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

armed feet

Pause by her; then came silence, then a voice,

Monotonous and hollow like a Ghost’s

Denouncing judgment, but though changed, the King’s:

 

‘Liest thou here so low, the child of one

I honoured, happy, dead before thy shame?

Well is it that no child is born of thee.

The children born of thee are sword and fire,

Red ruin, and the breaking up of laws,

The craft of kindred and the Godless hosts

Of heathen swarming o’er the Northern Sea;

Whom I, while yet Sir Lancelot, my right arm,

The mightiest of my knights, abode with me,

Have everywhere about this land of Christ

In twelve great battles ruining overthrown.

And knowest thou now from whence I come—from him

From waging bitter war with him: and he,

That did not shun to smite me in worse way,

Had yet that grace of courtesy in him left,

He spared to lift his hand against the King

Who made him knight: but many a knight was slain;

And many more, and all his kith and kin

Clave to him, and abode in his own land.

And many more when Modred raised revolt,

Forgetful of their troth and fealty, clave

To Modred, and a remnant stays with me.

And of this remnant will I leave a part,

True men who love me still, for whom I live,

To guard thee in the wild hour coming on,

Lest but a hair of this low head be harmed.

Fear not: thou shalt be guarded till my death.

Howbeit I know, if ancient prophecies

Have erred not, that I march to meet my doom.

Thou hast not made my life so sweet to me,

That I the King should greatly care to live;

For thou hast spoilt the purpose of my life.

Bear with me for the last time while I show,

Even for thy sake, the sin which thou hast sinned.

For when the Roman left us, and their law

Relaxed its hold upon us, and the ways

Were filled with rapine, here and there a deed

Of prowess done redressed a random wrong.

But I was first of all the kings who drew

The knighthood-errant of this realm and all

The realms together under me, their Head,

In that fair Order of my Table Round,

A glorious company, the flower of men,

To serve as model for the mighty world,

And be the fair beginning of a time.

I made them lay their hands in mine and swear

To reverence the King, as if he were

Their conscience, and their conscience as their King,

To break the heathen and uphold the Christ,

To ride abroad redressing human wrongs,

To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it,

To honour his own word as if his God’s,

To lead sweet lives in purest chastity,

To love one maiden only, cleave to her,

And worship her by years of noble deeds,

Until they won her; for indeed I knew

Of no more subtle master under heaven

Than is the maiden passion for a maid,

Not only to keep down the base in man,

But teach high thought, and amiable words

And courtliness, and the desire of fame,

And love of truth, and all that makes a man.

And all this throve before I wedded thee,

Believing, “lo mine helpmate, one to feel

My purpose and rejoicing in my joy.”

Then came thy shameful sin with Lancelot;

Then came the sin of Tristram and Isolt;

Then others, following these my mightiest knights,

And drawing foul ensample from fair names,

Sinned also, till the loathsome opposite

Of all my heart had destined did obtain,

And all through thee! so that this life of mine

I guard as God’s high gift from scathe and wrong,

Not greatly care to lose; but rather think

How sad it were for Arthur, should he live,

To sit once more within his lonely hall,

And miss the wonted number of my knights,

And miss to hear high talk of noble deeds

As in the golden days before thy sin.

For which of us, who might be left, could speak

Of the pure heart, nor seem to glance at thee?

And in thy bowers of Camelot or of Usk

Thy shadow still would glide from room to room,

And I should evermore be vext with thee

In hanging robe or vacant ornament,

Or ghostly footfall echoing on the stair.

For think not, though thou wouldst not love thy lord,

Thy lord hast wholly lost his love for thee.

I am not made of so slight elements.

Yet must I leave thee, woman, to thy shame.

I hold that man the worst of public foes

Who either for his own or children’s sake,

To save his blood from scandal, lets the wife

Whom he knows false, abide and rule the house:

For being through his cowardice allowed

Her station, taken everywhere for pure,

She like a new disease, unknown to men,

Creeps, no precaution used, among the crowd,

Makes wicked lightnings of her eyes, and saps

The fealty of our friends, and stirs the pulse

With devil’s leaps, and poisons half the young.

Worst of the worst were that man he that reigns!

Better the King’s waste hearth and aching heart

Than thou reseated in thy place of light,

The mockery of my people, and their bane.’

 

He paused, and in the pause she crept an inch

Nearer, and laid her hands about his feet.

Far off a solitary trumpet blew.

Then waiting by the doors the warhorse neighed

At a friend’s voice, and he spake again:

 

‘Yet think not that I come to urge thy crimes,

I did not come to curse thee, Guinevere,

I, whose vast pity almost makes me die

To see thee, laying there thy golden head,

My pride in happier summers, at my feet.

The wrath which forced my thoughts on that fierce law,

The doom of treason and the flaming death,

(When first I learnt thee hidden here) is past.

The pang—which while I weighed thy heart with one

Too wholly true to dream untruth in thee,

Made my tears burn—is also past—in part.

And all is past, the sin is sinned, and I,

Lo! I forgive thee, as Eternal God

Forgives: do thou for thine own soul the rest.

But how to take last leave of all I loved?

O golden hair, with which I used to play

Not knowing! O imperial-moulded form,

And beauty such as never woman wore,

Until it became a kingdom’s curse with thee—

I cannot touch thy lips, they are not mine,

But Lancelot’s: nay, they never were the King’s.

I cannot take thy hand: that too is flesh,

And in the flesh thou hast sinned; and mine own flesh,

Here looking down on thine polluted, cries

“I loathe thee:” yet not less, O Guinevere,

For I was ever virgin save for thee,

My love through flesh hath wrought into my life

So far, that my doom is, I love thee still.

Let no man dream but that I love thee still.

Perchance, and so thou purify thy soul,

And so thou lean on our fair father Christ,

Hereafter in that world where all are pure

We two may meet before high God, and thou

Wilt spring to me, and claim me thine, and know

I am thine husband—not a smaller soul,

Nor Lancelot, nor another. Leave me that,

I charge thee, my last hope. Now must I hence.

Through the thick night I hear the trumpet blow:

They summon me their King to lead mine hosts

Far down to that great battle in the west,

Where I must strike against the man they call

My sister’s son—no kin of mine, who leagues

With Lords of the White Horse, heathen, and knights,

Traitors—and strike him dead, and meet myself

Death, or I know not what mysterious doom.

And thou remaining here wilt learn the event;

But hither shall I never come again,

Never lie by thy side; see thee no more—

Farewell!’

 

And while she grovelled at his feet,

She felt the King’s breath wander o’er her neck,

And in the darkness o’er her fallen head,

Perceived the waving of his hands that blest.

 

Then, listening till those armed steps were gone,

Rose the pale Queen, and in her anguish found

The casement: ‘peradventure,’ so she thought,

‘If I might see his face, and not be seen.’

And lo, he sat on horseback at the door!

And near him the sad nuns with each a light

Stood, and he gave them charge about the Queen,

To guard and foster her for evermore.

And while he spake to these his helm was lowered,

To which for crest the golden dragon clung

Of Britain; so she did not see the face,

Which then was as an angel’s, but she saw,

Wet with the mists and smitten by the lights,

The Dragon of the great Pendragonship

Blaze, making all the night a steam of fire.

And even then he turned; and more and more

The moony vapour rolling round the King,

Who seemed the phantom of a Giant in it,

Enwound him fold by fold, and made him gray

And grayer, till himself became as mist

Before her, moving ghostlike to his doom.

 

Then she stretched out her arms and cried aloud

‘Oh Arthur!’ there her voice brake suddenly,

Then—as a stream that spouting from a cliff

Fails in mid air, but gathering at the base

Re-makes itself, and flashes down the vale—

Went on in passionate utterance:

 

‘Gone—my lord!

Gone through my sin to slay and to be slain!

And he forgave me, and I could not speak.

Farewell? I should have answered his farewell.

His mercy choked me. Gone, my lord the King,

My own true lord! how dare I call him mine?

The shadow of another cleaves to me,

And makes me one pollution: he, the King,

Called me polluted: shall I kill myself?

What help in that? I cannot kill my sin,

If soul be soul; nor can I kill my shame;

No, nor by living can I live it down.

The days will grow to weeks, the weeks to months

The months will add themselves and make the years,

The years will roll into the centuries,

And mine will ever be a name of scorn.

I must not dwell on that defeat of fame.

Let the world be; that is but of the world.

What else? what hope? I think there was a hope,

Except he mocked me when he spake of hope;

His hope he called it; but he never mocks,

For mockery is the fume of little hearts.

And blessed be the King, who hath forgiven

My wickedness to him, and left me hope

That in mine own heart I can live down sin

And be his mate hereafter in the heavens

Before high God. Ah great and gentle lord,

Who wast, as is the conscience of a saint

Among his warring senses, to thy knights—

To whom my false voluptuous pride, that took

Full easily all impressions from below,

Would not look up, or half-despised the height

To which I would not or I could not climb—

I thought I could not breathe in that fine air

That pure severity of perfect light—

I yearned for warmth and colour which I found

In Lancelot—now I see thee what thou art,

Thou art the highest and most human too,

Not Lancelot, nor another. Is there none

Will tell the King I love him though so late?

Now—ere he goes to the great Battle? none:

Myself must tell him in that purer life,

But now it were too daring. Ah my God,

What might I not have made of thy fair world,

Had I but loved thy highest creature here?

It was my duty to have loved the highest:

It surely was my profit had I known:

It would have been