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

air,

Pulsing full man; can Arthur make me pure

As any maiden child? lock up my tongue

From uttering freely what I freely hear?

Bind me to one? The wide world laughs at it.

And worldling of the world am I, and know

The ptarmigan that whitens ere his hour

Woos his own end; we are not angels here

Nor shall be: vows—I am woodman of the woods,

And hear the garnet-headed yaffingale

Mock them: my soul, we love but while we may;

And therefore is my love so large for thee,

Seeing it is not bounded save by love.’

 

Here ending, he moved toward her, and she said,

‘Good: an I turned away my love for thee

To some one thrice as courteous as thyself—

For courtesy wins woman all as well

As valour may, but he that closes both

Is perfect, he is Lancelot—taller indeed,

Rosier and comelier, thou—but say I loved

This knightliest of all knights, and cast thee back

Thine own small saw, “We love but while we may,”

Well then, what answer?’

 

He that while she spake,

Mindful of what he brought to adorn her with,

The jewels, had let one finger lightly touch

The warm white apple of her throat, replied,

‘Press this a little closer, sweet, until—

Come, I am hungered and half-angered—meat,

Wine, wine—and I will love thee to the death,

And out beyond into the dream to come.’

 

So then, when both were brought to full accord,

She rose, and set before him all he willed;

And after these had comforted the blood

With meats and wines, and satiated their hearts—

Now talking of their woodland paradise,

The deer, the dews, the fern, the founts, the lawns;

Now mocking at the much ungainliness,

And craven shifts, and long crane legs of Mark—

Then Tristram laughing caught the harp, and sang:

 

‘Ay, ay, O ay—the winds that bend the brier!

A star in heaven, a star within the mere!

Ay, ay, O ay—a star was my desire,

And one was far apart, and one was near:

Ay, ay, O ay—the winds that bow the grass!

And one was water and one star was fire,

And one will ever shine and one will pass.

Ay, ay, O ay—the winds that move the mere.’

 

Then in the light’s last glimmer Tristram showed

And swung the ruby carcanet. She cried,

‘The collar of some Order, which our King

Hath newly founded, all for thee, my soul,

For thee, to yield thee grace beyond thy peers.’

 

‘Not so, my Queen,’ he said, ‘but the red fruit

Grown on a magic oak-tree in mid-heaven,

And won by Tristram as a tourney-prize,

And hither brought by Tristram for his last

Love-offering and peace-offering unto thee.’

 

He spoke, he turned, then, flinging round her neck,

Claspt it, and cried, ‘Thine Order, O my Queen!’

But, while he bowed to kiss the jewelled throat,

Out of the dark, just as the lips had touched,

Behind him rose a shadow and a shriek—

‘Mark’s way,’ said Mark, and clove him through the brain.

 

That night came Arthur home, and while he climbed,

All in a death-dumb autumn-dripping gloom,

The stairway to the hall, and looked and saw

The great Queen’s bower was dark,—about his feet

A voice clung sobbing till he questioned it,

‘What art thou?’ and the voice about his feet

Sent up an answer, sobbing, ‘I am thy fool,

And I shall never make thee smile again.’

 

Guinevere

 

Queen Guinevere had fled the court, and sat

There in the holy house at Almesbury

Weeping, none with her save a little maid,

A novice: one low light betwixt them burned

Blurred by the creeping mist, for all abroad,

Beneath a moon unseen albeit at full,

The white mist, like a face-cloth to the face,

Clung to the dead earth, and the land was still.

 

For hither had she fled, her cause of flight

Sir Modred; he that like a subtle beast

Lay couchant with his eyes upon the throne,

Ready to spring, waiting a chance: for this

He chilled the popular praises of the King

With silent smiles of slow disparagement;

And tampered with the Lords of the White Horse,

Heathen, the brood by Hengist left; and sought

To make disruption in the Table Round

Of Arthur, and to splinter it into feuds

Serving his traitorous end; and all his aims

Were sharpened by strong hate for Lancelot.

 

For thus it chanced one morn when all the court,

Green-suited, but with plumes that mocked the may,

Had been, their wont, a-maying and returned,

That Modred still in green, all ear and eye,

Climbed to the high top of the garden-wall

To spy some secret scandal if he might,

And saw the Queen who sat betwixt her best

Enid, and lissome Vivien, of her court

The wiliest and the worst; and more than this

He saw not, for Sir Lancelot passing by

Spied where he couched, and as the gardener’s hand

Picks from the colewort a green caterpillar,

So from the high wall and the flowering grove

Of grasses Lancelot plucked him by the heel,

And cast him as a worm upon the way;

But when he knew the Prince though marred with dust,

He, reverencing king’s blood in a bad man,

Made such excuses as he might, and these

Full knightly without scorn; for in those days

No knight of Arthur’s noblest dealt in scorn;

But, if a man were halt or hunched, in him

By those whom God had made full-limbed and tall,

Scorn was allowed as part of his defect,

And he was answered softly by the King

And all his Table. So Sir Lancelot holp

To raise the Prince, who rising twice or thrice

Full sharply smote his knees, and smiled, and went:

But, ever after, the small violence done

Rankled in him and ruffled all his heart,

As the sharp wind that ruffles all day long

A little bitter pool about a stone

On the bare coast.

 

But when Sir Lancelot told

This matter to the Queen, at first she laughed

Lightly, to think of Modred’s dusty fall,

Then shuddered, as the village wife who cries

‘I shudder, some one steps across my grave;’

Then laughed again, but faintlier, for indeed

She half-foresaw that he, the subtle beast,

Would track her guilt until he found, and hers

Would be for evermore a name of scorn.

Henceforward rarely could she front in hall,

Or elsewhere, Modred’s narrow foxy face,

Heart-hiding smile, and gray persistent eye:

Henceforward too, the Powers that tend the soul,

To help it from the death that cannot die,

And save it even in extremes, began

To vex and plague her. Many a time for hours,

Beside the placid breathings of the King,

In the dead night, grim faces came and went

Before her, or a vague spiritual fear—

Like to some doubtful noise of creaking doors,

Heard by the watcher in a haunted house,

That keeps the rust of murder on the walls—

Held her awake: or if she slept, she dreamed

An awful dream; for then she seemed to stand

On some vast plain before a setting sun,

And from the sun there swiftly made at her

A ghastly something, and its shadow flew

Before it, till it touched her, and she turned—

When lo! her own, that broadening from her feet,

And blackening, swallowed all the land, and in it

Far cities burnt, and with a cry she woke.

And all this trouble did not pass but grew;

Till even the clear face of the guileless King,

And trustful courtesies of household life,

Became her bane; and at the last she said,

‘O Lancelot, get thee hence to thine own land,

For if thou tarry we shall meet again,

And if we meet again, some evil chance

Will make the smouldering scandal break and blaze

Before the people, and our lord the King.’

And Lancelot ever promised, but remained,

And still they met and met. Again she said,

‘O Lancelot, if thou love me get thee hence.’

And then they were agreed upon a night

(When the good King should not be there) to meet

And part for ever. Vivien, lurking, heard.

She told Sir Modred. Passion-pale they met

And greeted. Hands in hands, and eye to eye,

Low on the border of her couch they sat

Stammering and staring. It was their last hour,

A madness of farewells. And Modred brought

His creatures to the basement of the tower

For testimony; and crying with full voice

‘Traitor, come out, ye are trapt at last,’ aroused

Lancelot, who rushing outward lionlike

Leapt on him, and hurled him headlong, and he fell

Stunned, and his creatures took and bare him off,

And all was still: then she, ‘The end is come,

And I am shamed for ever;’ and he said,

‘Mine be the shame; mine was the sin: but rise,

And fly to my strong castle overseas:

There will I hide thee, till my life shall end,

There hold thee with my life against the world.’

She answered, ‘Lancelot, wilt thou hold me so?

Nay, friend, for we have taken our farewells.

Would God that thou couldst hide me from myself!

Mine is the shame, for I was wife, and thou

Unwedded: yet rise now, and let us fly,

For I will draw me into sanctuary,

And bide my doom.’ So Lancelot got her horse,

Set her thereon, and mounted on his own,

And then they rode to the divided way,

There kissed, and parted weeping: for he past,

Love-loyal to the least wish of the Queen,

Back to his land; but she to Almesbury

Fled all night long by glimmering waste and weald,

And heard the Spirits of the waste and weald

Moan as she fled, or thought she heard them moan:

And in herself she moaned ‘Too late, too late!’

Till in the cold wind that foreruns the morn,

A blot in heaven, the Raven, flying high,

Croaked, and she thought, ‘He spies a field of death;

For now the Heathen of the Northern Sea,

Lured by the crimes and frailties of the court,

Begin to slay the folk, and spoil the land.’

 

And when she came to Almesbury she spake

There to the nuns, and said, ‘Mine enemies

Pursue me, but, O peaceful Sisterhood,

Receive, and yield me sanctuary, nor ask

Her name to whom ye yield it, till her time

To tell you:’ and her beauty, grace and power,

Wrought as a charm upon them, and they spared

To ask it.

 

So the stately Queen abode

For many a week, unknown, among the nuns;

Nor with them mixed, nor told her name, nor sought,

Wrapt in her grief, for housel or for shrift,

But communed only with the little maid,

Who pleased her with a babbling heedlessness

Which often lured her from herself; but now,

This night, a rumour wildly blown about

Came, that Sir Modred had usurped the realm,

And leagued him with the heathen, while the King

Was waging war on Lancelot: then she thought,

‘With what a hate the people and the King

Must hate me,’ and bowed down upon her hands

Silent, until the little maid, who brooked

No silence, brake it, uttering, ‘Late! so late!

What hour, I wonder, now?’ and when she drew

No answer, by and by began to hum

An air the nuns had taught her; ‘Late, so late!’

Which when she heard, the Queen looked up, and said,

‘O maiden, if indeed ye list to sing,

Sing, and unbind my heart that I may weep.’

Whereat full willingly sang the little maid.

 

‘Late, late, so late! and dark the night and chill!

Late, late, so late! but we can enter still.

Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.

 

‘No light had we: for that we do repent;

And learning this,