"MEET IS IT CHANGES SHOULD CONTROL OUR BEING, LEST WE RUST IN EASE:-(TENNYSON)
THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH, YIELDING PLACE TO NEW,
KING ARTHUR'S FAREWELL TO GUINEVERE. 449
Believing 'lo my 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 has 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,
AND GOD FULFILS HIMSELF IN MANY WAYS."-TENNYSON.
ARE CHANGED BY STILL DEGREES, ALL BUT THE BASIS OF THE SOUL."-TENNYSON.
"MAKE KNOWLEDGE CIRCLE WITH THE WINDS; BUT LET HER HERALD, REVERENCE, FLY
66 THESE BIRDS HAVE JOYFUL THOUGHTS. THINK YOU THEY SING,
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 thy 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 war-horse neighed
As 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 thought 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 came a kingdom's curse with thee !
LIKE POETS, FROM THE VANITY OF SONG?"-ALFred tennySON.
BEFORE HER TO WHATEVER SKY BEAR SEED OF MEN AND GROWTH OF MINDS."-TENNYSON.
"MORE THINGS ARE WROUGHT BY PRAYER THAN THIS WORLD DREAMS OF.
THE DROWSY HOURS, DISPENSERS OF ALL GOOD,-(TENNYSON)
KING ARTHUR'S FAREWELL TO GUINEVERE. 451
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.
I charge thee, my last hope.
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 my sister's son,
Leagued with the lords of the White Horse and Knights
Once mine, 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.
O'ER THE MUTE CITY STOLE, with folded wings."-TENNYSON.
LET THY VOICE RISE, LIKE A FOUNTAIN, FOR ONE NIGHT AND DAY."-TENNYSON.
"FOR WHAT ARE MEN BETTER THAN SHEEP OR GOATS THAT NOURISH A BLIND LIFE WITHIN THE BRAIN,-(ALFRED TENNYSON)
"FOR SO THE WHOLE ROUND EARTH IS EVERY WAY-(TENNYSON)
Then, listening till those armèd 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 stream 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 ghost-like to his doom.
[From "The Idylls of the King," ed. 1859.]
IF, KNOWING GOD, THEY LIFT NOT HANDS OF PRAYER BOTH FOR THEMSELVES AND THOSE WHO CALL THEM FRIENDS?"-TENNYSON.
AN ISLAND IN THE TROPICS-THE SOLITARY.
[Enoch Arden has been cast away on a desert island in the Tropical
seas. Wandering in its luxuriant solitudes, he thinks of his English home,
and imagination brings to his ear the music of the village bells.]
HE mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns
And winding glades high up like ways to heaven,
The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes,
The lightning-flash of insect and of bird,
The lustre of the long convolvuluses
That coiled around the stately stems, and ran
BOUND BY GOLD CHAINS ABOUT THE FEET OF GOD."-TENNYSON.
"LIKE MEN, LIKE MANNERS: LIKE BREEDS LIKE, THEY SAY.
KIND NATURE IS THE BEST: THESE MANNERS NEXT
"BUT WHILE I MUSED CAME MEMORY WITH SAD EYES,
AN ISLAND IN THE TROPICS.
E'en to the limit of the land, the glows
And glories of the broad belt of the world,-
All these he saw; but what he fain had seen
He could not see-the kindly human face,
Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard
The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl,
The league-long roller thundering on the reef,
The moving whisper of huge trees that branched
And blossomed in the zenith, or the sweep
Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave,
As down the shore he ranged, or all day long
Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge,
A shipwrecked sailor, waiting for a sail :
No sail from day to day, but every day
The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts
Among the palms and ferns and precipices;
The blaze upon the waters to the east ;
The blaze upon his island overhead;
The blaze upon the waters to the west;
Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven,
The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again
The scarlet shafts of sunrise-but no sail.
There, often as he watched, or seemed to watch,
So still, the golden lizard on him paused,
A phantom made of many phantoms moved
Before him haunting him, or he himself
Moved haunting people, things and places, known
Far in a darker isle beyond the line;
The babes, their babble, Annie, the small house,
The climbing street, the mill, the leafy lanes,
The peacock yew-tree, and the lonely Hall,
The horse he drove, the boat he sold, the chill
November dawns and dewy-glooming downs,
HOLDING THE FOLDED ANNALS OF MY YOUTH."-TENNYSON.
THAT FIT US LIKE A NATURE SECOND-HAND; WHICH ARE INDEED THE MANNERS OF THE GREAT."-TENNYSON.
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