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

when the thing was blazed about the court,

The brute world howling forced them into bonds,

And as it chanced they are happy, being pure.’

 

‘O ay,’ said Vivien, ‘that were likely too.

What say ye then to fair Sir Percivale

And of the horrid foulness that he wrought,

The saintly youth, the spotless lamb of Christ,

Or some black wether of St Satan’s fold.

What, in the precincts of the chapel-yard,

Among the knightly brasses of the graves,

And by the cold Hic Jacets of the dead!’

 

And Merlin answered careless of her charge,

‘A sober man is Percivale and pure;

But once in life was flustered with new wine,

Then paced for coolness in the chapel-yard;

Where one of Satan’s shepherdesses caught

And meant to stamp him with her master’s mark;

And that he sinned is not believable;

For, look upon his face!—but if he sinned,

The sin that practice burns into the blood,

And not the one dark hour which brings remorse,

Will brand us, after, of whose fold we be:

Or else were he, the holy king, whose hymns

Are chanted in the minster, worse than all.

But is your spleen frothed out, or have ye more?’

 

And Vivien answered frowning yet in wrath:

‘O ay; what say ye to Sir Lancelot, friend

Traitor or true? that commerce with the Queen,

I ask you, is it clamoured by the child,

Or whispered in the corner? do ye know it?’

 

To which he answered sadly, ‘Yea, I know it.

Sir Lancelot went ambassador, at first,

To fetch her, and she watched him from her walls.

A rumour runs, she took him for the King,

So fixt her fancy on him: let them be.

But have ye no one word of loyal praise

For Arthur, blameless King and stainless man?’

 

She answered with a low and chuckling laugh:

‘Man! is he man at all, who knows and winks?

Sees what his fair bride is and does, and winks?

By which the good King means to blind himself,

And blinds himself and all the Table Round

To all the foulness that they work. Myself

Could call him (were it not for womanhood)

The pretty, popular cause such manhood earns,

Could call him the main cause of all their crime;

Yea, were he not crowned King, coward, and fool.’

 

Then Merlin to his own heart, loathing, said:

‘O true and tender! O my liege and King!

O selfless man and stainless gentleman,

Who wouldst against thine own eye-witness fain

Have all men true and leal, all women pure;

How, in the mouths of base interpreters,

From overfineness not intelligible

To things with every sense as false and foul

As the poached filth that floods the middle street,

Is thy white blamelessness accounted blame!’

 

But Vivien, deeming Merlin overborne

By instance, recommenced, and let her tongue

Rage like a fire among the noblest names,

Polluting, and imputing her whole self,

Defaming and defacing, till she left

Not even Lancelot brave, nor Galahad clean.

 

Her words had issue other than she willed.

He dragged his eyebrow bushes down, and made

A snowy penthouse for his hollow eyes,

And muttered in himself, ‘Tell her the charm!

So, if she had it, would she rail on me

To snare the next, and if she have it not

So will she rail. What did the wanton say?

“Not mount as high;” we scarce can sink as low:

For men at most differ as Heaven and earth,

But women, worst and best, as Heaven and Hell.

I know the Table Round, my friends of old;

All brave, and many generous, and some chaste.

She cloaks the scar of some repulse with lies;

I well believe she tempted them and failed,

Being so bitter: for fine plots may fail,

Though harlots paint their talk as well as face

With colours of the heart that are not theirs.

I will not let her know: nine tithes of times

Face-flatterer and backbiter are the same.

And they, sweet soul, that most impute a crime

Are pronest to it, and impute themselves,

Wanting the mental range; or low desire

Not to feel lowest makes them level all;

Yea, they would pare the mountain to the plain,

To leave an equal baseness; and in this

Are harlots like the crowd, that if they find

Some stain or blemish in a name of note,

Not grieving that their greatest are so small,

Inflate themselves with some insane delight,

And judge all nature from her feet of clay,

Without the will to lift their eyes, and see

Her godlike head crowned with spiritual fire,

And touching other worlds. I am weary of her.’

 

He spoke in words part heard, in whispers part,

Half-suffocated in the hoary fell

And many-wintered fleece of throat and chin.

But Vivien, gathering somewhat of his mood,

And hearing ‘harlot’ muttered twice or thrice,

Leapt from her session on his lap, and stood

Stiff as a viper frozen; loathsome sight,

How from the rosy lips of life and love,

Flashed the bare-grinning skeleton of death!

White was her cheek; sharp breaths of anger puffed

Her fairy nostril out; her hand half-clenched

Went faltering sideways downward to her belt,

And feeling; had she found a dagger there

(For in a wink the false love turns to hate)

She would have stabbed him; but she found it not:

His eye was calm, and suddenly she took

To bitter weeping like a beaten child,

A long, long weeping, not consolable.

Then her false voice made way, broken with sobs:

 

‘O crueller than was ever told in tale,

Or sung in song! O vainly lavished love!

O cruel, there was nothing wild or strange,

Or seeming shameful—for what shame in love,

So love be true, and not as yours is—nothing

Poor Vivien had not done to win his trust

Who called her what he called her—all her crime,

All—all—the wish to prove him wholly hers.’

 

She mused a little, and then clapt her hands

Together with a wailing shriek, and said:

‘Stabbed through the heart’s affections to the heart!

Seethed like the kid in its own mother’s milk!

Killed with a word worse than a life of blows!

I thought that he was gentle, being great:

O God, that I had loved a smaller man!

I should have found in him a greater heart.

O, I, that flattering my true passion, saw

The knights, the court, the King, dark in your light,

Who loved to make men darker than they are,

Because of that high pleasure which I had

To seat you sole upon my pedestal

Of worship—I am answered, and henceforth

The course of life that seemed so flowery to me

With you for guide and master, only you,

Becomes the sea-cliff pathway broken short,

And ending in a ruin—nothing left,

But into some low cave to crawl, and there,

If the wolf spare me, weep my life away,

Killed with inutterable unkindliness.’

 

She paused, she turned away, she hung her head,

The snake of gold slid from her hair, the braid

Slipt and uncoiled itself, she wept afresh,

And the dark wood grew darker toward the storm

In silence, while his anger slowly died

Within him, till he let his wisdom go

For ease of heart, and half believed her true:

Called her to shelter in the hollow oak,

‘Come from the storm,’ and having no reply,

Gazed at the heaving shoulder, and the face

Hand-hidden, as for utmost grief or shame;

Then thrice essayed, by tenderest-touching terms,

To sleek her ruffled peace of mind, in vain.

At last she let herself be conquered by him,

And as the cageling newly flown returns,

The seeming-injured simple-hearted thing

Came to her old perch back, and settled there.

There while she sat, half-falling from his knees,

Half-nestled at his heart, and since he saw

The slow tear creep from her closed eyelid yet,

About her, more in kindness than in love,

The gentle wizard cast a shielding arm.

But she dislinked herself at once and rose,

Her arms upon her breast across, and stood,

A virtuous gentlewoman deeply wronged,

Upright and flushed before him: then she said:

 

‘There must now be no passages of love

Betwixt us twain henceforward evermore;

Since, if I be what I am grossly called,

What should be granted which your own gross heart

Would reckon worth the taking? I will go.

In truth, but one thing now—better have died

Thrice than have asked it once—could make me stay—

That proof of trust—so often asked in vain!

How justly, after that vile term of yours,

I find with grief! I might believe you then,

Who knows? once more. Lo! what was once to me

Mere matter of the fancy, now hath grown

The vast necessity of heart and life.

Farewell; think gently of me, for I fear

My fate or folly, passing gayer youth

For one so old, must be to love thee still.

But ere I leave thee let me swear once more

That if I schemed against thy peace in this,

May yon just heaven, that darkens o’er me, send

One flash, that, missing all things else, may make

My scheming brain a cinder, if I lie.’

 

Scarce had she ceased, when out of heaven a bolt

(For now the storm was close above them) struck,

Furrowing a giant oak, and javelining

With darted spikes and splinters of the wood

The dark earth round. He raised his eyes and saw

The tree that shone white-listed through the gloom.

But Vivien, fearing heaven had heard her oath,

And dazzled by the livid-flickering fork,

And deafened with the stammering cracks and claps

That followed, flying back and crying out,

‘O Merlin, though you do not love me, save,

Yet save me!’ clung to him and hugged him close;

And called him dear protector in her fright,

Nor yet forgot her practice in her fright,

But wrought upon his mood and hugged him close.

The pale blood of the wizard at her touch

Took gayer colours, like an opal warmed.

She blamed herself for telling hearsay tales:

She shook from fear, and for her fault she wept

Of petulancy; she called him lord and liege,

Her seer, her bard, her silver star of eve,

Her God, her Merlin, the one passionate love

Of her whole life; and ever overhead

Bellowed the tempest, and the rotten branch

Snapt in the rushing of the river-rain

Above them; and in change of glare and gloom

Her eyes and neck glittering went and came;

Till now the storm, its burst of passion spent,

Moaning and calling out of other lands,

Had left the ravaged woodland yet once more

To peace; and what should not have been had been,

For Merlin, overtalked and overworn,

Had yielded, told her all the charm, and slept.

 

Then, in one moment, she put forth the charm

Of woven paces and of waving hands,

And in the hollow oak he lay as dead,

And lost to life and use and name and fame.

 

Then crying ‘I have made his glory mine,’

And shrieking out ‘O fool!’ the harlot leapt

Adown the forest, and the thicket closed

Behind her, and the forest echoed ‘fool.’

 

Lancelot and Elaine

 

Elaine the fair, Elaine the loveable,

Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat,

High in her chamber up a tower to the east

Guarded the sacred shield of Lancelot;

Which first she placed where the morning’s earliest ray

Might strike it, and awake her with the gleam;

Then fearing rust or soilure fashioned for it

A case of silk, and braided thereupon

All the devices blazoned on the shield

In their own tinct, and added, of her wit,

A border fantasy of branch and flower,

And yellow-throated nestling in the nest.

Nor rested thus content, but day by day,

Leaving her household and good father,