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

from the gates:

And Lancelot past away among the flowers,

(For then was latter April) and returned

Among the flowers, in May, with Guinevere.

To whom arrived, by Dubric the high saint,

Chief of the church in Britain, and before

The stateliest of her altar-shrines, the King

That morn was married, while in stainless white,

The fair beginners of a nobler time,

And glorying in their vows and him, his knights

Stood around him, and rejoicing in his joy.

Far shone the fields of May through open door,

The sacred altar blossomed white with May,

The Sun of May descended on their King,

They gazed on all earth’s beauty in their Queen,

Rolled incense, and there past along the hymns

A voice as of the waters, while the two

Sware at the shrine of Christ a deathless love:

And Arthur said, ‘Behold, thy doom is mine.

Let chance what will, I love thee to the death!’

To whom the Queen replied with drooping eyes,

‘King and my lord, I love thee to the death!’

And holy Dubric spread his hands and spake,

‘Reign ye, and live and love, and make the world

Other, and may thy Queen be one with thee,

And all this Order of thy Table Round

Fulfil the boundless purpose of their King!’

 

So Dubric said; but when they left the shrine

Great Lords from Rome before the portal stood,

In scornful stillness gazing as they past;

Then while they paced a city all on fire

With sun and cloth of gold, the trumpets blew,

And Arthur’s knighthood sang before the King:—

 

‘Blow, trumpet, for the world is white with May;

Blow trumpet, the long night hath rolled away!

Blow through the living world—“Let the King reign.”

 

‘Shall Rome or Heathen rule in Arthur’s realm?

Flash brand and lance, fall battleaxe upon helm,

Fall battleaxe, and flash brand! Let the King reign.

 

‘Strike for the King and live! his knights have heard

That God hath told the King a secret word.

Fall battleaxe, and flash brand! Let the King reign.

 

‘Blow trumpet! he will lift us from the dust.

Blow trumpet! live the strength and die the lust!

Clang battleaxe, and clash brand! Let the King reign.

 

‘Strike for the King and die! and if thou diest,

The King is King, and ever wills the highest.

Clang battleaxe, and clash brand! Let the King reign.

 

‘Blow, for our Sun is mighty in his May!

Blow, for our Sun is mightier day by day!

Clang battleaxe, and clash brand! Let the King reign.

 

‘The King will follow Christ, and we the King

In whom high God hath breathed a secret thing.

Fall battleaxe, and flash brand! Let the King reign.’

 

So sang the knighthood, moving to their hall.

There at the banquet those great Lords from Rome,

The slowly-fading mistress of the world,

Strode in, and claimed their tribute as of yore.

But Arthur spake, ‘Behold, for these have sworn

To wage my wars, and worship me their King;

The old order changeth, yielding place to new;

And we that fight for our fair father Christ,

Seeing that ye be grown too weak and old

To drive the heathen from your Roman wall,

No tribute will we pay:’ so those great lords

Drew back in wrath, and Arthur strove with Rome.

 

And Arthur and his knighthood for a space

Were all one will, and through that strength the King

Drew in the petty princedoms under him,

Fought, and in twelve great battles overcame

The heathen hordes, and made a realm and reigned.

 

Gareth and Lynette

 

The last tall son of Lot and Bellicent,

And tallest, Gareth, in a showerful spring

Stared at the spate. A slender-shafted Pine

Lost footing, fell, and so was whirled away.

‘How he went down,’ said Gareth, ‘as a false knight

Or evil king before my lance if lance

Were mine to use—O senseless cataract,

Bearing all down in thy precipitancy—

And yet thou art but swollen with cold snows

And mine is living blood: thou dost His will,

The Maker’s, and not knowest, and I that know,

Have strength and wit, in my good mother’s hall

Linger with vacillating obedience,

Prisoned, and kept and coaxed and whistled to—

Since the good mother holds me still a child!

Good mother is bad mother unto me!

A worse were better; yet no worse would I.

Heaven yield her for it, but in me put force

To weary her ears with one continuous prayer,

Until she let me fly discaged to sweep

In ever-highering eagle-circles up

To the great Sun of Glory, and thence swoop

Down upon all things base, and dash them dead,

A knight of Arthur, working out his will,

To cleanse the world. Why, Gawain, when he came

With Modred hither in the summertime,

Asked me to tilt with him, the proven knight.

Modred for want of worthier was the judge.

Then I so shook him in the saddle, he said,

“Thou hast half prevailed against me,” said so—he—

Though Modred biting his thin lips was mute,

For he is alway sullen: what care I?’

 

And Gareth went, and hovering round her chair

Asked, ‘Mother, though ye count me still the child,

Sweet mother, do ye love the child?’ She laughed,

‘Thou art but a wild-goose to question it.’

‘Then, mother, an ye love the child,’ he said,

‘Being a goose and rather tame than wild,

Hear the child’s story.’ ‘Yea, my well-beloved,

An ‘twere but of the goose and golden eggs.’

 

And Gareth answered her with kindling eyes,

‘Nay, nay, good mother, but this egg of mine

Was finer gold than any goose can lay;

For this an Eagle, a royal Eagle, laid

Almost beyond eye-reach, on such a palm

As glitters gilded in thy Book of Hours.

And there was ever haunting round the palm

A lusty youth, but poor, who often saw

The splendour sparkling from aloft, and thought

“An I could climb and lay my hand upon it,

Then were I wealthier than a leash of kings.”

But ever when he reached a hand to climb,

One, that had loved him from his childhood, caught

And stayed him, “Climb not lest thou break thy neck,

I charge thee by my love,” and so the boy,

Sweet mother, neither clomb, nor brake his neck,

But brake his very heart in pining for it,

And past away.’

 

To whom the mother said,

‘True love, sweet son, had risked himself and climbed,

And handed down the golden treasure to him.’

 

And Gareth answered her with kindling eyes,

‘Gold?’ said I gold?—ay then, why he, or she,

Or whosoe’er it was, or half the world

Had ventured—had the thing I spake of been

Mere gold—but this was all of that true steel,

Whereof they forged the brand Excalibur,

And lightnings played about it in the storm,

And all the little fowl were flurried at it,

And there were cries and clashings in the nest,

That sent him from his senses: let me go.’

 

Then Bellicent bemoaned herself and said,

‘Hast thou no pity upon my loneliness?

Lo, where thy father Lot beside the hearth

Lies like a log, and all but smouldered out!

For ever since when traitor to the King

He fought against him in the Barons’ war,

And Arthur gave him back his territory,

His age hath slowly droopt, and now lies there

A yet-warm corpse, and yet unburiable,

No more; nor sees, nor hears, nor speaks, nor knows.

And both thy brethren are in Arthur’s hall,

Albeit neither loved with that full love

I feel for thee, nor worthy such a love:

Stay therefore thou; red berries charm the bird,

And thee, mine innocent, the jousts, the wars,

Who never knewest finger-ache, nor pang

Of wrenched or broken limb—an often chance

In those brain-stunning shocks, and tourney-falls,

Frights to my heart; but stay: follow the deer

By these tall firs and our fast-falling burns;

So make thy manhood mightier day by day;

Sweet is the chase: and I will seek thee out

Some comfortable bride and fair, to grace

Thy climbing life, and cherish my prone year,

Till falling into Lot’s forgetfulness

I know not thee, myself, nor anything.

Stay, my best son! ye are yet more boy than man.’

 

Then Gareth, ‘An ye hold me yet for child,

Hear yet once more the story of the child.

For, mother, there was once a King, like ours.

The prince his heir, when tall and marriageable,

Asked for a bride; and thereupon the King

Set two before him. One was fair, strong, armed—

But to be won by force—and many men

Desired her; one good lack, no man desired.

And these were the conditions of the King:

That save he won the first by force, he needs

Must wed that other, whom no man desired,

A red-faced bride who knew herself so vile,

That evermore she longed to hide herself,

Nor fronted man or woman, eye to eye—

Yea—some she cleaved to, but they died of her.

And one—they called her Fame; and one,—O Mother,

How can ye keep me tethered to you—Shame.

Man am I grown, a man’s work must I do.

Follow the deer? follow the Christ, the King,

Live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the King—

Else, wherefore born?’

 

To whom the mother said

‘Sweet son, for there be many who deem him not,

Or will not deem him, wholly proven King—

Albeit in mine own heart I knew him King,

When I was frequent with him in my youth,

And heard him Kingly speak, and doubted him

No more than he, himself; but felt him mine,

Of closest kin to me: yet—wilt thou leave

Thine easeful biding here, and risk thine all,

Life, limbs, for one that is not proven King?

Stay, till the cloud that settles round his birth

Hath lifted but a little. Stay, sweet son.’

 

And Gareth answered quickly, ‘Not an hour,

So that ye yield me—I will walk through fire,

Mother, to gain it—your full leave to go.

Not proven, who swept the dust of ruined Rome

From off the threshold of the realm, and crushed

The Idolaters, and made the people free?

Who should be King save him who makes us free?’

 

So when the Queen, who long had sought in vain

To break him from the intent to which he grew,

Found her son’s will unwaveringly one,

She answered craftily, ‘Will ye walk through fire?

Who walks through fire will hardly heed the smoke.

Ay, go then, an ye must: only one proof,

Before thou ask the King to make thee knight,

Of thine obedience and thy love to me,

Thy mother,—I demand.

 

And Gareth cried,

‘A hard one, or a hundred, so I go.

Nay—quick! the proof to prove me to the quick!’

 

But slowly spake the mother looking at him,

‘Prince, thou shalt go disguised to Arthur’s hall,

And hire thyself to serve for meats and drinks

Among the scullions and the kitchen-knaves,

And those that hand the dish across the bar.

Nor shalt thou tell thy name to anyone.

And thou shalt serve a twelvemonth and a day.’

 

For so the Queen believed that when her son

Beheld his only way to glory lead

Low down through villain kitchen-vassalage,

Her own true Gareth was too princely-proud

To pass thereby; so should he rest with her,

Closed in her castle from the sound of arms.

 

Silent awhile was Gareth, then replied,

‘The thrall in person may be free in soul,

And I shall see the jousts. Thy son am I,

And since thou art my mother, must obey.

I therefore yield me freely to thy will;

For hence will I, disguised, and hire myself

To serve with scullions and with kitchen-knaves;

Nor tell my name to any—no, not the King.’

 

Gareth