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

vision of the Holy Grail

Drove me from all vainglories, rivalries,

And earthly heats that spring and sparkle out

Among us in the jousts, while women watch

Who wins, who falls; and waste the spiritual strength

Within us, better offered up to Heaven.’

 

To whom the monk: ‘The Holy Grail!—I trust

We are green in Heaven’s eyes; but here too much

We moulder—as to things without I mean—

Yet one of your own knights, a guest of ours,

Told us of this in our refectory,

But spake with such a sadness and so low

We heard not half of what he said. What is it?

The phantom of a cup that comes and goes?’

 

‘Nay, monk! what phantom?’ answered Percivale.

‘The cup, the cup itself, from which our Lord

Drank at the last sad supper with his own.

This, from the blessed land of Aromat—

After the day of darkness, when the dead

Went wandering o’er Moriah—the good saint

Arimathaean Joseph, journeying brought

To Glastonbury, where the winter thorn

Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of our Lord.

And there awhile it bode; and if a man

Could touch or see it, he was healed at once,

By faith, of all his ills. But then the times

Grew to such evil that the holy cup

Was caught away to Heaven, and disappeared.’

 

To whom the monk: ‘From our old books I know

That Joseph came of old to Glastonbury,

And there the heathen Prince, Arviragus,

Gave him an isle of marsh whereon to build;

And there he built with wattles from the marsh

A little lonely church in days of yore,

For so they say, these books of ours, but seem

Mute of this miracle, far as I have read.

But who first saw the holy thing today?’

 

‘A woman,’ answered Percivale, ‘a nun,

And one no further off in blood from me

Than sister; and if ever holy maid

With knees of adoration wore the stone,

A holy maid; though never maiden glowed,

But that was in her earlier maidenhood,

With such a fervent flame of human love,

Which being rudely blunted, glanced and shot

Only to holy things; to prayer and praise

She gave herself, to fast and alms. And yet,

Nun as she was, the scandal of the Court,

Sin against Arthur and the Table Round,

And the strange sound of an adulterous race,

Across the iron grating of her cell

Beat, and she prayed and fasted all the more.

 

‘And he to whom she told her sins, or what

Her all but utter whiteness held for sin,

A man wellnigh a hundred winters old,

Spake often with her of the Holy Grail,

A legend handed down through five or six,

And each of these a hundred winters old,

From our Lord’s time. And when King Arthur made

His Table Round, and all men’s hearts became

Clean for a season, surely he had thought

That now the Holy Grail would come again;

But sin broke out. Ah, Christ, that it would come,

And heal the world of all their wickedness!

“O Father!” asked the maiden, “might it come

To me by prayer and fasting?” “Nay,” said he,

“I know not, for thy heart is pure as snow.”

And so she prayed and fasted, till the sun

Shone, and the wind blew, through her, and I thought

She might have risen and floated when I saw her.

 

‘For on a day she sent to speak with me.

And when she came to speak, behold her eyes

Beyond my knowing of them, beautiful,

Beyond all knowing of them, wonderful,

Beautiful in the light of holiness.

And “O my brother Percivale,” she said,

“Sweet brother, I have seen the Holy Grail:

For, waked at dead of night, I heard a sound

As of a silver horn from o’er the hills

Blown, and I thought, ‘It is not Arthur’s use

To hunt by moonlight;’ and the slender sound

As from a distance beyond distance grew

Coming upon me—O never harp nor horn,

Nor aught we blow with breath, or touch with hand,

Was like that music as it came; and then

Streamed through my cell a cold and silver beam,

And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail,

Rose-red with beatings in it, as if alive,

Till all the white walls of my cell were dyed

With rosy colours leaping on the wall;

And then the music faded, and the Grail

Past, and the beam decayed, and from the walls

The rosy quiverings died into the night.

So now the Holy Thing is here again

Among us, brother, fast thou too and pray,

And tell thy brother knights to fast and pray,

That so perchance the vision may be seen

By thee and those, and all the world be healed.”

 

‘Then leaving the pale nun, I spake of this

To all men; and myself fasted and prayed

Always, and many among us many a week

Fasted and prayed even to the uttermost,

Expectant of the wonder that would be.

 

‘And one there was among us, ever moved

Among us in white armour, Galahad.

“God make thee good as thou art beautiful,”

Said Arthur, when he dubbed him knight; and none,

In so young youth, was ever made a knight

Till Galahad; and this Galahad, when he heard

My sister’s vision, filled me with amaze;

His eyes became so like her own, they seemed

Hers, and himself her brother more than I.

 

‘Sister or brother none had he; but some

Called him a son of Lancelot, and some said

Begotten by enchantment—chatterers they,

Like birds of passage piping up and down,

That gape for flies—we know not whence they come;

For when was Lancelot wanderingly lewd?

 

‘But she, the wan sweet maiden, shore away

Clean from her forehead all that wealth of hair

Which made a silken mat-work for her feet;

And out of this she plaited broad and long

A strong sword-belt, and wove with silver thread

And crimson in the belt a strange device,

A crimson grail within a silver beam;

And saw the bright boy-knight, and bound it on him,

Saying, “My knight, my love, my knight of heaven,

O thou, my love, whose love is one with mine,

I, maiden, round thee, maiden, bind my belt.

Go forth, for thou shalt see what I have seen,

And break through all, till one will crown thee king

Far in the spiritual city:” and as she spake

She sent the deathless passion in her eyes

Through him, and made him hers, and laid her mind

On him, and he believed in her belief.

 

‘Then came a year of miracle: O brother,

In our great hall there stood a vacant chair,

Fashioned by Merlin ere he past away,

And carven with strange figures; and in and out

The figures, like a serpent, ran a scroll

Of letters in a tongue no man could read.

And Merlin called it “The Siege perilous,”

Perilous for good and ill; “for there,” he said,

“No man could sit but he should lose himself:”

And once by misadvertence Merlin sat

In his own chair, and so was lost; but he,

Galahad, when he heard of Merlin’s doom,

Cried, “If I lose myself, I save myself!”

 

‘Then on a summer night it came to pass,

While the great banquet lay along the hall,

That Galahad would sit down in Merlin’s chair.

 

‘And all at once, as there we sat, we heard

A cracking and a riving of the roofs,

And rending, and a blast, and overhead

Thunder, and in the thunder was a cry.

And in the blast there smote along the hall

A beam of light seven times more clear than day:

And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail

All over covered with a luminous cloud.

And none might see who bare it, and it past.

But every knight beheld his fellow’s face

As in a glory, and all the knights arose,

And staring each at other like dumb men

Stood, till I found a voice and sware a vow.

 

‘I sware a vow before them all, that I,

Because I had not seen the Grail, would ride

A twelvemonth and a day in quest of it,

Until I found and saw it, as the nun

My sister saw it; and Galahad sware the vow,

And good Sir Bors, our Lancelot’s cousin, sware,

And Lancelot sware, and many among the knights,

And Gawain sware, and louder than the rest.’

 

Then spake the monk Ambrosius, asking him,

‘What said the King? Did Arthur take the vow?’

 

‘Nay, for my lord,’ said Percivale, ‘the King,

Was not in hall: for early that same day,

Scaped through a cavern from a bandit hold,

An outraged maiden sprang into the hall

Crying on help: for all her shining hair

Was smeared with earth, and either milky arm

Redrent with hooks of bramble, and all she wore

Torn as a sail that leaves the rope is torn

In tempest: so the King arose and went

To smoke the scandalous hive of those wild bees

That made such honey in his realm. Howbeit

Some little of this marvel he too saw,

Returning o’er the plain that then began

To darken under Camelot; whence the King

Looked up, calling aloud, “Lo, there! the roofs

Of our great hall are rolled in thunder-smoke!

Pray Heaven, they be not smitten by the bolt.”

For dear to Arthur was that hall of ours,

As having there so oft with all his knights

Feasted, and as the stateliest under heaven.

 

‘O brother, had you known our mighty hall,

Which Merlin built for Arthur long ago!

For all the sacred mount of Camelot,

And all the dim rich city, roof by roof,

Tower after tower, spire beyond spire,

By grove, and garden-lawn, and rushing brook,

Climbs to the mighty hall that Merlin built.

And four great zones of sculpture, set betwixt

With many a mystic symbol, gird the hall:

And in the lowest beasts are slaying men,

And in the second men are slaying beasts,

And on the third are warriors, perfect men,

And on the fourth are men with growing wings,

And over all one statue in the mould

Of Arthur, made by Merlin, with a crown,

And peaked wings pointed to the Northern Star.

And eastward fronts the statue, and the crown

And both the wings are made of gold, and flame

At sunrise till the people in far fields,

Wasted so often by the heathen hordes,

Behold it, crying, “We have still a King.”

 

‘And, brother, had you known our hall within,

Broader and higher than any in all the lands!

Where twelve great windows blazon Arthur’s wars,

And all the light that falls upon the board

Streams through the twelve great battles of our King.

Nay, one there is, and at the eastern end,

Wealthy with wandering lines of mount and mere,

Where Arthur finds the brand Excalibur.

And also one to the west, and counter to it,

And blank: and who shall blazon it? when and how?—

O there, perchance, when all our wars are done,

The brand Excalibur will be cast away.

 

‘So to this hall full quickly rode the King,

In horror lest the work by Merlin wrought,

Dreamlike, should on the sudden vanish, wrapt

In unremorseful folds of rolling fire.

And in he rode, and up I glanced, and saw

The golden dragon sparkling over all:

And many of those who burnt the hold, their arms

Hacked, and their foreheads grimed with smoke, and seared,

Followed, and in among bright faces, ours,

Full of the vision, prest: and then the King

Spake to me, being nearest, “Percivale,”

(Because the hall was all in tumult—some

Vowing, and some protesting), “what is this?”

 

‘O brother, when I told him what had chanced,

My sister’s vision, and the rest, his face

Darkened,