Idylls of the King by Alfred Lord Tennyson (best books to read for self development txt) 📕

Queen’s fantasy. Strength of heart

And might of limb, but mainly use and skill,

Are winners in this pastime of our King.

My hand—belike the lance hath dript upon it—

No blood of mine, I trow; but O chief knight,

Right arm of Arthur in the battlefield,

Great brother, thou nor I have made the world;

Be happy in thy fair Queen as I in mine.’

 

And Tristram round the gallery made his horse

Caracole; then bowed his homage, bluntly saying,

‘Fair damsels, each to him who worships each

Sole Queen of Beauty and of love, behold

This day my Queen of Beauty is not here.’

And most of these were mute, some angered, one

Murmuring, ‘All courtesy is dead,’ and one,

‘The glory of our Round Table is no more.’

 

Then fell thick rain, plume droopt and mantle clung,

And pettish cries awoke, and the wan day

Went glooming down in wet and weariness:

But under her black brows a swarthy one

Laughed shrilly, crying, ‘Praise the patient saints,

Our one white day of Innocence hath past,

Though somewhat draggled at the skirt. So be it.

The snowdrop only, flowering through the year,

Would make the world as blank as Winter-tide.

Come—let us gladden their sad eyes, our Queen’s

And Lancelot’s, at this night’s solemnity

With all the kindlier colours of the field.’

 

So dame and damsel glittered at the feast

Variously gay: for he that tells the tale

Likened them, saying, as when an hour of cold

Falls on the mountain in midsummer snows,

And all the purple slopes of mountain flowers

Pass under white, till the warm hour returns

With veer of wind, and all are flowers again;

So dame and damsel cast the simple white,

And glowing in all colours, the live grass,

Rose-campion, bluebell, kingcup, poppy, glanced

About the revels, and with mirth so loud

Beyond all use, that, half-amazed, the Queen,

And wroth at Tristram and the lawless jousts,

Brake up their sports, then slowly to her bower

Parted, and in her bosom pain was lord.

 

And little Dagonet on the morrow morn,

High over all the yellowing Autumn-tide,

Danced like a withered leaf before the hall.

Then Tristram saying, ‘Why skip ye so, Sir Fool?’

Wheeled round on either heel, Dagonet replied,

‘Belike for lack of wiser company;

Or being fool, and seeing too much wit

Makes the world rotten, why, belike I skip

To know myself the wisest knight of all.’

‘Ay, fool,’ said Tristram, ‘but ‘tis eating dry

To dance without a catch, a roundelay

To dance to.’ Then he twangled on his harp,

And while he twangled little Dagonet stood

Quiet as any water-sodden log

Stayed in the wandering warble of a brook;

But when the twangling ended, skipt again;

And being asked, ‘Why skipt ye not, Sir Fool?’

Made answer, ‘I had liefer twenty years

Skip to the broken music of my brains

Than any broken music thou canst make.’

Then Tristram, waiting for the quip to come,

‘Good now, what music have I broken, fool?’

And little Dagonet, skipping, ‘Arthur, the King’s;

For when thou playest that air with Queen Isolt,

Thou makest broken music with thy bride,

Her daintier namesake down in Brittany—

And so thou breakest Arthur’s music too.’

‘Save for that broken music in thy brains,

Sir Fool,’ said Tristram, ‘I would break thy head.

Fool, I came too late, the heathen wars were o’er,

The life had flown, we sware but by the shell—

I am but a fool to reason with a fool—

Come, thou art crabbed and sour: but lean me down,

Sir Dagonet, one of thy long asses’ ears,

And harken if my music be not true.

 

‘“Free love—free field—we love but while we may:

The woods are hushed, their music is no more:

The leaf is dead, the yearning past away:

New leaf, new life—the days of frost are o’er:

New life, new love, to suit the newer day:

New loves are sweet as those that went before:

Free love—free field—we love but while we may.”

 

‘Ye might have moved slow-measure to my tune,

Not stood stockstill. I made it in the woods,

And heard it ring as true as tested gold.’

 

But Dagonet with one foot poised in his hand,

‘Friend, did ye mark that fountain yesterday

Made to run wine?—but this had run itself

All out like a long life to a sour end—

And them that round it sat with golden cups

To hand the wine to whosoever came—

The twelve small damosels white as Innocence,

In honour of poor Innocence the babe,

Who left the gems which Innocence the Queen

Lent to the King, and Innocence the King

Gave for a prize—and one of those white slips

Handed her cup and piped, the pretty one,

“Drink, drink, Sir Fool,” and thereupon I drank,

Spat—pish—the cup was gold, the draught was mud.’

 

And Tristram, ‘Was it muddier than thy gibes?

Is all the laughter gone dead out of thee?—

Not marking how the knighthood mock thee, fool—

“Fear God: honour the King—his one true knight—

Sole follower of the vows”—for here be they

Who knew thee swine enow before I came,

Smuttier than blasted grain: but when the King

Had made thee fool, thy vanity so shot up

It frighted all free fool from out thy heart;

Which left thee less than fool, and less than swine,

A naked aught—yet swine I hold thee still,

For I have flung thee pearls and find thee swine.’

 

And little Dagonet mincing with his feet,

‘Knight, an ye fling those rubies round my neck

In lieu of hers, I’ll hold thou hast some touch

Of music, since I care not for thy pearls.

Swine? I have wallowed, I have washed—the world

Is flesh and shadow—I have had my day.

The dirty nurse, Experience, in her kind

Hath fouled me—an I wallowed, then I washed—

I have had my day and my philosophies—

And thank the Lord I am King Arthur’s fool.

Swine, say ye? swine, goats, asses, rams and geese

Trooped round a Paynim harper once, who thrummed

On such a wire as musically as thou

Some such fine song—but never a king’s fool.’

 

And Tristram, ‘Then were swine, goats, asses, geese

The wiser fools, seeing thy Paynim bard

Had such a mastery of his mystery

That he could harp his wife up out of hell.’

 

Then Dagonet, turning on the ball of his foot,

‘And whither harp’st thou thine? down! and thyself

Down! and two more: a helpful harper thou,

That harpest downward! Dost thou know the star

We call the harp of Arthur up in heaven?’

 

And Tristram, ‘Ay, Sir Fool, for when our King

Was victor wellnigh day by day, the knights,

Glorying in each new glory, set his name

High on all hills, and in the signs of heaven.’

 

And Dagonet answered, ‘Ay, and when the land

Was freed, and the Queen false, ye set yourself

To babble about him, all to show your wit—

And whether he were King by courtesy,

Or King by right—and so went harping down

The black king’s highway, got so far, and grew

So witty that ye played at ducks and drakes

With Arthur’s vows on the great lake of fire.

Tuwhoo! do ye see it? do ye see the star?’

 

‘Nay, fool,’ said Tristram, ‘not in open day.’

And Dagonet, ‘Nay, nor will: I see it and hear.

It makes a silent music up in heaven,

And I, and Arthur and the angels hear,

And then we skip.’ ‘Lo, fool,’ he said, ‘ye talk

Fool’s treason: is the King thy brother fool?’

Then little Dagonet clapt his hands and shrilled,

‘Ay, ay, my brother fool, the king of fools!

Conceits himself as God that he can make

Figs out of thistles, silk from bristles, milk

From burning spurge, honey from hornet-combs,

And men from beasts—Long live the king of fools!’

 

And down the city Dagonet danced away;

But through the slowly-mellowing avenues

And solitary passes of the wood

Rode Tristram toward Lyonnesse and the west.

Before him fled the face of Queen Isolt

With ruby-circled neck, but evermore

Past, as a rustle or twitter in the wood

Made dull his inner, keen his outer eye

For all that walked, or crept, or perched, or flew.

Anon the face, as, when a gust hath blown,

Unruffling waters re-collect the shape

Of one that in them sees himself, returned;

But at the slot or fewmets of a deer,

Or even a fallen feather, vanished again.

 

So on for all that day from lawn to lawn

Through many a league-long bower he rode. At length

A lodge of intertwisted beechen-boughs

Furze-crammed, and bracken-rooft, the which himself

Built for a summer day with Queen Isolt

Against a shower, dark in the golden grove

Appearing, sent his fancy back to where

She lived a moon in that low lodge with him:

Till Mark her lord had past, the Cornish King,

With six or seven, when Tristram was away,

And snatched her thence; yet dreading worse than shame

Her warrior Tristram, spake not any word,

But bode his hour, devising wretchedness.

 

And now that desert lodge to Tristram lookt

So sweet, that halting, in he past, and sank

Down on a drift of foliage random-blown;

But could not rest for musing how to smoothe

And sleek his marriage over to the Queen.

Perchance in lone Tintagil far from all

The tonguesters of the court she had not heard.

But then what folly had sent him overseas

After she left him lonely here? a name?

Was it the name of one in Brittany,

Isolt, the daughter of the King? ‘Isolt

Of the white hands’ they called her: the sweet name

Allured him first, and then the maid herself,

Who served him well with those white hands of hers,

And loved him well, until himself had thought

He loved her also, wedded easily,

But left her all as easily, and returned.

The black-blue Irish hair and Irish eyes

Had drawn him home—what marvel? then he laid

His brows upon the drifted leaf and dreamed.

 

He seemed to pace the strand of Brittany

Between Isolt of Britain and his bride,

And showed them both the ruby-chain, and both

Began to struggle for it, till his Queen

Graspt it so hard, that all her hand was red.

Then cried the Breton, ‘Look, her hand is red!

These be no rubies, this is frozen blood,

And melts within her hand—her hand is hot

With ill desires, but this I gave thee, look,

Is all as cool and white as any flower.’

Followed a rush of eagle’s wings, and then

A whimpering of the spirit of the child,

Because the twain had spoiled her carcanet.

 

He dreamed; but Arthur with a hundred spears

Rode far, till o’er the illimitable reed,

And many a glancing plash and sallowy isle,

The wide-winged sunset of the misty marsh

Glared on a huge machicolated tower

That stood with open doors, whereout was rolled

A roar of riot, as from men secure

Amid their marshes, ruffians at their ease

Among their harlot-brides, an evil song.

‘Lo there,’ said one of Arthur’s youth, for there,

High on a grim dead tree before the tower,

A goodly brother of the Table Round

Swung by the neck: and on the boughs a shield

Showing a shower of blood in a field noir,

And therebeside a horn, inflamed the knights

At that dishonour done the gilded spur,

Till each would clash the shield, and blow the horn.

But Arthur waved them back. Alone he rode.

Then at the dry harsh roar of the great horn,

That sent the face of all the marsh aloft

An ever upward-rushing storm and cloud

Of shriek and plume, the Red Knight heard, and all,

Even to tipmost lance and topmost helm,

In blood-red armour sallying,