Idylls of the King

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, W. J. Rolfe

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780486437958
• eBook ISBN: 9780486113258
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Classics
• Index: Literature

With Idylls of the King, one of the giants of Victorian literature turned his considerable talents to the chivalric lore surrounding a larger-than-life British ruler, King Arthur. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, cast his interpretation of Arthurian myth into the form of an epic poem, and his tales of Camelot soar to remarkable imaginative heights to trace the birth of a king; the founding, fellowship, and decline of the Round Table; and the king's inevitable departure. Encompassing romance, heroism, duty, and conflict, Tennyson's poetry charts the rise and fall of a legendary society.
"The Coming of Arthur" chronicles the victorious battle with which the king also wins Guinevere's hand; "Gareth and Lynette," "The Marriage of Geraint," and "Geraint and Enid" likewise concern tests and triumphs of love, virtue, and valor. The tragic tale of two brothers, "Balin and Balan," is followed by "Merlin and Vivien," recounting the wizard's betrayal at the hands of a femme fatale. "Lancelot and Elaine," a classic story of unrequited love, leads up to the grand climax, "The Holy Grail," followed by "The Last Tournament" and "The Passing of Arthur."
Generations of readers — both poetry lovers and devotees of myth and legend — have exulted in these stories "About the founding of a Round Table / That was to be, for love of God and man / And noble deeds, the flower of all the world."

THE ROUND TABLE

GARETH AND LYNETTE	LANCELOT AND ELAINE
THE MARRIAGE OF GERAINT	THE HOLY GRAIL
GERAINT AND ENID	PELLEAS AND ETTARRE
BALIN AND BALAN	THE LAST TOURNAMENT
MERLIN AND VIVIEN	GUINEVERE

Gareth and Lynette

THE last tall son of Lot and Bellicent,
And tallest, Gareth, in a showerful spring
Stared at the spate. A slender-shafted pine
Lost footing, fell, and so was whirl’d away.
‘How he went down,’ said Gareth, ‘as a false knight
Or evil king before my lance, if lance
Were mine to use—O senseless cataract,
Bearing all down in thy precipitancy—
And yet thou art but swollen with cold snows
And mine is living blood. Thou dost His will,
The Maker’s, and not knowest, and I that know,
Have strength and wit, in my good mother’s hall
Linger with vacillating obedience,
Prison’d, and kept and coax’d and whistled to—
Since the good mother holds me still a child!
Good mother is bad mother unto me!
A worse were better; yet no worse would I.
Heaven yield her for it, but in me put force
To weary her ears with one continuous prayer,
Until she let me fly discaged to sweep
In ever-highering eagle-circles up
To the great Sun of Glory, and thence swoop
Down upon all things base, and dash them dead,
A knight of Arthur, working out his will,
To cleanse the world. Why, Gawain, when he came
With Modred hither in the summer-time,
Ask’d me to tilt with him, the proven knight.
Modred for want of worthier was the judge.
Then I so shook him in the saddle, he said,
“Thou hast half prevail’d against me,” said so—he—
Tho’ Modred biting his thin lips was mute,
For he is alway sullen—what care I?’

And Gareth went, and hovering round her chair
Ask’d, ‘Mother, tho’ ye count me still the child,
Sweet mother, do ye love the child?’ She laugh’d,
‘Thou art but a wild-goose to question it.’
‘Then, mother, an ye love the child,’ he said,
‘Being a goose and rather tame than wild,
Hear the child’s story.’ ‘Yea, my well-beloved,
An ’t were but of the goose and golden eggs.’

And Gareth answer’d her with kindling eyes:
‘Nay, nay, good mother, but this egg of mine
Was finer gold than any goose can lay;
For this an eagle, a royal eagle, laid
Almost beyond eye-reach, on such a palm
As glitters gilded in thy Book of Hours.
And there was ever haunting round the palm
A lusty youth, but poor, who often saw
The splendor sparkling from aloft, and thought,
“An I could climb and lay my hand upon it,
Then were I wealthier than a leash of kings.”
But ever when he reach’d a hand to climb,
One that had loved him from his childhood caught
And stay’d him, “Climb not lest thou break thy neck,
I charge thee by my love,” and so the boy,
Sweet mother, neither clomb nor brake his neck,
But brake his very heart in pining for it,
And past away.’

To whom the mother said,
‘True love, sweet son, had risk’d himself and climb’d,
And handed down the golden treasure to him.’

And Gareth answer’d her with kindling eyes:
‘Gold? said I gold?—ay then, why he, or she,
Or whosoe’er it was, or half the world
Had ventured—had the thing I spake of been
Mere gold—but this was all of that true steel
Whereof they forged the brand Excalibur,
And lightnings play’d about it in the storm,
And all the little fowl were flurried at it,
And there were cries and clashings in the nest,
That sent him from his senses. Let me go.’

Then Bellicent bemoan’d herself and said:
‘Hast thou no pity upon my loneliness?
Lo, where thy father Lot beside the hearth
Lies like a log, and all but smoulder’d out!
For ever since when traitor to the King
He fought against him in the barons’ war,
And Arthur gave him back his territory,
His age hath slowly droopt, and now lies there
A yet-warm corpse, and yet unburiable,
No more; nor sees, nor hears, nor speaks, nor knows.
And both thy brethren are in Arthur’s hall,
Albeit neither loved with that full love
I feel for thee, nor worthy such a love.
Stay therefore thou; red berries charm the bird,
And thee, mine innocent, the jousts, the wars,
Who never knewest finger-ache, nor pang
Of wrench’d or broken limb—an often chance
In those brain-stunning shocks, and tourney-falls,
Frights to my heart. But stay; follow the deer
By these tall firs and our fast-falling burns;
So make thy manhood mightier day by day.
Sweet is the chase; and I will seek thee out
Some comfortable bride and fair, to grace
Thy climbing life, and cherish my prone year,
Till falling into Lot’s forgetfulness
I know not thee, myself, nor anything.
Stay, my best son! ye are yet more boy than man.’

Then Gareth: ‘An ye hold me yet for child,
Hear yet once more the story of the child.
For, mother, there was once a king, like ours.
The prince his heir, when tall and marriageable,
Ask’d for a bride; and thereupon the king
Set two before him. One was fair, strong, arm’d—
But to be won by force—and many men
Desired her; one, good lack, no man desired.
And these were the conditions of the king:
That save he won the first by force, he needs
Must wed that other, whom no man desired,
A red-faced bride who knew herself so vile
That evermore she long’d to hide herself,
Nor fronted man or woman, eye to eye—
Yea—some she cleaved to, but they died of her.
And one—they call’d her Fame; and one—O mother,’
How can ye keep me tether’d to you?—Shame.
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?’

To whom the mother said:
‘Sweet son, for there be many who deem him not,
Or will not deem him, wholly proven king—
Albeit in mine own heart I knew him King
When I was frequent with him in my youth,
And heard him kingly speak, and doubted him
No more than he, himself; but felt him mine,
Of closest kin to me. Yet—wilt thou leave
Thine easeful biding here, and risk thine all,
Life, limbs, for one that is not proven king?
Stay, till the cloud that settles round his birth
Hath lifted but a little. Stay, sweet son.’

And Gareth answer’d quickly: ‘Not an hour,
So that ye yield me—I will walk thro’ fire,
Mother, to gain it—your full leave to go.
Not proven, who swept the dust of ruin’d Rome
From off the threshold of the realm, and crush’d
The idolaters, and made the people free?
Who should be king save him who makes us free?’

So when the Queen, who long had sought in vain
To break him from the intent to which he grew,
Found her son’s will unwaveringly one,
She answer’d craftily: ‘Will ye walk thro’ fire?
Who walks thro’ fire will hardly heed the smoke.
Ay, go then, an ye must; only one proof,
Before thou ask the King to make thee knight,
Of thine obedience and thy love to me,
Thy mother,—I demand.’

And Gareth cried:
‘A hard one, or a hundred, so I go.
Nay—quick! the proof to prove me to the quick!’

But slowly spake the mother looking at him:
‘Prince, thou shalt go disguised to Arthur’s hall,
And hire thyself to serve for meats and drinks
Among the scullions and the kitchen-knaves,
And those that hand the dish across the bar.
Nor shalt thou tell thy name to any one.
And thou shalt serve a twelvemonth and a day.’

For so the Queen believed that when her son
Beheld his only way to glory lead
Low down thro’ villain kitchen-vassalage,
Her own true Gareth was too princely-proud
To pass thereby; so should he rest with her,
Closed in her castle from the sound of arms.

Silent awhile was Gareth, then replied:
‘The thrall in person may be free in soul,
And I shall see the jousts. Thy son am I,
And, since thou art my mother, must obey.
I therefore yield me freely to thy will;
For hence will I, disguised, and hire myself
To serve with scullions and with kitchen-knaves;
Nor tell my name to any—no, not the King.’

Gareth awhile linger’d. The mother’s eye
Full of the wistful fear that he would go,
And turning toward him wheresoe’er he turn’d,
Perplext his outward purpose, till an hour
When, waken’d by the wind which with full voice
Swept bellowing thro’ the darkness on to dawn,
He rose, and out of slumber calling two
That still had tended on him from his birth,
Before the wakeful mother heard him, went.

The three were clad like tillers of the soil.
Southward they set their faces. The birds made
Melody on branch and melody in mid air.
The damp hill-slopes were quicken’d into green,
And the live green had kindled into flowers,
For it was past the time of Easter-day.

So, when their feet were planted on the plain
That broaden’d toward the base of Camelot,
Far off they saw the silver-misty morn
Rolling her smoke about the royal mount,
That rose ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Note
• IDYLLS OF THE KING
• THE ROUND TABLE
• Notes
• To the Queen.