Idylls of the King by Alfred Lord Tennyson (best feel good books txt) 📖

Only this

Grant me, I pray you: have your joys apart.

I doubt not that however changed, you keep

So much of what is graceful: and myself

Would shun to break those bounds of courtesy

In which as Arthur’s Queen I move and rule:

So cannot speak my mind. An end to this!

A strange one! yet I take it with Amen.

So pray you, add my diamonds to her pearls;

Deck her with these; tell her, she shines me down:

An armlet for an arm to which the Queen’s

Is haggard, or a necklace for a neck

O as much fairer—as a faith once fair

Was richer than these diamonds—hers not mine—

Nay, by the mother of our Lord himself,

Or hers or mine, mine now to work my will—

She shall not have them.’

 

Saying which she seized,

And, through the casement standing wide for heat,

Flung them, and down they flashed, and smote the stream.

Then from the smitten surface flashed, as it were,

Diamonds to meet them, and they past away.

Then while Sir Lancelot leant, in half disdain

At love, life, all things, on the window ledge,

Close underneath his eyes, and right across

Where these had fallen, slowly past the barge.

Whereon the lily maid of Astolat

Lay smiling, like a star in blackest night.

 

But the wild Queen, who saw not, burst away

To weep and wail in secret; and the barge,

On to the palace-doorway sliding, paused.

There two stood armed, and kept the door; to whom,

All up the marble stair, tier over tier,

Were added mouths that gaped, and eyes that asked

‘What is it?’ but that oarsman’s haggard face,

As hard and still as is the face that men

Shape to their fancy’s eye from broken rocks

On some cliff-side, appalled them, and they said

‘He is enchanted, cannot speak—and she,

Look how she sleeps—the Fairy Queen, so fair!

Yea, but how pale! what are they? flesh and blood?

Or come to take the King to Fairyland?

For some do hold our Arthur cannot die,

But that he passes into Fairyland.’

 

While thus they babbled of the King, the King

Came girt with knights: then turned the tongueless man

From the half-face to the full eye, and rose

And pointed to the damsel, and the doors.

So Arthur bad the meek Sir Percivale

And pure Sir Galahad to uplift the maid;

And reverently they bore her into hall.

Then came the fine Gawain and wondered at her,

And Lancelot later came and mused at her,

And last the Queen herself, and pitied her:

But Arthur spied the letter in her hand,

Stoopt, took, brake seal, and read it; this was all:

 

‘Most noble lord, Sir Lancelot of the Lake,

I, sometime called the maid of Astolat,

Come, for you left me taking no farewell,

Hither, to take my last farewell of you.

I loved you, and my love had no return,

And therefore my true love has been my death.

And therefore to our Lady Guinevere,

And to all other ladies, I make moan:

Pray for my soul, and yield me burial.

Pray for my soul thou too, Sir Lancelot,

As thou art a knight peerless.’

 

Thus he read;

And ever in the reading, lords and dames

Wept, looking often from his face who read

To hers which lay so silent, and at times,

So touched were they, half-thinking that her lips,

Who had devised the letter, moved again.

 

Then freely spoke Sir Lancelot to them all:

‘My lord liege Arthur, and all ye that hear,

Know that for this most gentle maiden’s death

Right heavy am I; for good she was and true,

But loved me with a love beyond all love

In women, whomsoever I have known.

Yet to be loved makes not to love again;

Not at my years, however it hold in youth.

I swear by truth and knighthood that I gave

No cause, not willingly, for such a love:

To this I call my friends in testimony,

Her brethren, and her father, who himself

Besought me to be plain and blunt, and use,

To break her passion, some discourtesy

Against my nature: what I could, I did.

I left her and I bad her no farewell;

Though, had I dreamt the damsel would have died,

I might have put my wits to some rough use,

And helped her from herself.’

 

Then said the Queen

(Sea was her wrath, yet working after storm)

‘Ye might at least have done her so much grace,

Fair lord, as would have helped her from her death.’

He raised his head, their eyes met and hers fell,

He adding,

‘Queen, she would not be content

Save that I wedded her, which could not be.

Then might she follow me through the world, she asked;

It could not be. I told her that her love

Was but the flash of youth, would darken down

To rise hereafter in a stiller flame

Toward one more worthy of her—then would I,

More specially were he, she wedded, poor,

Estate them with large land and territory

In mine own realm beyond the narrow seas,

To keep them in all joyance: more than this

I could not; this she would not, and she died.’

 

He pausing, Arthur answered, ‘O my knight,

It will be to thy worship, as my knight,

And mine, as head of all our Table Round,

To see that she be buried worshipfully.’

 

So toward that shrine which then in all the realm

Was richest, Arthur leading, slowly went

The marshalled Order of their Table Round,

And Lancelot sad beyond his wont, to see

The maiden buried, not as one unknown,

Nor meanly, but with gorgeous obsequies,

And mass, and rolling music, like a queen.

And when the knights had laid her comely head

Low in the dust of half-forgotten kings,

Then Arthur spake among them, ‘Let her tomb

Be costly, and her image thereupon,

And let the shield of Lancelot at her feet

Be carven, and her lily in her hand.

And let the story of her dolorous voyage

For all true hearts be blazoned on her tomb

In letters gold and azure!’ which was wrought

Thereafter; but when now the lords and dames

And people, from the high door streaming, brake

Disorderly, as homeward each, the Queen,

Who marked Sir Lancelot where he moved apart,

Drew near, and sighed in passing, ‘Lancelot,

Forgive me; mine was jealousy in love.’

He answered with his eyes upon the ground,

‘That is love’s curse; pass on, my Queen, forgiven.’

But Arthur, who beheld his cloudy brows,

Approached him, and with full affection said,

 

‘Lancelot, my Lancelot, thou in whom I have

Most joy and most affiance, for I know

What thou hast been in battle by my side,

And many a time have watched thee at the tilt

Strike down the lusty and long practised knight,

And let the younger and unskilled go by

To win his honour and to make his name,

And loved thy courtesies and thee, a man

Made to be loved; but now I would to God,

Seeing the homeless trouble in thine eyes,

Thou couldst have loved this maiden, shaped, it seems,

By God for thee alone, and from her face,

If one may judge the living by the dead,

Delicately pure and marvellously fair,

Who might have brought thee, now a lonely man

Wifeless and heirless, noble issue, sons

Born to the glory of thine name and fame,

My knight, the great Sir Lancelot of the Lake.’

 

Then answered Lancelot, ‘Fair she was, my King,

Pure, as you ever wish your knights to be.

To doubt her fairness were to want an eye,

To doubt her pureness were to want a heart—

Yea, to be loved, if what is worthy love

Could bind him, but free love will not be bound.’

 

‘Free love, so bound, were freest,’ said the King.

‘Let love be free; free love is for the best:

And, after heaven, on our dull side of death,

What should be best, if not so pure a love

Clothed in so pure a loveliness? yet thee

She failed to bind, though being, as I think,

Unbound as yet, and gentle, as I know.’

 

And Lancelot answered nothing, but he went,

And at the inrunning of a little brook

Sat by the river in a cove, and watched

The high reed wave, and lifted up his eyes

And saw the barge that brought her moving down,

Far-off, a blot upon the stream, and said

Low in himself, ‘Ah simple heart and sweet,

Ye loved me, damsel, surely with a love

Far tenderer than my Queen’s. Pray for thy soul?

Ay, that will I. Farewell too—now at last—

Farewell, fair lily. “Jealousy in love?”

Not rather dead love’s harsh heir, jealous pride?

Queen, if I grant the jealousy as of love,

May not your crescent fear for name and fame

Speak, as it waxes, of a love that wanes?

Why did the King dwell on my name to me?

Mine own name shames me, seeming a reproach,

Lancelot, whom the Lady of the Lake

Caught from his mother’s arms—the wondrous one

Who passes through the vision of the night—

She chanted snatches of mysterious hymns

Heard on the winding waters, eve and morn

She kissed me saying, “Thou art fair, my child,

As a king’s son,” and often in her arms

She bare me, pacing on the dusky mere.

Would she had drowned me in it, where’er it be!

For what am I? what profits me my name

Of greatest knight? I fought for it, and have it:

Pleasure to have it, none; to lose it, pain;

Now grown a part of me: but what use in it?

To make men worse by making my sin known?

Or sin seem less, the sinner seeming great?

Alas for Arthur’s greatest knight, a man

Not after Arthur’s heart! I needs must break

These bonds that so defame me: not without

She wills it: would I, if she willed it? nay,

Who knows? but if I would not, then may God,

I pray him, send a sudden Angel down

To seize me by the hair and bear me far,

And fling me deep in that forgotten mere,

Among the tumbled fragments of the hills.’

 

So groaned Sir Lancelot in remorseful pain,

Not knowing he should die a holy man.

 

The Holy Grail

 

From noiseful arms, and acts of prowess done

In tournament or tilt, Sir Percivale,

Whom Arthur and his knighthood called The Pure,

Had passed into the silent life of prayer,

Praise, fast, and alms; and leaving for the cowl

The helmet in an abbey far away

From Camelot, there, and not long after, died.

 

And one, a fellow-monk among the rest,

Ambrosius, loved him much beyond the rest,

And honoured him, and wrought into his heart

A way by love that wakened love within,

To answer that which came: and as they sat

Beneath a world-old yew-tree, darkening half

The cloisters, on a gustful April morn

That puffed the swaying branches into smoke

Above them, ere the summer when he died

The monk Ambrosius questioned Percivale:

 

‘O brother, I have seen this yew-tree smoke,

Spring after spring, for half a hundred years:

For never have I known the world without,

Nor ever strayed beyond the pale: but thee,

When first thou camest—such a courtesy

Spake through the limbs and in the voice—I knew

For one of those who eat in Arthur’s hall;

For good ye are and bad, and like to coins,

Some true, some light, but every one of you

Stamped with the image of the King; and now

Tell me, what drove thee from the Table Round,

My brother? was it earthly passion crost?’

 

‘Nay,’ said the knight; ‘for no such passion mine.

But the sweet