were lovers.
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  SPEAKER_00: Praise and passion in her throat breathed above her psalter long
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  SPEAKER_00: before King Arthur's boat moved upon the water.
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  SPEAKER_00: Though she died in Almsbury,
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  SPEAKER_00: white as any lily, laid beneath the darkest tree, winter cannot sully.
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  SPEAKER_00: All the color she had wrought stayed in her possession.
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  SPEAKER_00: Time stood still in Camelot.
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  SPEAKER_00: Set your foot upon this land.
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  SPEAKER_00: Come, for time has vanished.
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  SPEAKER_00: Part the grasses with your hand.
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  SPEAKER_00: Here, though he was banished,
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  SPEAKER_00: never did the grasses cease whispering of their pledges,
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  SPEAKER_00: while the blossoms on the trees burst along the hedges.
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  SPEAKER_00: Far he walked, accompanied by that lovely creature.
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  SPEAKER_00: Petals falling from the seed told him of her nature.
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  SPEAKER_00: Never let your heart deny joy that I inherit, Say above me when I die, here all time is buried.
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  SPEAKER_00: Wisdom gave her dignity, now her crown has fallen.
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  SPEAKER_00: Light upon the land is she, and her dust is pollen.
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  SPEAKER_00: Oh, how hard it is to lose passions,
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  SPEAKER_00: reins, and writings, yet no better could she choose to give nature tidings.
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  SPEAKER_00: Stoop and find the bow unstrung and the empty quiver.
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  SPEAKER_00: Limpid now the stones give tongue in the mountain river Silent move
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  SPEAKER_00: the tapestries painted in her chamber.
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  SPEAKER_00: She has gathered all the seas in a bead of amber.
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  SPEAKER_00: Leave as by a mummy's hand, ears that none may gather.
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  SPEAKER_00: She is sleeping in the land, hidden from the weather.
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  SPEAKER_00: This has been The Daily Poem.
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  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.
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  SPEAKER_00: We'll be back tomorrow with another subscriber poem and here on the main channel on Friday.
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  SPEAKER_00: Till then,
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  SPEAKER_00: visit us at dailypoempod.substack.com to listen to past episodes of The Daily Poem,
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  SPEAKER_00: to become a subscriber and supporter of the show, to comment on each day's poem.
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  SPEAKER_00: Tell us about your favorite Arthurian poems.
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  SPEAKER_00: Tell us about your favorite Vernon Watkins poems, if you have some.
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  SPEAKER_00: And if you do, God bless you.
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  SPEAKER_00: For all of us at Goldberry Studios, I'm Sean Johnson wishing you happy reading.