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

man and true

Could see it, thou hast seen the Grail;” and Bors,

“Ask me not, for I may not speak of it:

I saw it;” and the tears were in his eyes.

 

‘Then there remained but Lancelot, for the rest

Spake but of sundry perils in the storm;

Perhaps, like him of Cana in Holy Writ,

Our Arthur kept his best until the last;

“Thou, too, my Lancelot,” asked the king, “my friend,

Our mightiest, hath this Quest availed for thee?”

 

‘“Our mightiest!” answered Lancelot, with a groan;

“O King!”—and when he paused, methought I spied

A dying fire of madness in his eyes—

“O King, my friend, if friend of thine I be,

Happier are those that welter in their sin,

Swine in the mud, that cannot see for slime,

Slime of the ditch: but in me lived a sin

So strange, of such a kind, that all of pure,

Noble, and knightly in me twined and clung

Round that one sin, until the wholesome flower

And poisonous grew together, each as each,

Not to be plucked asunder; and when thy knights

Sware, I sware with them only in the hope

That could I touch or see the Holy Grail

They might be plucked asunder. Then I spake

To one most holy saint, who wept and said,

That save they could be plucked asunder, all

My quest were but in vain; to whom I vowed

That I would work according as he willed.

And forth I went, and while I yearned and strove

To tear the twain asunder in my heart,

My madness came upon me as of old,

And whipt me into waste fields far away;

There was I beaten down by little men,

Mean knights, to whom the moving of my sword

And shadow of my spear had been enow

To scare them from me once; and then I came

All in my folly to the naked shore,

Wide flats, where nothing but coarse grasses grew;

But such a blast, my King, began to blow,

So loud a blast along the shore and sea,

Ye could not hear the waters for the blast,

Though heapt in mounds and ridges all the sea

Drove like a cataract, and all the sand

Swept like a river, and the clouded heavens

Were shaken with the motion and the sound.

And blackening in the sea-foam swayed a boat,

Half-swallowed in it, anchored with a chain;

And in my madness to myself I said,

‘I will embark and I will lose myself,

And in the great sea wash away my sin.’

I burst the chain, I sprang into the boat.

Seven days I drove along the dreary deep,

And with me drove the moon and all the stars;

And the wind fell, and on the seventh night

I heard the shingle grinding in the surge,

And felt the boat shock earth, and looking up,

Behold, the enchanted towers of Carbonek,

A castle like a rock upon a rock,

With chasm-like portals open to the sea,

And steps that met the breaker! there was none

Stood near it but a lion on each side

That kept the entry, and the moon was full.

Then from the boat I leapt, and up the stairs.

There drew my sword. With sudden-flaring manes

Those two great beasts rose upright like a man,

Each gript a shoulder, and I stood between;

And, when I would have smitten them, heard a voice,

‘Doubt not, go forward; if thou doubt, the beasts

Will tear thee piecemeal.’ Then with violence

The sword was dashed from out my hand, and fell.

And up into the sounding hall I past;

But nothing in the sounding hall I saw,

No bench nor table, painting on the wall

Or shield of knight; only the rounded moon

Through the tall oriel on the rolling sea.

But always in the quiet house I heard,

Clear as a lark, high o’er me as a lark,

A sweet voice singing in the topmost tower

To the eastward: up I climbed a thousand steps

With pain: as in a dream I seemed to climb

For ever: at the last I reached a door,

A light was in the crannies, and I heard,

‘Glory and joy and honour to our Lord

And to the Holy Vessel of the Grail.’

Then in my madness I essayed the door;

It gave; and through a stormy glare, a heat

As from a seventimes-heated furnace, I,

Blasted and burnt, and blinded as I was,

With such a fierceness that I swooned away—

O, yet methought I saw the Holy Grail,

All palled in crimson samite, and around

Great angels, awful shapes, and wings and eyes.

And but for all my madness and my sin,

And then my swooning, I had sworn I saw

That which I saw; but what I saw was veiled

And covered; and this Quest was not for me.”

 

‘So speaking, and here ceasing, Lancelot left

The hall long silent, till Sir Gawain—nay,

Brother, I need not tell thee foolish words,—

A reckless and irreverent knight was he,

Now boldened by the silence of his King,—

Well, I will tell thee: “O King, my liege,” he said,

“Hath Gawain failed in any quest of thine?

When have I stinted stroke in foughten field?

But as for thine, my good friend Percivale,

Thy holy nun and thou have driven men mad,

Yea, made our mightiest madder than our least.

But by mine eyes and by mine ears I swear,

I will be deafer than the blue-eyed cat,

And thrice as blind as any noonday owl,

To holy virgins in their ecstasies,

Henceforward.”

 

‘“Deafer,” said the blameless King,

“Gawain, and blinder unto holy things

Hope not to make thyself by idle vows,

Being too blind to have desire to see.

But if indeed there came a sign from heaven,

Blessed are Bors, Lancelot and Percivale,

For these have seen according to their sight.

For every fiery prophet in old times,

And all the sacred madness of the bard,

When God made music through them, could but speak

His music by the framework and the chord;

And as ye saw it ye have spoken truth.

 

‘“Nay—but thou errest, Lancelot: never yet

Could all of true and noble in knight and man

Twine round one sin, whatever it might be,

With such a closeness, but apart there grew,

Save that he were the swine thou spakest of,

Some root of knighthood and pure nobleness;

Whereto see thou, that it may bear its flower.

 

‘“And spake I not too truly, O my knights?

Was I too dark a prophet when I said

To those who went upon the Holy Quest,

That most of them would follow wandering fires,

Lost in the quagmire?—lost to me and gone,

And left me gazing at a barren board,

And a lean Order—scarce returned a tithe—

And out of those to whom the vision came

My greatest hardly will believe he saw;

Another hath beheld it afar off,

And leaving human wrongs to right themselves,

Cares but to pass into the silent life.

And one hath had the vision face to face,

And now his chair desires him here in vain,

However they may crown him otherwhere.

 

‘“And some among you held, that if the King

Had seen the sight he would have sworn the vow:

Not easily, seeing that the King must guard

That which he rules, and is but as the hind

To whom a space of land is given to plow.

Who may not wander from the allotted field

Before his work be done; but, being done,

Let visions of the night or of the day

Come, as they will; and many a time they come,

Until this earth he walks on seems not earth,

This light that strikes his eyeball is not light,

This air that smites his forehead is not air

But vision—yea, his very hand and foot—

In moments when he feels he cannot die,

And knows himself no vision to himself,

Nor the high God a vision, nor that One

Who rose again: ye have seen what ye have seen.”

 

‘So spake the King: I knew not all he meant.’

 

Pelleas and Ettarre

 

King Arthur made new knights to fill the gap

Left by the Holy Quest; and as he sat

In hall at old Caerleon, the high doors

Were softly sundered, and through these a youth,

Pelleas, and the sweet smell of the fields

Past, and the sunshine came along with him.

 

‘Make me thy knight, because I know, Sir King,

All that belongs to knighthood, and I love.’

Such was his cry: for having heard the King

Had let proclaim a tournament—the prize

A golden circlet and a knightly sword,

Full fain had Pelleas for his lady won

The golden circlet, for himself the sword:

And there were those who knew him near the King,

And promised for him: and Arthur made him knight.

 

And this new knight, Sir Pelleas of the isles—

But lately come to his inheritance,

And lord of many a barren isle was he—

Riding at noon, a day or twain before,

Across the forest called of Dean, to find

Caerleon and the King, had felt the sun

Beat like a strong knight on his helm, and reeled

Almost to falling from his horse; but saw

Near him a mound of even-sloping side,

Whereon a hundred stately beeches grew,

And here and there great hollies under them;

But for a mile all round was open space,

And fern and heath: and slowly Pelleas drew

To that dim day, then binding his good horse

To a tree, cast himself down; and as he lay

At random looking over the brown earth

Through that green-glooming twilight of the grove,

It seemed to Pelleas that the fern without

Burnt as a living fire of emeralds,

So that his eyes were dazzled looking at it.

Then o’er it crost the dimness of a cloud

Floating, and once the shadow of a bird

Flying, and then a fawn; and his eyes closed.

And since he loved all maidens, but no maid

In special, half-awake he whispered, ‘Where?

O where? I love thee, though I know thee not.

For fair thou art and pure as Guinevere,

And I will make thee with my spear and sword

As famous—O my Queen, my Guinevere,

For I will be thine Arthur when we meet.’

 

Suddenly wakened with a sound of talk

And laughter at the limit of the wood,

And glancing through the hoary boles, he saw,

Strange as to some old prophet might have seemed

A vision hovering on a sea of fire,

Damsels in divers colours like the cloud

Of sunset and sunrise, and all of them

On horses, and the horses richly trapt

Breast-high in that bright line of bracken stood:

And all the damsels talked confusedly,

And one was pointing this way, and one that,

Because the way was lost.

 

And Pelleas rose,

And loosed his horse, and led him to the light.

There she that seemed the chief among them said,

‘In happy time behold our pilot-star!

Youth, we are damsels-errant, and we ride,

Armed as ye see, to tilt against the knights

There at Caerleon, but have lost our way:

To right? to left? straight forward? back again?

Which? tell us quickly.’

 

Pelleas gazing thought,

‘Is Guinevere herself so beautiful?’

For large her violet eyes looked, and her bloom

A rosy dawn kindled in stainless heavens,

And round her limbs, mature in womanhood;

And slender was her hand and small her shape;

And but for those large eyes, the haunts of scorn,

She might have seemed a toy to trifle with,

And pass and care no more. But while he gazed

The beauty of her flesh abashed the boy,

As though it were the beauty of her soul:

For as the base man, judging