Idylls of the King, Alfred Lord Tennyson [the reading strategies book TXT] 📗

brought

Her own claw back, and wounded her own heart.

Sweet were the days when I was all unknown,

But when my name was lifted up, the storm

Brake on the mountain and I cared not for it.

Right well know I that Fame is half-disfame,

Yet needs must work my work. That other fame,

To one at least, who hath not children, vague,

The cackle of the unborn about the grave,

I cared not for it: a single misty star,

Which is the second in a line of stars

That seem a sword beneath a belt of three,

I never gazed upon it but I dreamt

Of some vast charm concluded in that star

To make fame nothing. Wherefore, if I fear,

Giving you power upon me through this charm,

That you might play me falsely, having power,

However well ye think ye love me now

(As sons of kings loving in pupilage

Have turned to tyrants when they came to power)

I rather dread the loss of use than fame;

If you—and not so much from wickedness,

As some wild turn of anger, or a mood

Of overstrained affection, it may be,

To keep me all to your own self,—or else

A sudden spurt of woman’s jealousy,—

Should try this charm on whom ye say ye love.’

 

And Vivien answered smiling as in wrath:

‘Have I not sworn? I am not trusted. Good!

Well, hide it, hide it; I shall find it out;

And being found take heed of Vivien.

A woman and not trusted, doubtless I

Might feel some sudden turn of anger born

Of your misfaith; and your fine epithet

Is accurate too, for this full love of mine

Without the full heart back may merit well

Your term of overstrained. So used as I,

My daily wonder is, I love at all.

And as to woman’s jealousy, O why not?

O to what end, except a jealous one,

And one to make me jealous if I love,

Was this fair charm invented by yourself?

I well believe that all about this world

Ye cage a buxom captive here and there,

Closed in the four walls of a hollow tower

From which is no escape for evermore.’

 

Then the great Master merrily answered her:

‘Full many a love in loving youth was mine;

I needed then no charm to keep them mine

But youth and love; and that full heart of yours

Whereof ye prattle, may now assure you mine;

So live uncharmed. For those who wrought it first,

The wrist is parted from the hand that waved,

The feet unmortised from their ankle-bones

Who paced it, ages back: but will ye hear

The legend as in guerdon for your rhyme?

 

‘There lived a king in the most Eastern East,

Less old than I, yet older, for my blood

Hath earnest in it of far springs to be.

A tawny pirate anchored in his port,

Whose bark had plundered twenty nameless isles;

And passing one, at the high peep of dawn,

He saw two cities in a thousand boats

All fighting for a woman on the sea.

And pushing his black craft among them all,

He lightly scattered theirs and brought her off,

With loss of half his people arrow-slain;

A maid so smooth, so white, so wonderful,

They said a light came from her when she moved:

And since the pirate would not yield her up,

The King impaled him for his piracy;

Then made her Queen: but those isle-nurtured eyes

Waged such unwilling though successful war

On all the youth, they sickened; councils thinned,

And armies waned, for magnet-like she drew

The rustiest iron of old fighters’ hearts;

And beasts themselves would worship; camels knelt

Unbidden, and the brutes of mountain back

That carry kings in castles, bowed black knees

Of homage, ringing with their serpent hands,

To make her smile, her golden ankle-bells.

What wonder, being jealous, that he sent

His horns of proclamation out through all

The hundred under-kingdoms that he swayed

To find a wizard who might teach the King

Some charm, which being wrought upon the Queen

Might keep her all his own: to such a one

He promised more than ever king has given,

A league of mountain full of golden mines,

A province with a hundred miles of coast,

A palace and a princess, all for him:

But on all those who tried and failed, the King

Pronounced a dismal sentence, meaning by it

To keep the list low and pretenders back,

Or like a king, not to be trifled with—

Their heads should moulder on the city gates.

And many tried and failed, because the charm

Of nature in her overbore their own:

And many a wizard brow bleached on the walls:

And many weeks a troop of carrion crows

Hung like a cloud above the gateway towers.’

 

And Vivien breaking in upon him, said:

‘I sit and gather honey; yet, methinks,

Thy tongue has tript a little: ask thyself.

The lady never made unwilling war

With those fine eyes: she had her pleasure in it,

And made her good man jealous with good cause.

And lived there neither dame nor damsel then

Wroth at a lover’s loss? were all as tame,

I mean, as noble, as the Queen was fair?

Not one to flirt a venom at her eyes,

Or pinch a murderous dust into her drink,

Or make her paler with a poisoned rose?

Well, those were not our days: but did they find

A wizard? Tell me, was he like to thee?

 

She ceased, and made her lithe arm round his neck

Tighten, and then drew back, and let her eyes

Speak for her, glowing on him, like a bride’s

On her new lord, her own, the first of men.

 

He answered laughing, ‘Nay, not like to me.

At last they found—his foragers for charms—

A little glassy-headed hairless man,

Who lived alone in a great wild on grass;

Read but one book, and ever reading grew

So grated down and filed away with thought,

So lean his eyes were monstrous; while the skin

Clung but to crate and basket, ribs and spine.

And since he kept his mind on one sole aim,

Nor ever touched fierce wine, nor tasted flesh,

Nor owned a sensual wish, to him the wall

That sunders ghosts and shadow-casting men

Became a crystal, and he saw them through it,

And heard their voices talk behind the wall,

And learnt their elemental secrets, powers

And forces; often o’er the sun’s bright eye

Drew the vast eyelid of an inky cloud,

And lashed it at the base with slanting storm;

Or in the noon of mist and driving rain,

When the lake whitened and the pinewood roared,

And the cairned mountain was a shadow, sunned

The world to peace again: here was the man.

And so by force they dragged him to the King.

And then he taught the King to charm the Queen

In such-wise, that no man could see her more,

Nor saw she save the King, who wrought the charm,

Coming and going, and she lay as dead,

And lost all use of life: but when the King

Made proffer of the league of golden mines,

The province with a hundred miles of coast,

The palace and the princess, that old man

Went back to his old wild, and lived on grass,

And vanished, and his book came down to me.’

 

And Vivien answered smiling saucily:

‘Ye have the book: the charm is written in it:

Good: take my counsel: let me know it at once:

For keep it like a puzzle chest in chest,

With each chest locked and padlocked thirty-fold,

And whelm all this beneath as vast a mound

As after furious battle turfs the slain

On some wild down above the windy deep,

I yet should strike upon a sudden means

To dig, pick, open, find and read the charm:

Then, if I tried it, who should blame me then?’

 

And smiling as a master smiles at one

That is not of his school, nor any school

But that where blind and naked Ignorance

Delivers brawling judgments, unashamed,

On all things all day long, he answered her:

 

‘Thou read the book, my pretty Vivien!

O ay, it is but twenty pages long,

But every page having an ample marge,

And every marge enclosing in the midst

A square of text that looks a little blot,

The text no larger than the limbs of fleas;

And every square of text an awful charm,

Writ in a language that has long gone by.

So long, that mountains have arisen since

With cities on their flanks—thou read the book!

And ever margin scribbled, crost, and crammed

With comment, densest condensation, hard

To mind and eye; but the long sleepless nights

Of my long life have made it easy to me.

And none can read the text, not even I;

And none can read the comment but myself;

And in the comment did I find the charm.

O, the results are simple; a mere child

Might use it to the harm of anyone,

And never could undo it: ask no more:

For though you should not prove it upon me,

But keep that oath ye sware, ye might, perchance,

Assay it on some one of the Table Round,

And all because ye dream they babble of you.’

 

And Vivien, frowning in true anger, said:

‘What dare the full-fed liars say of me?

They ride abroad redressing human wrongs!

They sit with knife in meat and wine in horn!

They bound to holy vows of chastity!

Were I not woman, I could tell a tale.

But you are man, you well can understand

The shame that cannot be explained for shame.

Not one of all the drove should touch me: swine!’

 

Then answered Merlin careless of her words:

‘You breathe but accusation vast and vague,

Spleen-born, I think, and proofless. If ye know,

Set up the charge ye know, to stand or fall!’

 

And Vivien answered frowning wrathfully:

‘O ay, what say ye to Sir Valence, him

Whose kinsman left him watcher o’er his wife

And two fair babes, and went to distant lands;

Was one year gone, and on returning found

Not two but three? there lay the reckling, one

But one hour old! What said the happy sire?’

A seven-months’ babe had been a truer gift.

Those twelve sweet moons confused his fatherhood.’

 

Then answered Merlin, ‘Nay, I know the tale.

Sir Valence wedded with an outland dame:

Some cause had kept him sundered from his wife:

One child they had: it lived with her: she died:

His kinsman travelling on his own affair

Was charged by Valence to bring home the child.

He brought, not found it therefore: take the truth.’

 

‘O ay,’ said Vivien, ‘overtrue a tale.

What say ye then to sweet Sir Sagramore,

That ardent man? “to pluck the flower in season,”

So says the song, “I trow it is no treason.”

O Master, shall we call him overquick

To crop his own sweet rose before the hour?’

 

And Merlin answered, ‘Overquick art thou

To catch a loathly plume fallen from the wing

Of that foul bird of rapine whose whole prey

Is man’s good name: he never wronged his bride.

I know the tale. An angry gust of wind

Puffed out his torch among the myriad-roomed

And many-corridored complexities

Of Arthur’s palace: then he found a door,

And darkling felt the sculptured ornament

That wreathen round it made it seem his own;

And wearied out made for the couch and slept,

A stainless man beside a stainless maid;

And either slept, nor knew of other there;

Till the high dawn piercing the royal rose

In Arthur’s casement glimmered chastely down,

Blushing upon them blushing, and at once

He rose without a word and parted from her:

But