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

howled to the King,

 

‘The teeth of Hell flay bare and gnash thee flat!—

Lo! art thou not that eunuch-hearted King

Who fain had clipt free manhood from the world—

The woman-worshipper? Yea, God’s curse, and I!

Slain was the brother of my paramour

By a knight of thine, and I that heard her whine

And snivel, being eunuch-hearted too,

Sware by the scorpion-worm that twists in hell,

And stings itself to everlasting death,

To hang whatever knight of thine I fought

And tumbled. Art thou King? —Look to thy life!’

 

He ended: Arthur knew the voice; the face

Wellnigh was helmet-hidden, and the name

Went wandering somewhere darkling in his mind.

And Arthur deigned not use of word or sword,

But let the drunkard, as he stretched from horse

To strike him, overbalancing his bulk,

Down from the causeway heavily to the swamp

Fall, as the crest of some slow-arching wave,

Heard in dead night along that table-shore,

Drops flat, and after the great waters break

Whitening for half a league, and thin themselves,

Far over sands marbled with moon and cloud,

From less and less to nothing; thus he fell

Head-heavy; then the knights, who watched him, roared

And shouted and leapt down upon the fallen;

There trampled out his face from being known,

And sank his head in mire, and slimed themselves:

Nor heard the King for their own cries, but sprang

Through open doors, and swording right and left

Men, women, on their sodden faces, hurled

The tables over and the wines, and slew

Till all the rafters rang with woman-yells,

And all the pavement streamed with massacre:

Then, echoing yell with yell, they fired the tower,

Which half that autumn night, like the live North,

Red-pulsing up through Alioth and Alcor,

Made all above it, and a hundred meres

About it, as the water Moab saw

Came round by the East, and out beyond them flushed

The long low dune, and lazy-plunging sea.

 

So all the ways were safe from shore to shore,

But in the heart of Arthur pain was lord.

 

Then, out of Tristram waking, the red dream

Fled with a shout, and that low lodge returned,

Mid-forest, and the wind among the boughs.

He whistled his good warhorse left to graze

Among the forest greens, vaulted upon him,

And rode beneath an ever-showering leaf,

Till one lone woman, weeping near a cross,

Stayed him. ‘Why weep ye?’ ‘Lord,’ she said, ‘my man

Hath left me or is dead;’ whereon he thought—

‘What, if she hate me now? I would not this.

What, if she love me still? I would not that.

I know not what I would’—but said to her,

‘Yet weep not thou, lest, if thy mate return,

He find thy favour changed and love thee not’—

Then pressing day by day through Lyonnesse

Last in a roky hollow, belling, heard

The hounds of Mark, and felt the goodly hounds

Yelp at his heart, but turning, past and gained

Tintagil, half in sea, and high on land,

A crown of towers.

 

Down in a casement sat,

A low sea-sunset glorying round her hair

And glossy-throated grace, Isolt the Queen.

And when she heard the feet of Tristram grind

The spiring stone that scaled about her tower,

Flushed, started, met him at the doors, and there

Belted his body with her white embrace,

Crying aloud, ‘Not Mark—not Mark, my soul!

The footstep fluttered me at first: not he:

Catlike through his own castle steals my Mark,

But warrior-wise thou stridest through his halls

Who hates thee, as I him—even to the death.

My soul, I felt my hatred for my Mark

Quicken within me, and knew that thou wert nigh.’

To whom Sir Tristram smiling, ‘I am here.

Let be thy Mark, seeing he is not thine.’

 

And drawing somewhat backward she replied,

‘Can he be wronged who is not even his own,

But save for dread of thee had beaten me,

Scratched, bitten, blinded, marred me somehow—Mark?

What rights are his that dare not strike for them?

Not lift a hand—not, though he found me thus!

But harken! have ye met him? hence he went

Today for three days’ hunting—as he said—

And so returns belike within an hour.

Mark’s way, my soul!—but eat not thou with Mark,

Because he hates thee even more than fears;

Nor drink: and when thou passest any wood

Close vizor, lest an arrow from the bush

Should leave me all alone with Mark and hell.

My God, the measure of my hate for Mark

Is as the measure of my love for thee.’

 

So, plucked one way by hate and one by love,

Drained of her force, again she sat, and spake

To Tristram, as he knelt before her, saying,

‘O hunter, and O blower of the horn,

Harper, and thou hast been a rover too,

For, ere I mated with my shambling king,

Ye twain had fallen out about the bride

Of one—his name is out of me—the prize,

If prize she were—(what marvel—she could see)—

Thine, friend; and ever since my craven seeks

To wreck thee villainously: but, O Sir Knight,

What dame or damsel have ye kneeled to last?’

 

And Tristram, ‘Last to my Queen Paramount,

Here now to my Queen Paramount of love

And loveliness—ay, lovelier than when first

Her light feet fell on our rough Lyonnesse,

Sailing from Ireland.’

 

Softly laughed Isolt;

‘Flatter me not, for hath not our great Queen

My dole of beauty trebled?’ and he said,

‘Her beauty is her beauty, and thine thine,

And thine is more to me—soft, gracious, kind—

Save when thy Mark is kindled on thy lips

Most gracious; but she, haughty, even to him,

Lancelot; for I have seen him wan enow

To make one doubt if ever the great Queen

Have yielded him her love.’

 

To whom Isolt,

‘Ah then, false hunter and false harper, thou

Who brakest through the scruple of my bond,

Calling me thy white hind, and saying to me

That Guinevere had sinned against the highest,

And I—misyoked with such a want of man—

That I could hardly sin against the lowest.’

 

He answered, ‘O my soul, be comforted!

If this be sweet, to sin in leading-strings,

If here be comfort, and if ours be sin,

Crowned warrant had we for the crowning sin

That made us happy: but how ye greet me—fear

And fault and doubt—no word of that fond tale—

Thy deep heart-yearnings, thy sweet memories

Of Tristram in that year he was away.’

 

And, saddening on the sudden, spake Isolt,

‘I had forgotten all in my strong joy

To see thee—yearnings?—ay! for, hour by hour,

Here in the never-ended afternoon,

O sweeter than all memories of thee,

Deeper than any yearnings after thee

Seemed those far-rolling, westward-smiling seas,

Watched from this tower. Isolt of Britain dashed

Before Isolt of Brittany on the strand,

Would that have chilled her bride-kiss? Wedded her?

Fought in her father’s battles? wounded there?

The King was all fulfilled with gratefulness,

And she, my namesake of the hands, that healed

Thy hurt and heart with unguent and caress—

Well—can I wish her any huger wrong

Than having known thee? her too hast thou left

To pine and waste in those sweet memories.

O were I not my Mark’s, by whom all men

Are noble, I should hate thee more than love.’

 

And Tristram, fondling her light hands, replied,

‘Grace, Queen, for being loved: she loved me well.

Did I love her? the name at least I loved.

Isolt?—I fought his battles, for Isolt!

The night was dark; the true star set. Isolt!

The name was ruler of the dark—Isolt?

Care not for her! patient, and prayerful, meek,

Pale-blooded, she will yield herself to God.’

 

And Isolt answered, ‘Yea, and why not I?

Mine is the larger need, who am not meek,

Pale-blooded, prayerful. Let me tell thee now.

Here one black, mute midsummer night I sat,

Lonely, but musing on thee, wondering where,

Murmuring a light song I had heard thee sing,

And once or twice I spake thy name aloud.

Then flashed a levin-brand; and near me stood,

In fuming sulphur blue and green, a fiend—

Mark’s way to steal behind one in the dark—

For there was Mark: “He has wedded her,” he said,

Not said, but hissed it: then this crown of towers

So shook to such a roar of all the sky,

That here in utter dark I swooned away,

And woke again in utter dark, and cried,

“I will flee hence and give myself to God”—

And thou wert lying in thy new leman’s arms.’

 

Then Tristram, ever dallying with her hand,

‘May God be with thee, sweet, when old and gray,

And past desire!’ a saying that angered her.

‘“May God be with thee, sweet, when thou art old,

And sweet no more to me!” I need Him now.

For when had Lancelot uttered aught so gross

Even to the swineherd’s malkin in the mast?

The greater man, the greater courtesy.

Far other was the Tristram, Arthur’s knight!

But thou, through ever harrying thy wild beasts—

Save that to touch a harp, tilt with a lance

Becomes thee well—art grown wild beast thyself.

How darest thou, if lover, push me even

In fancy from thy side, and set me far

In the gray distance, half a life away,

Her to be loved no more? Unsay it, unswear!

Flatter me rather, seeing me so weak,

Broken with Mark and hate and solitude,

Thy marriage and mine own, that I should suck

Lies like sweet wines: lie to me: I believe.

Will ye not lie? not swear, as there ye kneel,

And solemnly as when ye sware to him,

The man of men, our King—My God, the power

Was once in vows when men believed the King!

They lied not then, who sware, and through their vows

The King prevailing made his realm:—I say,

Swear to me thou wilt love me even when old,

Gray-haired, and past desire, and in despair.’

 

Then Tristram, pacing moodily up and down,

‘Vows! did you keep the vow you made to Mark

More than I mine? Lied, say ye? Nay, but learnt,

The vow that binds too strictly snaps itself—

My knighthood taught me this—ay, being snapt—

We run more counter to the soul thereof

Than had we never sworn. I swear no more.

I swore to the great King, and am forsworn.

For once—even to the height—I honoured him.

“Man, is he man at all?” methought, when first

I rode from our rough Lyonnesse, and beheld

That victor of the Pagan throned in hall—

His hair, a sun that rayed from off a brow

Like hillsnow high in heaven, the steel-blue eyes,

The golden beard that clothed his lips with light—

Moreover, that weird legend of his birth,

With Merlin’s mystic babble about his end

Amazed me; then, his foot was on a stool

Shaped as a dragon; he seemed to me no man,

But Michael trampling Satan; so I sware,

Being amazed: but this went by— The vows!

O ay—the wholesome madness of an hour—

They served their use, their time; for every knight

Believed himself a greater than himself,

And every follower eyed him as a God;

Till he, being lifted up beyond himself,

Did mightier deeds than elsewise he had done,

And so the realm was made; but then their vows—

First mainly through that sullying of our Queen—

Began to gall the knighthood, asking whence

Had Arthur right to bind them to himself?

Dropt down from heaven? washed up from out the deep?

They failed to trace him through the flesh and blood

Of our old kings: whence then? a doubtful lord

To bind them by inviolable vows,

Which flesh and blood perforce would violate:

For feel this arm of mine—the tide within

Red with free chase and heather-scented