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

so defamed

Thy brotherhood in me and all the rest,

As let these caitiffs on thee work their will?’

 

And Pelleas answered, ‘O, their wills are hers

For whom I won the circlet; and mine, hers,

Thus to be bounden, so to see her face,

Marred though it be with spite and mockery now,

Other than when I found her in the woods;

And though she hath me bounden but in spite,

And all to flout me, when they bring me in,

Let me be bounden, I shall see her face;

Else must I die through mine unhappiness.’

 

And Gawain answered kindly though in scorn,

‘Why, let my lady bind me if she will,

And let my lady beat me if she will:

But an she send her delegate to thrall

These fighting hands of mine—Christ kill me then

But I will slice him handless by the wrist,

And let my lady sear the stump for him,

Howl as he may. But hold me for your friend:

Come, ye know nothing: here I pledge my troth,

Yea, by the honour of the Table Round,

I will be leal to thee and work thy work,

And tame thy jailing princess to thine hand.

Lend me thine horse and arms, and I will say

That I have slain thee. She will let me in

To hear the manner of thy fight and fall;

Then, when I come within her counsels, then

From prime to vespers will I chant thy praise

As prowest knight and truest lover, more

Than any have sung thee living, till she long

To have thee back in lusty life again,

Not to be bound, save by white bonds and warm,

Dearer than freedom. Wherefore now thy horse

And armour: let me go: be comforted:

Give me three days to melt her fancy, and hope

The third night hence will bring thee news of gold.’

 

Then Pelleas lent his horse and all his arms,

Saving the goodly sword, his prize, and took

Gawain’s, and said, ‘Betray me not, but help—

Art thou not he whom men call light-of-love?’

 

‘Ay,’ said Gawain, ‘for women be so light.’

Then bounded forward to the castle walls,

And raised a bugle hanging from his neck,

And winded it, and that so musically

That all the old echoes hidden in the wall

Rang out like hollow woods at hunting-tide.

 

Up ran a score of damsels to the tower;

‘Avaunt,’ they cried, ‘our lady loves thee not.’

But Gawain lifting up his vizor said,

‘Gawain am I, Gawain of Arthur’s court,

And I have slain this Pelleas whom ye hate:

Behold his horse and armour. Open gates,

And I will make you merry.’

 

And down they ran,

Her damsels, crying to their lady, ‘Lo!

Pelleas is dead—he told us—he that hath

His horse and armour: will ye let him in?

He slew him! Gawain, Gawain of the court,

Sir Gawain—there he waits below the wall,

Blowing his bugle as who should say him nay.’

 

And so, leave given, straight on through open door

Rode Gawain, whom she greeted courteously.

‘Dead, is it so?’ she asked. ‘Ay, ay,’ said he,

‘And oft in dying cried upon your name.’

‘Pity on him,’ she answered, ‘a good knight,

But never let me bide one hour at peace.’

‘Ay,’ thought Gawain, ‘and you be fair enow:

But I to your dead man have given my troth,

That whom ye loathe, him will I make you love.’

 

So those three days, aimless about the land,

Lost in a doubt, Pelleas wandering

Waited, until the third night brought a moon

With promise of large light on woods and ways.

 

Hot was the night and silent; but a sound

Of Gawain ever coming, and this lay—

Which Pelleas had heard sung before the Queen,

And seen her sadden listening—vext his heart,

And marred his rest—‘A worm within the rose.’

 

‘A rose, but one, none other rose had I,

A rose, one rose, and this was wondrous fair,

One rose, a rose that gladdened earth and sky,

One rose, my rose, that sweetened all mine air—

I cared not for the thorns; the thorns were there.

 

‘One rose, a rose to gather by and by,

One rose, a rose, to gather and to wear,

No rose but one—what other rose had I?

One rose, my rose; a rose that will not die,—

He dies who loves it,—if the worm be there.’

 

This tender rhyme, and evermore the doubt,

‘Why lingers Gawain with his golden news?’

So shook him that he could not rest, but rode

Ere midnight to her walls, and bound his horse

Hard by the gates. Wide open were the gates,

And no watch kept; and in through these he past,

And heard but his own steps, and his own heart

Beating, for nothing moved but his own self,

And his own shadow. Then he crost the court,

And spied not any light in hall or bower,

But saw the postern portal also wide

Yawning; and up a slope of garden, all

Of roses white and red, and brambles mixt

And overgrowing them, went on, and found,

Here too, all hushed below the mellow moon,

Save that one rivulet from a tiny cave

Came lightening downward, and so spilt itself

Among the roses, and was lost again.

 

Then was he ware of three pavilions reared

Above the bushes, gilden-peakt: in one,

Red after revel, droned her lurdane knights

Slumbering, and their three squires across their feet:

In one, their malice on the placid lip

Frozen by sweet sleep, four of her damsels lay:

And in the third, the circlet of the jousts

Bound on her brow, were Gawain and Ettarre.

 

Back, as a hand that pushes through the leaf

To find a nest and feels a snake, he drew:

Back, as a coward slinks from what he fears

To cope with, or a traitor proven, or hound

Beaten, did Pelleas in an utter shame

Creep with his shadow through the court again,

Fingering at his sword-handle until he stood

There on the castle-bridge once more, and thought,

‘I will go back, and slay them where they lie.’

 

And so went back, and seeing them yet in sleep

Said, ‘Ye, that so dishallow the holy sleep,

Your sleep is death,’ and drew the sword, and thought,

‘What! slay a sleeping knight? the King hath bound

And sworn me to this brotherhood;’ again,

‘Alas that ever a knight should be so false.’

Then turned, and so returned, and groaning laid

The naked sword athwart their naked throats,

There left it, and them sleeping; and she lay,

The circlet of her tourney round her brows,

And the sword of the tourney across her throat.

 

And forth he past, and mounting on his horse

Stared at her towers that, larger than themselves

In their own darkness, thronged into the moon.

Then crushed the saddle with his thighs, and clenched

His hands, and maddened with himself and moaned:

 

‘Would they have risen against me in their blood

At the last day? I might have answered them

Even before high God. O towers so strong,

Huge, solid, would that even while I gaze

The crack of earthquake shivering to your base

Split you, and Hell burst up your harlot roofs

Bellowing, and charred you through and through within,

Black as the harlot’s heart—hollow as a skull!

Let the fierce east scream through your eyelet-holes,

And whirl the dust of harlots round and round

In dung and nettles! hiss, snake—I saw him there—

Let the fox bark, let the wolf yell. Who yells

Here in the still sweet summer night, but I—

I, the poor Pelleas whom she called her fool?

Fool, beast—he, she, or I? myself most fool;

Beast too, as lacking human wit—disgraced,

Dishonoured all for trial of true love—

Love?—we be all alike: only the King

Hath made us fools and liars. O noble vows!

O great and sane and simple race of brutes

That own no lust because they have no law!

For why should I have loved her to my shame?

I loathe her, as I loved her to my shame.

I never loved her, I but lusted for her—

Away—’

He dashed the rowel into his horse,

And bounded forth and vanished through the night.

 

Then she, that felt the cold touch on her throat,

Awaking knew the sword, and turned herself

To Gawain: ‘Liar, for thou hast not slain

This Pelleas! here he stood, and might have slain

Me and thyself.’ And he that tells the tale

Says that her ever-veering fancy turned

To Pelleas, as the one true knight on earth,

And only lover; and through her love her life

Wasted and pined, desiring him in vain.

 

But he by wild and way, for half the night,

And over hard and soft, striking the sod

From out the soft, the spark from off the hard,

Rode till the star above the wakening sun,

Beside that tower where Percivale was cowled,

Glanced from the rosy forehead of the dawn.

For so the words were flashed into his heart

He knew not whence or wherefore: ‘O sweet star,

Pure on the virgin forehead of the dawn!’

And there he would have wept, but felt his eyes

Harder and drier than a fountain bed

In summer: thither came the village girls

And lingered talking, and they come no more

Till the sweet heavens have filled it from the heights

Again with living waters in the change

Of seasons: hard his eyes; harder his heart

Seemed; but so weary were his limbs, that he,

Gasping, ‘Of Arthur’s hall am I, but here,

Here let me rest and die,’ cast himself down,

And gulfed his griefs in inmost sleep; so lay,

Till shaken by a dream, that Gawain fired

The hall of Merlin, and the morning star

Reeled in the smoke, brake into flame, and fell.

 

He woke, and being ware of some one nigh,

Sent hands upon him, as to tear him, crying,

‘False! and I held thee pure as Guinevere.’

 

But Percivale stood near him and replied,

‘Am I but false as Guinevere is pure?

Or art thou mazed with dreams? or being one

Of our free-spoken Table hast not heard

That Lancelot’—there he checked himself and paused.

 

Then fared it with Sir Pelleas as with one

Who gets a wound in battle, and the sword

That made it plunges through the wound again,

And pricks it deeper: and he shrank and wailed,

‘Is the Queen false?’ and Percivale was mute.

‘Have any of our Round Table held their vows?’

And Percivale made answer not a word.

‘Is the King true?’ ‘The King!’ said Percivale.

‘Why then let men couple at once with wolves.

What! art thou mad?’

 

But Pelleas, leaping up,

Ran through the doors and vaulted on his horse

And fled: small pity upon his horse had he,

Or on himself, or any, and when he met

A cripple, one that held a hand for alms—

Hunched as he was, and like an old dwarf-elm

That turns its back upon the salt blast, the boy

Paused not, but overrode him, shouting, ‘False,

And false with Gawain!’ and so left him bruised

And battered, and fled on, and hill and wood

Went ever streaming by him till the gloom,

That follows on the turning of the world,

Darkened the common path: he twitched the reins,

And made his beast that better knew it, swerve

Now off it and now on; but when he saw

High up in heaven the hall that Merlin built,

Blackening against the dead-green stripes of even,

‘Black nest of rats,’ he groaned, ‘ye build too high.’

 

Not long thereafter from the city gates

Issued Sir Lancelot riding airily,

Warm with a gracious parting from the Queen,

Peace at his heart, and gazing at a