---------

A moral child, without the craft to rule

---------

Yet in this heathen war the fire of God fills him.
I never saw his like. There lives no greater leader.

---------

He had not dream'd she was so beautiful.

---------

Whereat Lavaine said laughing, 'Lily Maid,
for fear our people call you lilly made in earnest,
let me bring your colour back;'

---------

Then to her tower she climb'd, and took the shield.
There kept it, and so lived in fantasy.

---------

Whom he smote, he overthrew

---------

A spear prick'd sharply his own curiass,
and the head pierced thro' his side,
and there snapt, and remain'd.

---------

...then the trumpets blew,
proclaiming his the prize who wore
the sleeve of scarlet, and the pearls.

---------

Far lovlier in our Lancelot had it been,
in lieu of idly dallying with the truth,
to have trusted me, as he hath trusted thee, surely his King,
and most familiar friend.

---------

Yet good news too: for goodly hopes are mine
that Lancelot is no more a lonely heart!

---------

Thru her own side she felt the sharp lance go;

---------

And stay'd; and cast his eyes on fair Elaine:
Where could be found face daintier?
Then her shape from forehead down to foot,
perfect - again, from foot to forehead exquisitely
trim'd:

---------

Fare you well, a thousand times!
A thousand times farewell!

---------

'Rest must you have', 'No rest for me' she cried;
'Nay, for near you, fair lord, I am at rest.'

---------

'Till all her hearts sad secret blazed itself
in the heart's colours on her suple face;

---------

He would listen for her coming,
and regret her parting step

---------

His honour rooted in dishonour stood.
and faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.

---------

I have gone mad. I love you; Let me die.

---------

Death, like a friend's voice from a distant
field approaching thru the darkness, call'd;

---------

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.

---------

To doubt her fairness were to want an eye,
to doubt her pureness were to want a heart.

---------

Ah! Simple heart and sweet. Ye loved me, damsel,
surely with a love far tenderer than my Queen's.

---------

And she was the fairest of all flesh on earth,
Guinevere, and in her his one delight.

---------

Tho' Modred biting his thin lips was mute,
For he is alway sullen - what care I?

---------

Man am I grown, a man's work must I do.
Follow the deer? Follow the Christ, the King,
Live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the King
Else, wherefore born?

---------

Silent awhile was Gareth, then replied,
"The thrall in person may be free in soul,

---------

But the Seer replied,
"Know ye not then the Riddling of the Bards?
'Confusion, and illusion, and relation,
Elusion, and occasion, and evasion"?

---------

The shield was blank and bare without a sign
Saving the name beneath; and Gareth saw
The shield of Gawain blazon'd rich and bright,
And Modred's blank as death; and Arthur cried,
To rend the cloth and cast it on the hearth.

---------

But Mark hath tarnish'd the great name of king,
As Mark would sully the low state of churl:

---------

Shame never made girl redder than Gareth joy.
He laugh'd; he sprang. "Out of the smoke, at once
I leap from Satan's foot to Peter's knee-

---------

Be hidd'n and give me the first quest, I spring
Like flame from ashes.

---------

A damsel of high lineage, and a brow
May-blossom, and a cheek of apple-blossom,
Hawk-eyes; and lightly was her slender nose
Tip-tilted like the petal of a flower;

---------

"My name?" she said-
"Lynette my name, noble, my need, a knight

---------

But on the damsel's forehead shame, pride, wrath
Slew the May-white:

---------

So till the dusk that follow'd evensong
Rode on the two, reviler and reviled;

---------

"O morning star that smilest in the blue,
O star, my morning dream hath proven true,
Smile sweetly, thou! My love hath smiled on me."

"O Sun, that wakenest all to bliss or pain,
O moon, that layest all to sleep again,
Shine sweetly: twice my love hath smiled on me."

"O trefoil, sparkling on the rainy plain,
O rainbow with three colours after rain,
Shine sweetly: thrice my love hath smiled on me.

---------

But the damsel said,
"I lead no longer, ride thou at my side;
Thou art the kingliest of all the kitchen-knaves.

---------

Where should be truth if not in Arthur's hall,
In Arthur's presence? Knight, knave, prince and fool,
I hate thee and for ever.

---------

The brave Geraint a knight of Arthur's court,
A tributary prince of Devon, one
Of that great Order of the Table Round,
Had married Enid, Yniol's only child,
And loved her, as he loved the light of Heaven.
And as the light of Heaven varies, now
At sunrise, now at sunset, now by night
With moon and trembling stars, so loved Geraint
To make her beauty vary day by day,
In crimsons and in purples and in gems.

---------

... and all flyers from the hand
Of Justice, and whatever loathes a law:

---------

Was ever man so grandly made as he?

---------

"Hark, by the bird's song ye may learn the nest"

---------

For though ye won the prize of fairest fair,
And though I heard him call you fairest fair,
Let never maiden think, however fair,
She is not fairer in new clothes than in old.

---------

... fain I would the two
Should love each other: how can Enid find
A nobler friend?

---------

---------

O purblind race of miserable men,
How many among us at this very hour
Do forge a lifelong trouble for ourselves,
By taking true for false, or false for true.

---------

Needs must I speak, and though he kill me for it,
I save a life dearer to me than mine.

---------

Then rose Limours, and looking at his feet,
Like him who tries the bridge he fears may fail,

---------

And left him lying in the public way;
So vanish friendships made only in wine.

---------

They might as well have blessed her,
She was deaf to blessing or to cursing save from one.

---------

... Good luck had your man,
For were I dead who would weep for me?

---------

Drink therefore and the wine will change your will.

---------

I love that beauty should go beautifully.

---------

I do believe yourself against yourself,
And will henceforward rather die than doubt.

---------

O'er the four rivers the first roses blew,
Came purer pleasure unto mortal kind.
Than lived through her, who in that perilous hour
Put hand to hand beneath her husband's heart,
And felt him hers again:

---------

By overthrowing me you threw me higher.

---------

They called him the great Prince and man of men.

---------

He crowned a happy life with a fair death.

---------

Being so stately-gentle, would she make
My darkness blackness?

---------

Too high this mount of Camelot for me:

---------

Queen? Subject? But I see not what I see.
Damsel and lover? Hear not what I hear.

---------

Ha! So thou be Shadow, here I make thee ghost

---------

I curse the tale, the told-of and the teller.

---------

Goodnight! For we shall never bid again Goodmorrow!

---------

I loved thee first --- that warps the wit

---------

Courteous - amends for gauntness - takes her hand -
That glances of theirs, but for the street, had been
A clinging kiss - how hand lingers in hand!
Let go at last! - they ride away - to hawk

---------

Death in all life and lying in all love,
The meanest having power upon the highest,
And the high purpose broken by the worm.

---------

As fancying that her glory would be great.
According to his greatness whom she quenched.

---------

A twist of gold was round her hair, a robe
Of samite without price, that more exprest
Than hid her, clung about her lissome limbs,
In colour like the satin-shining palm

---------

And lissome Vivien, holding by his heel,
Writhed toward him, slided up his knee and sat,
Behind his ankle twined her hollow feet
Together, curved an arm about his neck,
Clung like a snake; and letting her left hand
Droop from his mighty shoulder, as a leaf,
Made with her right a comb of pearl to part
The lists of such a beard as youth gone out
Had left in ashes.

---------

In that mind-mist: for shall I tell you truth?
You seemed that wave about to break upon me
And sweep me from my hold upon the world

---------

In Love, if Love be Love, if Love be ours,
Faith and unfaith can ne'er be equal powers:
Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all.

It is the little rift within the lute,
That by and by will make the music mute,
And ever widening slowly silences all.

The little rift within the lover's lute
Or little pitted speck in garnered fruit,
That rotting inward slowly moulders all.

It is not worth the keeping: let it go:
But shall it? Answer, darling, answer; no.
And trust me not at all or all in all.

---------

So sweetly gleamed her eyes behind her tears
Like sunlight on that plain behind a shower:

---------

Rather use than fame

---------

So used as I, my daily wonder is, I love at all.

---------

A maid so smooth, so white, so wonderful,
They said a light came from her when she moved:

---------

But is your spleen frothed out, or have ye more?

---------

O ay; what say ye to Sir Lancelot, friend
Traitor or true?

---------

But have ye no one word of loyal praise
For Arthur, blameless King and stainless man?

---------

For men at most differ as Heaven and earth,
But women, worst and best, as Heaven and Hell.

---------

And what should not have been had been,
For Merlin, overtalked and overworn,
Had yielded, told her all the charm, and slept.

---------

God make thee good as thou are beautiful

---------

So the King arose and went
To smoke the scandalous hive of those wild bees
That made such honey in his realm.

---------

And I was left alone and wearying
in a land of sand and thorns.

---------

That all of pure,
Noble, and knightly in me twined and clung
Round that one sin, until the wholesome flower
And poisonous grew together, each as each.

---------

---------

But while he gazed
The beauty of her flesh abashed the boy,
As though it were the beauty of her soul:

---------

The when he came before Ettarre, the sight
Of her rich beauty made him at one glance
More bondsman in his heart than in his bonds.

---------

Why have I pushed him from me? This man loves,
If love there be: yet him I loved not.

---------

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; though 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?
On rose, my rose, a rose that will not die,--
He dies who loves it, -- if the worm be there.

---------

Then faired 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.

---------

I am wrath and shame and hate and evil fame,
And like a poisonous wind I pass to blast
And blaze the crime of Lancelot and the Queen.

---------

"Thou art false as Hell: slay me I have no sword."
Then Lancelot, "Yea, between thy lips-and sharp;"

---------

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.

---------

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

---------

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?

---------

Ill doom is mine
To war against my people and my knights.
The king who fights his people fights himself.
And they my knights, who loved me once, the stroke
That strikes them dead is as my death to me.

---------

She seem'd a part of joyous Spring

---------

As she fled fast thro' sun and shade,
The happy winds upon her play'd,
Blowing the ringlet from the braid.
She look'd so lovely, as she sway'd
The rein with dainty finger-tips,
A man had given all other bliss,
And all his worldly worth for this,
To waste whole heart to place a kiss
Just once upon her perfect lips.

---------

---------

Still as the boathead wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her chanting her deathsong,
The Lady of Shalott.

---------

A longdrawn carol, mournful, holy,
She chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her eyes were darken'd wholly,
And her smooth face sharpen'd slowly,
Turn'd to tower'd Camelot:
For ere she reach'd upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott.