Idylls of the King, Alfred, Lord Tennyson [best historical biographies .TXT] 📗

But he by wild and way, for half the night,
And over hard and soft, striking the sod
From out the soft, the spark from off the hard,
Rode till the star above the wakening sun,
Beside that tower where Percivale was cowled,
Glanced from the rosy forehead of the dawn.
For so the words were flashed into his heart
He knew not whence or wherefore: “O sweet star,
Pure on the virgin forehead of the dawn!”
And there he would have wept, but felt his eyes
Harder and drier than a fountain bed
In summer: thither came the village girls
And lingered talking, and they come no more
Till the sweet heavens have filled it from the heights
Again with living waters in the change
Of seasons: hard his eyes; harder his heart
Seemed; but so weary were his limbs, that he,
Gasping, “Of Arthur’s hall am I, but here,
Here let me rest and die,” cast himself down,
And gulfed his griefs in inmost sleep; so lay,
Till shaken by a dream, that Gawain fired
The hall of Merlin, and the morning star
Reeled in the smoke, brake into flame, and fell.

He woke, and being ware of someone nigh,
Sent hands upon him, as to tear him, crying,
“False! and I held thee pure as Guinevere.”

But Percivale stood near him and replied,
“Am I but false as Guinevere is pure?
Or art thou mazed with dreams? or being one
Of our free-spoken Table hast not heard
That Lancelot”⁠—there he checked himself and paused.

Then fared it with Sir Pelleas as with one
Who gets a wound in battle, and the sword
That made it plunges through the wound again,
And pricks it deeper: and he shrank and wailed,
“Is the Queen false?” and Percivale was mute.
“Have any of our Round Table held their vows?”
And Percivale made answer not a word.
“Is the King true?” “The King!” said Percivale.
“Why then let men couple at once with wolves.
What! art thou mad?”

But Pelleas, leaping up,
Ran through the doors and vaulted on his horse
And fled: small pity upon his horse had he,
Or on himself, or any, and when he met
A cripple, one that held a hand for alms⁠—
Hunched as he was, and like an old dwarf-elm
That turns its back upon the salt blast, the boy
Paused not, but overrode him, shouting, “False,
And false with Gawain!” and so left him bruised
And battered, and fled on, and hill and wood
Went ever streaming by him till the gloom,
That follows on the turning of the world,
Darkened the common path: he twitched the reins,
And made his beast that better knew it, swerve
Now off it and now on; but when he saw
High up in heaven the hall that Merlin built,
Blackening against the dead-green stripes of even,
“Black nest of rats,” he groaned, “ye build too high.”

Not long thereafter from the city gates
Issued Sir Lancelot riding airily,
Warm with a gracious parting from the Queen,
Peace at his heart, and gazing at a star
And marvelling what it was: on whom the boy,
Across the silent seeded meadow-grass
Borne, clashed: and Lancelot, saying, “What name hast thou
That ridest here so blindly and so hard?”
“No name, no name,” he shouted, “a scourge am I
To lash the treasons of the Table Round.”
“Yea, but thy name?” “I have many names,” he cried:
“I am wrath and shame and hate and evil fame,
And like a poisonous wind I pass to blast
And blaze the crime of Lancelot and the Queen.”
“First over me,” said Lancelot, “shalt thou pass.”
“Fight therefore,” yelled the youth, and either knight
Drew back a space, and when they closed, at once
The weary steed of Pelleas floundering flung
His rider, who called out from the dark field,
“Thou art as false as Hell: slay me: I have no sword.”
Then Lancelot, “Yea, between thy lips⁠—and sharp;
But here I will disedge it by thy death.”
“Slay then,” he shrieked, “my will is to be slain,”
And Lancelot, with his heel upon the fallen,
Rolling his eyes, a moment stood, then spake:
“Rise, weakling; I am Lancelot; say thy say.”

And Lancelot slowly rode his warhorse back
To Camelot, and Sir Pelleas in brief while
Caught his unbroken limbs from the dark field,
And followed to the city. It chanced that both
Brake into hall together, worn and pale.
There with her knights and dames was Guinevere.
Full wonderingly she gazed on Lancelot
So soon returned, and then on Pelleas, him
Who had not greeted her, but cast himself
Down on a bench, hard-breathing. “Have ye fought?”
She asked of Lancelot. “Ay, my Queen,” he said.
“And hast thou overthrown him?” “Ay, my Queen.”
Then she, turning to Pelleas, “O young knight,
Hath the great heart of knighthood in thee failed
So far thou canst not bide, unfrowardly,
A fall from him?” Then, for he answered not,
“Or hast thou other griefs? If I, the Queen,
May help them, loose thy tongue, and let me know.”
But Pelleas lifted up an eye so fierce
She quailed; and he, hissing “I have no sword,”
Sprang from the door into the dark. The Queen
Looked hard upon her lover, he on her;
And each foresaw the dolorous day to be:
And all talk died, as in a grove all song
Beneath the shadow of some bird of prey;
Then a long silence came upon the hall,
And Modred thought, “The time is hard at hand.”

Dagonet, the fool, whom Gawain in his mood
Had made mock-knight of Arthur’s Table Round,
At Camelot, high above the yellowing woods,
Danced like a withered leaf before the hall.
And toward him from the hall, with harp in hand,
And from the crown thereof a carcanet
Of ruby swaying to and fro, the prize
Of Tristram in the jousts of yesterday,
Came Tristram, saying, “Why skip ye so, Sir Fool?”

For Arthur and Sir Lancelot riding once
Far down beneath a winding wall of rock
Heard a child wail. A stump of oak half-dead,
From roots like some black coil of carven snakes,
Clutched at the crag, and started through mid air
Bearing an eagle’s nest: and through the tree
Rushed ever a rainy wind, and through the wind
Pierced ever a child’s