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

the bridegroom will relent.

Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.

 

‘No light: so late! and dark and chill the night!

O let us in, that we may find the light!

Too late, too late: ye cannot enter now.

 

‘Have we not heard the bridegroom is so sweet?

O let us in, though late, to kiss his feet!

No, no, too late! ye cannot enter now.’

 

So sang the novice, while full passionately,

Her head upon her hands, remembering

Her thought when first she came, wept the sad Queen.

Then said the little novice prattling to her,

‘O pray you, noble lady, weep no more;

But let my words, the words of one so small,

Who knowing nothing knows but to obey,

And if I do not there is penance given—

Comfort your sorrows; for they do not flow

From evil done; right sure am I of that,

Who see your tender grace and stateliness.

But weigh your sorrows with our lord the King’s,

And weighing find them less; for gone is he

To wage grim war against Sir Lancelot there,

Round that strong castle where he holds the Queen;

And Modred whom he left in charge of all,

The traitor—Ah sweet lady, the King’s grief

For his own self, and his own Queen, and realm,

Must needs be thrice as great as any of ours.

For me, I thank the saints, I am not great.

For if there ever come a grief to me

I cry my cry in silence, and have done.

None knows it, and my tears have brought me good:

But even were the griefs of little ones

As great as those of great ones, yet this grief

Is added to the griefs the great must bear,

That howsoever much they may desire

Silence, they cannot weep behind a cloud:

As even here they talk at Almesbury

About the good King and his wicked Queen,

And were I such a King with such a Queen,

Well might I wish to veil her wickedness,

But were I such a King, it could not be.’

 

Then to her own sad heart muttered the Queen,

‘Will the child kill me with her innocent talk?’

But openly she answered, ‘Must not I,

If this false traitor have displaced his lord,

Grieve with the common grief of all the realm?’

 

‘Yea,’ said the maid, ‘this is all woman’s grief,

That she is woman, whose disloyal life

Hath wrought confusion in the Table Round

Which good King Arthur founded, years ago,

With signs and miracles and wonders, there

At Camelot, ere the coming of the Queen.’

 

Then thought the Queen within herself again,

‘Will the child kill me with her foolish prate?’

But openly she spake and said to her,

‘O little maid, shut in by nunnery walls,

What canst thou know of Kings and Tables Round,

Or what of signs and wonders, but the signs

And simple miracles of thy nunnery?’

 

To whom the little novice garrulously,

‘Yea, but I know: the land was full of signs

And wonders ere the coming of the Queen.

So said my father, and himself was knight

Of the great Table—at the founding of it;

And rode thereto from Lyonnesse, and he said

That as he rode, an hour or maybe twain

After the sunset, down the coast, he heard

Strange music, and he paused, and turning—there,

All down the lonely coast of Lyonnesse,

Each with a beacon-star upon his head,

And with a wild sea-light about his feet,

He saw them—headland after headland flame

Far on into the rich heart of the west:

And in the light the white mermaiden swam,

And strong man-breasted things stood from the sea,

And sent a deep sea-voice through all the land,

To which the little elves of chasm and cleft

Made answer, sounding like a distant horn.

So said my father—yea, and furthermore,

Next morning, while he past the dim-lit woods,

Himself beheld three spirits mad with joy

Come dashing down on a tall wayside flower,

That shook beneath them, as the thistle shakes

When three gray linnets wrangle for the seed:

And still at evenings on before his horse

The flickering fairy-circle wheeled and broke

Flying, and linked again, and wheeled and broke

Flying, for all the land was full of life.

And when at last he came to Camelot,

A wreath of airy dancers hand-in-hand

Swung round the lighted lantern of the hall;

And in the hall itself was such a feast

As never man had dreamed; for every knight

Had whatsoever meat he longed for served

By hands unseen; and even as he said

Down in the cellars merry bloated things

Shouldered the spigot, straddling on the butts

While the wine ran: so glad were spirits and men

Before the coming of the sinful Queen.’

 

Then spake the Queen and somewhat bitterly,

‘Were they so glad? ill prophets were they all,

Spirits and men: could none of them foresee,

Not even thy wise father with his signs

And wonders, what has fallen upon the realm?’

 

To whom the novice garrulously again,

‘Yea, one, a bard; of whom my father said,

Full many a noble war-song had he sung,

Even in the presence of an enemy’s fleet,

Between the steep cliff and the coming wave;

And many a mystic lay of life and death

Had chanted on the smoky mountain-tops,

When round him bent the spirits of the hills

With all their dewy hair blown back like flame:

So said my father—and that night the bard

Sang Arthur’s glorious wars, and sang the King

As wellnigh more than man, and railed at those

Who called him the false son of Gorlois:

For there was no man knew from whence he came;

But after tempest, when the long wave broke

All down the thundering shores of Bude and Bos,

There came a day as still as heaven, and then

They found a naked child upon the sands

Of dark Tintagil by the Cornish sea;

And that was Arthur; and they fostered him

Till he by miracle was approven King:

And that his grave should be a mystery

From all men, like his birth; and could he find

A woman in her womanhood as great

As he was in his manhood, then, he sang,

The twain together well might change the world.

But even in the middle of his song

He faltered, and his hand fell from the harp,

And pale he turned, and reeled, and would have fallen,

But that they stayed him up; nor would he tell

His vision; but what doubt that he foresaw

This evil work of Lancelot and the Queen?’

 

Then thought the Queen, ‘Lo! they have set her on,

Our simple-seeming Abbess and her nuns,

To play upon me,’ and bowed her head nor spake.

Whereat the novice crying, with clasped hands,

Shame on her own garrulity garrulously,

Said the good nuns would check her gadding tongue

Full often, ‘and, sweet lady, if I seem

To vex an ear too sad to listen to me,

Unmannerly, with prattling and the tales

Which my good father told me, check me too

Nor let me shame my father’s memory, one

Of noblest manners, though himself would say

Sir Lancelot had the noblest; and he died,

Killed in a tilt, come next, five summers back,

And left me; but of others who remain,

And of the two first-famed for courtesy—

And pray you check me if I ask amiss-But pray you, which had noblest, while you moved

Among them, Lancelot or our lord the King?’

 

Then the pale Queen looked up and answered her,

‘Sir Lancelot, as became a noble knight,

Was gracious to all ladies, and the same

In open battle or the tilting-field

Forbore his own advantage, and the King

In open battle or the tilting-field

Forbore his own advantage, and these two

Were the most nobly-mannered men of all;

For manners are not idle, but the fruit

Of loyal nature, and of noble mind.’

 

‘Yea,’ said the maid, ‘be manners such fair fruit?’

Then Lancelot’s needs must be a thousand-fold

Less noble, being, as all rumour runs,

The most disloyal friend in all the world.’

 

To which a mournful answer made the Queen:

‘O closed about by narrowing nunnery-walls,

What knowest thou of the world, and all its lights

And shadows, all the wealth and all the woe?

If ever Lancelot, that most noble knight,

Were for one hour less noble than himself,

Pray for him that he scape the doom of fire,

And weep for her that drew him to his doom.’

 

‘Yea,’ said the little novice, ‘I pray for both;

But I should all as soon believe that his,

Sir Lancelot’s, were as noble as the King’s,

As I could think, sweet lady, yours would be

Such as they are, were you the sinful Queen.’

 

So she, like many another babbler, hurt

Whom she would soothe, and harmed where she would heal;

For here a sudden flush of wrathful heat

Fired all the pale face of the Queen, who cried,

‘Such as thou art be never maiden more

For ever! thou their tool, set on to plague

And play upon, and harry me, petty spy

And traitress.’ When that storm of anger brake

From Guinevere, aghast the maiden rose,

White as her veil, and stood before the Queen

As tremulously as foam upon the beach

Stands in a wind, ready to break and fly,

And when the Queen had added ‘Get thee hence,’

Fled frighted. Then that other left alone

Sighed, and began to gather heart again,

Saying in herself, ‘The simple, fearful child

Meant nothing, but my own too-fearful guilt,

Simpler than any child, betrays itself.

But help me, heaven, for surely I repent.

For what is true repentance but in thought—

Not even in inmost thought to think again

The sins that made the past so pleasant to us:

And I have sworn never to see him more,

To see him more.’

 

And even in saying this,

Her memory from old habit of the mind

Went slipping back upon the golden days

In which she saw him first, when Lancelot came,

Reputed the best knight and goodliest man,

Ambassador, to lead her to his lord

Arthur, and led her forth, and far ahead

Of his and her retinue moving, they,

Rapt in sweet talk or lively, all on love

And sport and tilts and pleasure, (for the time

Was maytime, and as yet no sin was dreamed,)

Rode under groves that looked a paradise

Of blossom, over sheets of hyacinth

That seemed the heavens upbreaking through the earth,

And on from hill to hill, and every day

Beheld at noon in some delicious dale

The silk pavilions of King Arthur raised

For brief repast or afternoon repose

By couriers gone before; and on again,

Till yet once more ere set of sun they saw

The Dragon of the great Pendragonship,

That crowned the state pavilion of the King,

Blaze by the rushing brook or silent well.

 

But when the Queen immersed in such a trance,

And moving through the past unconsciously,

Came to that point where first she saw the King

Ride toward her from the city, sighed to find

Her journey done, glanced at him, thought him cold,

High, self-contained, and passionless, not like him,

‘Not like my Lancelot’—while she brooded thus

And grew half-guilty in her thoughts again,

There rode an armed warrior to the doors.

A murmuring whisper through the nunnery ran,

Then on a sudden a cry, ‘The King.’ She sat

Stiff-stricken, listening; but when armed feet

Through the long gallery from the outer doors

Rang coming, prone from off her seat she fell,

And grovelled with her face against the floor:

There with her milkwhite arms and shadowy hair

She made her face a darkness from the King:

And in the darkness heard his