Chapter CIII: Section V: The Idylls of the King

There is another chivalry, which inaugurates the Middle Ages, as this closes it; sung by children, as this by youths; and restored in the "Idylls of the King," as this in the "Princess." It is the legend of Arthur, Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table. With admirable heart, Tennyson has modernized the feelings and the language; this pliant soul takes all tones, in order to give itself all pleasures. This time he has become epic, antique and ingenuous, like Homer, and like the old _trouvères_ of the _chansons de Geste._ It is pleasant to quit our learned civilization, to rise again to the primitive age and manners, to listen to the peaceful discourse which flows copiously and slowly, as a river in a smooth channel. The distinguishing mark of the ancient epic is clearness and calm. The ideas were new-born; man was happy and in his infancy. He had not had time to refine, to cut down and adorn his thoughts; he showed them bare. He was not yet pricked by manifold lusts; he thought at leisure. Every idea interested him; he unfolded it curiously, and explained it. His speech never jerks; he goes step by step, from one object to another, and every object seems lovely to him: he pauses, observes, and takes pleasure in observing. This simplicity and peace are strange and charming; we abandon ourselves, it is well with us; we do not desire to go more quickly; we fancy we would gladly remain thus, and forever. For primitive thought is wholesome thought; we have but marred it by grafting and cultivation; we return to it as our familiar element, to find contentment and repose.

But of all epics, this of the Round Table is distinguished by purity. Arthur, the irreproachable king, has assembled

"A glorious company, the flower of men, To serve as model for the mighty world, And be the fair beginning of a time. 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,... To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it, To lead sweet lives in purest chastity, To love one maiden only, cleave to her, And worship her by years of noble deeds."[452]

There is a sort of refined pleasure in having to do with such a world; for there is none in which purer or more touching fruits could grow. I will show one--"Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat"--who, having seen Lancelot once, loves him when he has departed, and for her whole life. She keeps the shield, which he has left in a tower, and every day goes up to look at it, counting "every dint a sword had beaten in it, and every scratch a lance had made upon it," and living on her dreams. He is wounded: she goes to tend and heal him:

"She murmur'd, 'vain, in vain: it cannot be. He will not love me: how then? must I die?' Then as a little helpless innocent bird, That has but one plain passage of few notes, Will sing the simple passage o'er and o'er For all an April morning, till the ear Wearies to hear it, so the simple maid Went half the night repeating, 'must I die?'"[453]

At last she confesses her secret; but with what modesty and spirit! He cannot marry her; he is tied to another. She droops and fades; her father and brothers try to console her, but she will pot be consoled. She is told that Lancelot has sinned with the queen; she does not believe it:

"At last she said, 'Sweet brothers, yester night I seem'd a curious little maid again, As happy as when we dwelt among the woods, And when you used to take me with the flood Up the great river in the boatman's boat. Only you would not pass beyond the cape That hast the poplar on it; there you fixt Your limit, oft returning with the tide. And yet I cried because you would not pass Beyond it, and far up the shining flood Until we found the palace of the King. ... Now shall I have my will.'"[454]

She dies, and her father and brothers did what she had asked them to do:

"But when the next sun brake from underground, Then, those two brethren slowly with bent brows Accompanying, the sad chariot-bier Past like a shadow thro' the field, that shone Full summer, to that stream whereon the barge, Pall'd all its length in blackest samite, lay. There sat the lifelong creature of the house, Loyal, the dumb old servitor, on deck, Winking his eyes, and twisted all his face. So those two brethren from the chariot took And on the black decks laid her in her bed, Set in her hand a lily, o'er her hung The silken case with braided blazonings And kiss'd her quiet brows, and saying to her: 'Sister, farewell for ever,' and again 'Farewell, sweet sister,' parted all in tears. Then rose the dumb old servitor, and the dead Steer'd by the dumb went upward with the flood-- In her right hand the lily, in her left The letter--all her bright hair streaming down-- And all the coverlid was cloth of gold Drawn to her waist, and she herself in white All but her face, and that clear-featured face Was lovely, for she did not seem as dead But fast asleep, and lay as tho' she smiled."[455]

Thus they arrive at Court in great silence, and King Arthur read the letter before all his knights and weeping ladies:

"Most noble lord, Sir Lancelot of the Lake, I, sometime call'd the maid of Astolat, Come, for you left me taking no farewell, Hither, to take my last farewell of you. I loved you, and my love had no return, And therefore my true love has been my death. And therefore to our lady Guinevere, And to all other ladies, I make moan. Pray for my soul, and yield me burial. Pray for my soul thou too, Sir Lancelot, As thou art a knight peerless."[456]

Nothing more: she ends with this word, full of so sad a regret and so tender an admiration: we could hardly find anything more simple or more delicate.

It seems as if an archaeologist might reproduce all styles except the grand, and Tennyson has reproduced all, even the grand. It is the night of the final battle; all day the tumult of the mighty fray "roll'd among the mountains by the winter sea"; Arthur's knights had fallen "man by man"; he himself had fallen, "deeply smitten through the helm," and Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights, bore him to a place hard by,

"A chapel nigh the field, A broken chancel with a broken cross, That stood on a dark strait of barren land. On one side lay the Ocean, and on one Lay a great water, and the moon was full."[457]

Arthur, feeling himself about to die, bids him to take his sword Excalibur "and fling him far into the middle meer"; for he had received it from the sea-nymphs, and after him no mortal must handle it. Twice Sir Bedivere went to obey the king: twice he paused, and came back pretending that he had flung away the sword; for his eyes were dazzled by the wondrous diamond setting which clustered and shone about the haft. The third time he throws it:

"The great brand Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon, And flashing round and round, and whirl'd in an arch, Shot like a streamer of the northern morn, Seen where the moving isles of winter shock By night, with noises of the northern sea. So flash'd and fell the brand Excalibur: But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, And caught him by the hilt, and brandish'd him Three times, and drew him under in the meer."[458]

Then Arthur, rising painfully and scarce able to breathe, bids Sir Bedivere take him on his shoulders and "bear me to the margin. Quick, quick! I fear it is too late, and I shall die." They arrive thus, through "icy caves and barren chasms," to the shores of a lake, where they saw "the long glories of the winter moon":

"They saw then how there hove a dusky barge Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern, Beneath them; and descending they were ware That all the decks were dense with stately forms Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream--by these Three Queens with crowns of gold--and from them rose A cry that shiver'd to the tingling stars, And, as it were one voice, an agony Of lamentation, like a wind, that shrills All night in a waste land, where no one comes Or hath come, since the making of the world. Then murmur'd Arthur: 'Place me in the barge,' And to the barge they came. There those three Queens Put forth their hands, and took the King, and wept. But she, that rose the tallest of them all And fairest, laid his head upon her lap, And loosed the shatter'd casque, and chafed his hands And call'd him by his name, complaining loud...."[459]

Before the barge drifts away, King Arthur, raising his slow voice, consoles Sir Bedivere, standing in sorrow on the shore, and pronounces this heroic and solemn farewell:

"The old order changeth, yielding place to new, And God fulfils himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.... If thou shouldst never see my face again, Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of.... For so the whole round earth is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. But now farewell. I am going a long way With these thou seest--if indeed I go-- (For all my mind is clouded with a doubt) To the island-valley of Avilion; Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard-lawns And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea, Where I will heal me of my grievous wound."[460]

Nothing, I think, calmer and more imposing, has been seen since Goethe.

How, in a few words, shall we assemble all the features of so manifold a talent? Tennyson is a born poet, that is, a builder of airy palaces and imaginary castles. But the individual passion and absorbing preoccupations which generally guide the hands of such men are wanting to him; he found in himself no plan of a new edifice; he lias built after all the rest; he has simply chosen amongst all forms the most elegant, ornate, exquisite. Of their beauties he has taken but the flower. At most, now and then, he has here and there amused himself by designing some genuinely English and modern cottage. If in this choice of architecture, adopted or restored, we look for a trace of him, we shall find it, here and there, in some more finely sculptured frieze, in some more delicate and graceful sculptured rose-work; but we only find it marked and sensible in the purity and elevation of the moral emotion which we carry away with us when we quit his gallery of art.