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THE MEANING OF 
 
 THE IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 AN ESSAY IN INTERPRETATION 
 
 BY 
 CONDE BENOIST FALLEN, LL.D. 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE PHILOSOPHY OF LITERATURE," "EPOCHS 
 
 OP LITERATURE," "THE FEAST OF THALARCHUS," 
 
 "THE DEATH OF SIR LAUNCELOT," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK •:• CINCINNATI •:• CHICAGO 
 AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 
 
THE LIBRARY OF 
 CONGRESS. 
 
 Two Copies Received 
 
 OCT 27 1904 
 
 Cooyright Entry 
 
 cuss' a XXC No: 
 
 ^COPY A. 
 
 FK5S60 
 
 Copyright, 1904, by 
 CONDfi BENOIST FALLEN 
 
 Entered at Stationers' Hall, London 
 
 THE MEANING OF 
 THE IDYLLS OP THE KING 
 
I?; 
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 The letter of Lord Tennyson, the facsimile of 
 which appears on the first page, was written in 
 commendation of a brief magazine article on The 
 Idylls of the King published in 1885. The inter- 
 pretation of the article of 1885 was more fully 
 developed in a series of short studies, also published 
 in magazine form in 1895. The present essay is 
 a still further amplification of the original concep- 
 tion, to which is added an appendix of notes eluci- 
 dating some points passed over in the text. The 
 author has thought it better to treat these points 
 apart, in order to avoid unnecessary digressions 
 from the main tenor of his theme. This study is 
 now printed in book form, in response to re- 
 peated requests to put the interpretation in a more 
 convenient shape than the pages of a magazine 
 afford. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The General Purport of the Idylls .... 7 
 
 The Coming of Arthur 19 
 
 Gareth and Lynette 38 
 
 Geraint and Enid 6l 
 
 Balin and Balan , ... 67 
 
 Merlin and Vivien 69 
 
 Lancelot and Elaine 75 
 
 The Holy Grail 79 
 
 Pelleas and Ettarre 89 
 
 The Last Tournament 94- 
 
 Guinevere 98 
 
 The Passing of Arthur 99 
 
 Notes 105 
 

 Mm^i'i3. 
 
 ^ fU ^((Hl^ q, ftu )^ ■ ^ M 
 
THE MEANING OF THE IDYLLS 
 OF THE KING 
 
 THE GENERAL PURPORT OF THE 
 IDYLLS 
 
 Why should any one set about the interpretation 
 of the Idylls? Is not their meaning plain enough 
 in itself — so many vignettes illustrating a common 
 theme and tracing the Arthurian legend through 
 some of its most touching episodes in the subtle 
 imagery of Tennyson's polished muse? Mere 
 idylls, summer landscapes of a tender fancy weav- 
 ing the myths of an ancient fable into modern 
 verse, graceful pictures of heroic days blown by 
 the winds of tradition into this hurly-burly age of 
 sturdy fact and despotic practicality? What 
 need, then, of plunging into seas of allegory to find 
 a mystic meaning beneath the glittering pageantry 
 of the poet's lines? Take them for what they 
 themselves appear to be, random pictures of an 
 heroic legend, done by a master's hand, but withal 
 
 7 
 
 \ 
 
8 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 mere pictures, whose beauty and whose worth He 
 in the master's use of color, Hglit and shade, to 
 body forth the outward show, the pomp and the 
 splendor of the Arthurian myth — this and noth- 
 ing more. 
 
 Idle the office of interpretation if forestalled by 
 such a prejudice. Yet such has been the current 
 notion ; a notion, it must be conceded, not lacking 
 extenuation ; for the Idylls were given to the world 
 without regard to their proper order, a circum- 
 stance contributing not a little to the popular mis- 
 understanding of their real scope and purpose. 
 The last Idyll of the twelve was published first, 
 framed in a poem entitled The Epic, in which the 
 Morte D' Arthur was described as the fragment of 
 a larger work. The remaining eleven came out 
 at wide intervals without regard to the chrono- 
 logical or logical order of the theme of which each 
 is a due integral part. The natural judgment 
 was that the Idylls, though clustered about the 
 Arthurian legend, had no closer bond than the 
 hazard of the same heroic subject in such phases 
 as struck a poetic fancy. It was not until after 
 ten Idylls had found their way to the liglit that 
 they were grouped together in their due relation. 
 
 Whether or not The Idylls of the King may 
 
PURPORT OF THE IDYLLS 9 
 
 justly lay claim to the dignity and proportions of 
 an epic poem, at least there is no gainsaying — by 
 one who has read them in the order in which they 
 are arranged in authorized editions subsequent to 
 1884 — that they constitute a single poem with an 
 intimate relation both as to time and theme. 
 
 But more than this, whether epic or not, they 
 are a poem whose theme is deeper than the surface, 
 not mere tableaux of wondrous coloring and pose, 
 appealing only to the eye and the fancy. The 
 placing of a further value on them than their 
 mere outward show has indeed been disputed, and 
 it has been averred that a deeper meaning has been 
 read into them than they themselves will warrant 
 to be read out. But such criticism seems to arise 
 rather from the prejudice of a popular miscon- 
 ception than from any discriminating considera- 
 tion of their intrinsic nature. More than this, we 
 may urge that criticism of the kind, denying their 
 esoteric meaning, impinges on an awkward pre- 
 dicament of its own making; for if the Idylls be 
 mere poetic pageantry, they are not always even 
 that, but in many respects a mere masquerade of 
 8i\Yy imagery, beautiful but unsubstantial. Re- 
 garded from this external view only, it becomes 
 necessary to explain satisfactorily innumerable 
 
10 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 obscure passages, which have no significance under 
 this mere word-painting theory, as well as to give 
 the chief characters and the main action of the 
 drama a rational perspective. Who is Arthur, 
 who, though wounded, cannot die; whose coming 
 and whose passing are a mystery beyond the ken 
 of men, since " from the great deep to the great 
 deep he goes"? Who Merlin, the sage, and, above 
 all, the Lady of the Lake, who dwells at the bases 
 of the hills? Who the three Fair Queens, destined 
 to help Arthur at his need? What is Excalibul', 
 the mystic weapon given to Arthur by the Lady 
 of the Lake at the installation of the Round Table, 
 to be returned to her at his passing? What is the 
 mystic city of Camelot, built to music, therefore 
 never built at all, and therefore built forever? 
 These and other aspects of the Idylls, utterly un- 
 intelligible on the word-painting theory, it may be 
 urged, are but the unwitting inheritance of the 
 old legend, and Tennyson's heroics are only un- 
 meaning echoes of the ancient mysticism. Yet the 
 mystical element is there, and those who would 
 deny its significance in the Idylls must bear upon 
 their shoulders the onus of proof that the poet has 
 not seized upon those legendary shadows of higher 
 things to body forth his own conception of his 
 
PURPORT OF THE IDYLLS 11 
 
 ideal, molding them after the fashion of his own 
 genius. 
 
 Apart from the inconsistency of this merely 
 external view of the Idylls and the inexplicable 
 riddles it leaves behind it at almost every page, 
 we may urge the words of Tennyson himself, giv- 
 ing us more than a quickening hint as to the pro- 
 founder sense of the poems. First as to their 
 unity, the perception of which is primarily essen- 
 tial to their proper understanding: that unity will 
 of course most conclusively stand forth from a 
 consideration of their intrinsic character. But 
 prior to such demonstration it finds extrinsic sup- 
 port from passages in the poem entitled The Epic. 
 The Epic is but the poetic envelope of the Morte 
 D' Arthur, which the poet calls a fragment of a 
 larger work and which was the first Idyll pub- 
 lished, though at the time in an incomplete state. 
 
 The point I would urge is that we may gather 
 Tennyson's mind from certain lines in The Epic. 
 Everard Hall, a poet, sits, on a Christmas eve, 
 around the " wassail bowl " in company with boon 
 friends. The subject of an epic poem Hall had 
 written at college is brought up : 
 
 . . . "You know," said Frank, "he burnt 
 His epic, his King Arthur, some twelve books," 
 
12 IDYLLS or THE KING 
 
 And then to me, demanding "Why ?" "Oh, sir, 
 
 He thought that nothing new was said, or else 
 
 Something so said 'twas nothing — that a truth 
 
 Looks freshest in the fashion of the day. 
 
 God knows he has a mint of reasons: ask. 
 
 It pleased me well enough." "Nay, nay," said Hall 
 
 "Why take the style of those heroic times ? 
 
 For nature brings not back the mastodon. 
 
 Nor we those times; and why should any man 
 
 Remodel models ? These twelve books of mine 
 
 Were faint Homeric echoes, nothing worth. 
 
 Mere chaff and draff, much better burnt." "But I,'* 
 
 Said Francis, "picked the eleventh from this hearth. 
 
 And have it. Keep a thing, its use will come. 
 
 I hoard it as a sugar-plum for Holmes." 
 
 . And the poet, little urged, 
 But wdth some prelude of disparagement, 
 Read, mouthing out his hollow o's and a's, 
 Deep-chested music, and to this result. 
 
 The passage is quoted at some length to put its 
 full purport before the reader. Everard Hall, the 
 poet, is clearly Tennyson himself. It may, with 
 some show of point, be urged that this is no evi- 
 dence that Tennyson had actually written an epic, 
 that the fiction of an epic of twelve books was 
 
PURPORT or THE IDYLLS 13 
 
 simply a fanciful setting for the Morte D' Arthur. 
 Admitting the force of this, we have at least evi- 
 dence of Tennyson's conception of the possibility 
 of an epic out of the materials of the Arthurian 
 legend ; and if he had Hot actually executed it, we 
 at least understand that the purpose, and perhaps 
 the plan, was in his mind's eye. But what is espe- 
 cially notable in this passage is that it gives us a 
 clear expression of the character of the epic, 
 whether already written or merely contemplated. 
 This we gather readily from the line "that a truth 
 looks freshest in the fashion of the day." The 
 burnt epic the poet regarded as the vehicle of a 
 truth, better conveyed after a later fashion, bet- 
 ter told in other ways than in heroics. Therefore 
 he had discarded the old setting of that truth, 
 deeming it more acceptable to modern ears in: the 
 fashion of a day other than the style of those 
 heroic times. The epic, then, was not to be a mere 
 rehearsal of King Arthur's exploits, but, more than 
 this, file poetic setting of a great truth to be ut- 
 tered to the world. What that truth is we are 
 not told in this prelude to the Morte D'Arthur. 
 Sufficient to glean from its lines that there is in- 
 tended a truth about which the poet has used, as a 
 painter would his colors, the beauties of the old 
 
14 IDYLLS or THE KING 
 
 legend to body forth an ideal too often forgotten 
 by a generation blinded by the pride of its own 
 philosophies. 
 — ^ Evidence we have here sufficient to show us that 
 the Idylls are more than mere vignettes of an an- 
 cient tale. But further e^ddence we also have in 
 Tennyson's own words what that inner truth is. 
 In the epilogue to the Idylls is a passage which 
 puts the matter beyond all doubt. Addressing the 
 Queen the poet says : 
 
 But thou, my Queen, 
 Not for itself, but thro' thy living love 
 For one * to whom I made it o'er his grave 
 Sacred, accept this old imperfect tale, 
 New-old, and shadowing Sense at war with Soul 
 Rather than that gray king whose name, a ghost, 
 Streams like a cloud, man-shaped, from mountain peak, 
 And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still: or him 
 Of Geoffrey's book, or him of Malleor's, one 
 Touched by the adulterous finger of a time 
 That hovered between war and wantonness. 
 And crownings and dethronements. 
 
 The keynote is here plainly enough sounded. 
 -It is a tale shadowing Sense at war with Soul, 
 
 * The Prince Consort. 
 
PURPORT OF THE IDYLLS 15 
 
 not simply the mythical story of a fabled king on 
 the lips of popular tradition, nor of the knightly 
 hero depicted in Geoffrey's or Malory's olden 
 book!^ ^ense at war with Soul is the esoteric 
 character of The Idylls of the King, and this is 
 that truth, new-old, which the poet, Everard Hall, 
 thought better told in the fashion of the day, but 
 which a maturer sense of the plastic power and 
 poetic worth of the old legend led the poet to em- 
 body, after all, in the style of those heroic times. 
 In face of this passage from the epilogue there can 
 be no room for legitimate doubt as to the meaning 
 of the Idylls. Without this interpretation put 
 upon them they become in large part so many 
 poetized riddles, valueless save for the subtleness 
 and beauty of their imagery. In the light of this 
 interpretation they become a luminous message 
 of purity to an age 
 
 Touched by the adulterous finger of a time 
 That hovered between war and wantonness. 
 
 To Tennyson, in an age whose literature has 
 become replete with the gross spirit of realism, we 
 are indebted for a noble poem whose theme is the 
 exaltation of the beauty of purity, and this, where 
 
 ^The numbers refer to the notes on pages 105 to 115, 
 
16 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 the age is most blind to it, in man. The message 
 is luminous to those who have desire to see. By 
 the deaf and blind unto holy things, the voice 
 will not be heard, the light will not be seen, and 
 
 . . . The crime of sense becomes 
 The crime of malice, and is equal blame. 
 
 It is this crime of sense become the crime of 
 malice Avhich undoes the building up of Arthur's 
 realm, breaks the harmony of the virtues into the 
 discord of sin and crime, and disrupts the order 
 Divine Wisdom has established amongst men. 
 Against it the spiritual man, despite of the sin, the 
 crime, and the treachery about him, stands proof, 
 passing from the old order in the flesh to the new 
 order in the spirit. The Idylls are simply the 
 drama of the new-old truth. Sense at war with 
 Soul, the old battle and the ever renewed strife 
 between the old and the new man. The picture 
 is old but its meaning ever new, speaking signifi- 
 cantly to a generation sunk in the steaming valleys 
 of sense, and blinded to the lofty ideal on the 
 heights above by the gross exhalations of its ma- 
 terialism. 
 
 ' The poet puts the picture before us in an alle- 
 gory. While to a proper understanding of the 
 
PURPORT OF THE IDYLLS 17 
 
 Idylls we must realize the allegorical character 
 of the poem speaking to us in symbols, we must 
 not forget the artistic perspective which such a 
 work demands. We must take the parts in their 
 proper proportions. Like any other picture, it 
 has its coloring, its lights and its shadows, mass- 
 ing effects here, softening its points there, with 
 its foreground and its background, yet the whole 
 breathing the same organic inspiration. We must 
 not look for an allegory in every passage, a sym- 
 bol in ever}^ line, a mystery in every syllable, a 
 hidden meaning in every image. This were driv- 
 ing interpretation to the ridiculous, straining 
 at a gnat to swallow a camel, and making art 
 a mere artificial symbol. While detail and inci- 
 dents serve the purpose of the main idea, illus- 
 trate and embellish the action and development 
 of the argument, the}^ are not to be taken for the 
 essence of the movement nor emphasized to a mi- 
 croscopic magnitude. 
 
 The mechanism of art is not to be confounded 
 with its ultimate aim or its ideal. Unfortunately, 
 the ideal of art is often obscured by the crime of 
 sense. The function of art is to express the splen- 
 dor of truth, and modern man in large part has 
 either denied outright or become skeptical of the 
 
 MEAN. IDYLLS KING— 2 
 
18 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 truth. The ideal lost, he has been thrown back 
 upon the mechanism of art. We have therefore 
 much finished painting, wrought to an exquisite 
 nicety of detail, but barren of the ideal; we have 
 much elaborated versification, but little true poe- 
 try ; much building, but little architecture ; a vast 
 deal of formal symbolism, but no true spiritual- 
 ity. There is neither inspiration nor aspiration 
 where there is no ideal; no ideal w^here truth is 
 neglected or denied. Ti-uth is the root of art. 
 Sapless and barren, therefore, the product of the 
 art effort without it. We have much artifice, but 
 little art. 
 
 The degeneration has not stopped here. Not 
 only has the ideal been abandoned, but in the errant 
 madness of the hour an idol has been erected in 
 its stead, and we have the fetich worship of the 
 ugly by the school of Naturalism. Here is the 
 adoration of not even the golden calf, but of a 
 beast of clay. Worse than mere artifice, it is the 
 parody of art. The abode of its choice is with 
 the swine, and it no longer sighs for the glory of 
 the Father's house. The crime of sense has become 
 the crime of malice. To depict man, not with 
 the splendor or the glory of truth upon his brow, 
 but man, the beast, amid the husks and the swine. 
 
THE COMING OF ARTHUR 19 
 
 has become an avowed intent and end. The ugly, 
 the gloom of falsehood, not the beautiful, the 
 splendor of truth, is its sodden idol. It is with- 
 out ideal. Here sense is no longer at war with 
 soul; the beast is victorious. 
 
 The main purport of the Idylls is to show fortl^, 
 the kingship of the soul, and how only through 
 that kingship the beast in man is subdued. Their 
 message is a rebuke to^he pride of the flesh, the 
 crime of sense become the crime of malice, the 
 ancient rebellion against the spiritual and God. 
 
 THE COMING OF ARTHUR 
 
 Guinevere, the daughter of King Leodogran, 
 is " the fairest of all flesh on earth." The land 
 of Leodogran is wasted by war from within and 
 from without. Nor law nor peace is there. In- 
 ternal strife has snapped asunder the bond of rule, 
 and the heathen from without have poured down 
 upon a helpless people. 
 
 For many a petty king ere Arthur came 
 Ruled in this isle, and ever waging war 
 Each upon other, wasted all the land; 
 And still from time to time the heathen host 
 Swarmed over seas, and harried what was left. 
 
 f4 
 
 \ 
 
20 IDYLLS or THE KING 
 
 And so there grew great tracts of wilderness, 
 Wherein the beast was ever more and more, 
 And man was less and less, till Arthur came. 
 
 Prior to the coming of the spiritual man, war 
 raged amongst the human passions. Man became 
 their prey ; the passions dominated, and as the 
 beast in man grew stronger, the man waned less 
 and less. The victim of his own brutal passions, 
 he became the easy prey of the heathen from 
 without. There was no principle of rule, as there 
 was no principle of unity. The lower nature, hav- 
 ing nothing in itself to establish order amongst 
 its own conflicting elements, dominated not in har- 
 mony but in discord. Human society was a waste 
 and a desolation, where the beast ranged at will. 
 Here was need of one stronger than the beast. 
 The spiritual in man must assert its kingship, sub- 
 jugate the beast, bridle the passions, bring order 
 out of confusion, and make a realm and reign. 
 
 Leodogran, King of Cameliard, knows not 
 whither to turn for aid, but hearing of Arthur, 
 newly crowned, sends for him, saying: 
 
 . . . . "Arise, and help us, thou 
 
 For here between the man and beast we die.'* 
 
THE COMING OF ARTHUR 21 
 
 Arthur responds to the appeal, and, coming to 
 the land of Leodogran, there beholds Guinevere, 
 and 
 
 Felt the light of her eyes into his life 
 Smite on the sudden, .... 
 And passing thence to battle felt 
 Travail, and throes and agonies of life, 
 Desiring to be joined with Guinevere. 
 
 Guinevere is the fairest of all flesh. She, the 
 feminine and receptive element, is symbol of the 
 nobility and beauty of the human body as the 
 destined habitation of the soul. Beautiful should 
 be the tabernacle of the spiritual, a dwellii^g place 
 in all order and fairness. The soul, the'-'spiritual 
 element, which Arthur typifies, manifests its nat- 
 ural disposition to be united with the body in the 
 human order, for the soul has been made for union 
 with the body." It is a spiritual entity made not 
 to dwell apart, like angelic substance, but with and 
 in the body, the principle of its life and its activi- 
 ties. As Arthur goes to battle he ponders with 
 himself : 
 
 Her father said 
 
 That here between the man and beast they die. 
 Shall I not lift her from this land of beasts 
 I Up to my throne, and side by side with me ? 
 
22 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 The human body is not to be left a prey to the 
 beast ; it must be rescued from the despotism of 
 the brutal passions. It must be lifted up from 
 the land of beasts to the very throne of the spirit- 
 ual. Here is its proper place, where, by virtue 
 of its union with the soul, it reigns in comeliness 
 and power over the world. On the other hand, how 
 may the soul fulfill its destined mission without 
 this intimate union with the body.^ What is the 
 world to it without the body.^ 
 
 What happiness to reign a lonely king, 
 Vext — O ye stars that shudder over me, 
 
 earth that soundest hollow under me — 
 
 Vext with waste dreams! For, saving I be joined 
 To her that is the fairest under heaven, 
 
 1 seem as nothing in the mighty world, 
 And cannot will my will, nor work my work 
 Wholly, nor make myself in mine own realm 
 Victor and lord. But were I joined with her, 
 Then might we live together as one life, 
 And, reigning with one will in everything. 
 Have power on this dark land to lighten it, 
 And power on this dead world to make it live. 
 
 Without the body, earth and the things of the 
 earth are as nothing to the human soul — empty 
 shadows, waste dreams in the regions of death. 
 
THE COMING OF ARTHUR 23 
 
 The spiritual principle, the principle of order and 
 rule, is impotent to will its will, to work its work, 
 in a world of matter without that body, which, when 
 one with it, gives it the means of power over earth 
 and the things of earth. To effect the purpose of 
 the soul, that union must be so intimate that the 
 two become really one, that they may reign with 
 one will in everything. This can only be accom- 
 plished by lifting the lower nature up to the 
 higher, the spiritual uniting itself with the sensual, 
 infusing its own spiritual fire, its own noble life, 
 into itj and so make the dead world live. Arthur 
 must lift Guinevere up to his throne side by side 
 with him. 
 
 In this episode of Arthur coming to the land 
 of Leodogran and there meeting Guinevere in that 
 land of beasts, where he conceives his purpose of 
 taking her to wife, is the ground of the action of 
 the Idylls. In the land of beasts we find sense at \ 
 war with soul, and sense victorious : the beast in 
 man dominant, the soul in man overcome: discord, 
 confusion, war, chaos, and anarchy supreme. To 
 bring back peace, law, and order, the soul, in union 
 with the body as its vital and controlling element, 
 must subdue the passions and organize human 
 society on a spiritual basis. The accomplishment 
 
24 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 of this work is Arthur's mission. The first step 
 is union with Guinevere. 
 
 After Arthur has cleared Leodogran's realm for 
 him, he sends to the King three chosen knights to 
 ask for Guinevere's hand: 
 
 Saying, " If I in aught have served thee well, 
 Give me thy daughter, Guinevere, to wife." 
 
 But Leodogran, after the manner of the flesh, 
 ever prone to call in question the soul's supremacy, 
 doubts the kingship of Arthur, and requires con- 
 firmation of his title. In the pride of the flesh 
 he will not give his daughter saving to a king who is 
 also a king's son. In the eyes of the world the legiti- 
 macy of Arthur's title was dubious. His own bar- 
 ons had risen against him, disclaiming him as king 
 of theirs. However much Arthur has helped him 
 in his need, Leodogran fails to discern the kingly 
 character of the deed ; but measuring the worth of 
 the savior of his realm by the pride of human birth, 
 summons his chamberlain, and asks him if he 
 knows aught of Arthur's origin. The chamber- 
 lain refers the King to Bleys and Merlin, two sages, 
 with whom rests the secret. Bleys was Merlin's 
 master, but the latter, says Leodogran's chamber- 
 lain, so far outstripped his master, that the master 
 
THE COMING OF ARTHUR 25 
 
 in his turn became the scholar. In Blejs we have 
 Knowledge typified, in Merlin, Wisdom; for Wis- 
 dom, so we read in In Memoriam, excels Knowl- 
 edge : 
 
 . . . Let her know her place : 
 She is the second, not the first. 
 
 For she is earthly of the mind, 
 But wisdom heavenly of the soul. 
 
 Merlin is Arthur's great counsellor, building 
 him his cities and guiding him in the ruling of 
 his realm. Wisdom is the supreme director of the 
 soul, and Wisdom alone possesses the secret of its 
 birth. Knowledge cannot penetrate to the final 
 causes of things ; that is reserved to Wisdom. 
 
 It is INIerlin who presents Arthur to the quarrel- 
 ing barons as their king. But they cry out: 
 
 . . . Away with him! 
 No king of ours. 
 
 The warring passions refuse to submit to the 
 sovereignty of the soul. The sensual man would 
 rule according to the flesh in discord and lawless- 
 ness. He would rather suffer the strife engendered 
 by license than submit to the happy bonds by 
 
26 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 which spiritual hberty is secured. None knows of 
 Arthur's birth ; nearly all doubt. Some few, as 
 Bedivere, Ulfius, Brastias and Bellicent, believe in 
 him as true king, but their acceptance is on faith. 
 Bedivere's answer to the King's inquiries gives the 
 latter no assurance. His answer is by faith, not by 
 knowledge. Whilst Leodogran debates with him- 
 self the question of Arthur's legitimacy, his mind 
 divided in doubt. Queen Bellicent, Lot's wife and 
 Arthur's reputed sister, comes to his court. 
 By way of leading up to the main object of his 
 inquiry, Leodogran asks her if she thinks the 
 kingdom founded by Arthur possesses stability 
 and power enough to perpetuate itself. Bellicent 
 then narrates, as an eye-witness, the scene of the 
 founding of the Round Table: 
 
 . . . Then the King, in low, deep tones, 
 
 And simple words of great authority. 
 
 Bound them by so strait vows to his own self, 
 
 That when they rose knighted from kneeling, some 
 
 Were pale as at the passing of a ghost, 
 
 Some flushed and others dazed, as one who wakes. 
 
 Half-blinded at the coming of a light. 
 
 The Round Table is the spiritual organization 
 of man. A new spirit is breathed into the sensual 
 
THE COMING OF ARTHUR 27 
 
 man. The new man awakens to a higher hfe. He 
 is sworn to a new order of things. He has vowed 
 himself to the spiritual head and model; and those 
 whom Arthur, the spiritual man, has bound so 
 straightly to himself, grow pale when the splendor 
 and awe of that spiritual world first open to their 
 vision; some are flushed and others dazed, half- 
 blinded by the eff'ulgence of light that has burst 
 upon them. They tremble with apprehension. 
 
 But when he spake and cheered his Table Round 
 With large, divine, and comfortable words 
 Beyond my tongue to tell thee — I beheld 
 From eye to eye thro' all their order flash 
 A momentary likeness of the King: 
 And ere it left their faces, thro' the cross 
 And those around it and the Crucified, 
 Down from the casement over Arthur, smote 
 Flame color, vert and azure, in three rays. 
 And falling upon each of three fair queens, 
 Who stood in silence near his throne, the friends 
 Of Arthur, gazing on him, tall, with bright 
 Sweet faces, who will help him at his need. 
 
 Merlin is also described as present: 
 
 And near him stood the Lady of the Lake — 
 Who knows a subtler magic than his own — 
 Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful; 
 
28 IDYLLS or THE KING 
 
 She gave the King his huge cross-hilted sword 
 Wherewith to drive the heathen out: a mist 
 Of incense curled about her, and her face 
 WeUnigh was hidden in the minster gloom; 
 But there was heard among the holy hymns 
 A voice as of the waters, for she dwells 
 Down in a deep calm, w^hatsoever storms 
 May shake the world, and when the surface rolls, 
 Hath powder to walk the waters like our Lord. 
 
 The meaning of this passage is not hard to dis- 
 cover. It is a picture of the spiritual organiza- 
 tion effected by the infusion of Arthur's own spirit 
 into his knighthood. They become like unto the 
 King, because they are lifted up by their vows to 
 his great purpose. As their vows still tremble on 
 their lips, the three theological virtues. Charity, 
 Hope, and Faith, appear- in the persons of " three 
 fair queens " amongst them, illumined by three 
 rays of varied light from above, each in her ow^n 
 respective symbolical color, red, green, and blue. 
 This mystic illumination strikes dow^n upon them 
 from the casement above through the cross and 
 Him on it, the Crucified, with those around Him, 
 the pictured scene on the stained-glass window 
 above Arthur's throne, to signify that it is through 
 the atonement of Jesus Christ that these three 
 
THE COMING OF ARTHUR 29 
 
 heavenly virtues, the friends of the soul to help 
 it at its need, come to the aid of the spiritualized 
 man. Merlin, or Wisdom, is also present at the in- 
 stallation of the Round Table, now the type of the 
 spiritualized body, politic and social. But more 
 especially to be noted is the mystic Lady of the 
 Lake, who possesses even a subtler magic than 
 Merlin's. In her Religion is symbolized. She 
 dwells in a deep calm at the bases of the hills, be- 
 neath the stormy waters of the world, in her eternal 
 repose, and has power, like her Lord and Founder, 
 to walk the troubled surface of the sea. It is she 
 who gives to Arthur the brand Excalibur where- 
 with to drive the heathen out; for it is Religion 
 that gives to the soul the spiritual w^eapons where- 
 with to war against the passions and hell typified 
 by the heathen. Excalibur is to be used and then 
 returned, but not until the soul quits its earthly 
 tenement; then the soul will have no further need 
 of a weapon, for that moment it passes from the 
 state militant to the state triumphant. 
 
 Leodogran is pleased to learn of the great prom- 
 ise of Arthur's kingdom. But Bellicent's account 
 of the Round Table does not solve his doubt of 
 Arthur's legitimacy. When he asks her what she 
 knows of his birth, Bellicent narrates to him the 
 
30 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 story of Arthur's coming, wliich the dying Bleys 
 had confided to her keeping; how he and MerHn 
 on the night of Uther's death, 
 
 , . . From the castle gateway hy the chasm 
 
 Descending througli the dismal night — a night 
 
 In which the hounds of heaven and earth were lost — 
 
 Beheld, so high upon the dreary deeps 
 
 It seemed in heaven, a ship, the shape thereof 
 
 A dragon wing'd, and all from stem to stern 
 
 Bright with a shining people on the decks, 
 
 And gone as soon as seen. And then the two 
 
 Dropt to the cove, and watched the great sea fall, 
 
 Wave after wave, each mightier than the last. 
 
 Till last, a ninth one, gathering half the deep 
 
 And full of voices, slowly rose and plunged 
 
 Roaring, and all the wave was in a flame; 
 
 And down the wave and in the flame was borne 
 
 A naked babe, and rode to Merlin's feet. 
 
 Who stoopt and caught the babe, and cried, " The King! 
 
 Here is an heir for Uther! " And the fringe 
 
 Of that great breaker, sweeping up the strand. 
 
 Lashed at the wizard as he spoke the word. 
 
 And all at once all round him rose in fire. 
 
 So that the child and he were clothed in fire. 
 
 And presently thereafter followed calm. 
 
 Free sky and stars: "And this same child," he said, 
 
 *' Is he who reigns." 
 
THE COMING OF ARTHUR 31 
 
 Who, then, is Arthur? Surely the babe myste- 
 riously washed up from the deep is not Uther's 
 heir? The night of his coming, says Ble3\s, is one 
 when the bounds of heaven and earth seem to meet. 
 His coming is attended by the apparition 6f a 
 shining ship, so high upon the deeps that it 
 seemed in heaven, and whose decks are bright with 
 a celestial people. Nine great waves, each mightier 
 than the last, come roaring inward to the shore, 
 and the ninth sweeps flaming up the strand, bear- 
 ing a naked babe to Merlin's feet. 
 
 This' is the advent of the human soul from that 
 eternity whence it comes to human birth^ — to the 
 shores of time. So does the poet sing elsewhere, 
 
 And breaking let the splendor fall 
 To spangle all the happy shores. 
 By which they rest, and ocean sounds, 
 And, star and system rolling past, 
 A soul shall draw from out the vast 
 And strike his being into bounds.* 
 
 It is out of eternity, from amongst the celestial 
 people on the shining ship, the shape thereof a 
 dragon winged, the ancient British symbol of sov- 
 ereignty, that the soul comes into the bounds of 
 
 * In Memoriam . cxxxi. 
 
32 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 human existence. It comes inswathcd In fire, the 
 symbol of Hfe. Merlin proclaims this babe from 
 out the deep " The King ! " He is King not be- 
 cause he is the heir of Uther's body, but by virtue 
 of the spiritual supremacy of the soul. It is the 
 kingship of the higher over the lower nature. And 
 this is the King, says the dying Bleys, who now 
 reigns. 
 
 When Bellicent questions Merlin as to the truth 
 of Bleys' story, he answers her in what she terms 
 " riddling triplets of old times : " 
 
 Rain, rain and sun! a rainbow in the sky! 
 A young man will be wiser by and by; 
 An old man's wits may wander ere he die. 
 
 Rain, rain and sun! a rainbow on the lea! 
 And truth is this to me and that to thee; 
 And truth or clothed or naked let it be. 
 
 Rain, sun and rain! and the free blossom blows! 
 Sun, rain and sun! and where is he who knows .^ 
 From the great deep to the great deep he goes. 
 
 Bellicent's human curiosity would pierce the 
 mystery of the soul's origin, and Merlin answers 
 her in what she calls riddles, because their meaning 
 is beyond her limited comprehension. Merlin's 
 
THE COMING OF ARTHUR 33 
 
 triplets cloak a great truth not seen b}^ Bellicent. 
 Life has its many vicissitudes, its rain and its sun- 
 shine, storm and calm, hopes and fears, jo3\s and 
 sorrows, but truth abides unchanging, whether it 
 be clothed or naked to human eyes. The soul, 
 which is the house of truth, passes through all 
 changes of time, all vicissitudes of space, from 
 eternity to eternity : 
 
 From the great deep to the great deep he goes. 
 
 Though Merlin's riddling answer angers Belli- 
 cent, Wisdom will not unveil an unbearable light to 
 the weakness of human eyes. For Bellicent, who 
 stands for the type of those to whom Wisdom knows 
 better than disclose her profound secrets, faith is 
 sufficient. She is such an one as may not see the 
 Holy Grail unveiled. Yet she accepts Arthur on 
 faith, believing in his kingship, for JMerlin, whom 
 she knows to be Wisdom, has sworn. 
 
 Though men may wound him, that he will not die. 
 
 So Wisdom pledges itself for the immortality of 
 the soul, which passes but cannot die. 
 
 Leodogran rejoices at Belliccnt's account of 
 Arthur's coming, but is not convinced, and still 
 
 MEAN. IDYLLS KIXG — 3 
 
34 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 weighs the " yea " or " nay" to Arthur's suit, 
 and, growing drowsy with the perplexity of his 
 doubt, nods and sleeps, and sees. 
 
 Dreaming, a slope of land that ever grew, 
 Field after field, up to a height, the peak 
 Haze-hidden, and thereon a phantom king. 
 Now looming, and now lost; and on the slope 
 The sword rose, the hind fell, the herd was driven, 
 Fire glimpsed; and all the land from roof and rick. 
 In drifts of smoke before a rolling wind. 
 Streamed to the peak, and mingled with the haze 
 And made it thicker, while the phantom king 
 Sent out at times a voice; and here or there 
 Stood one who pointed toward the voice, the rest 
 Slew on and burnt, crying, "No king of ours. 
 No son of Uther, and no king of ours;" 
 Till with a wink his dream was changed, the haze 
 Descended and the solid earth became 
 As nothing, but the King stood out in heaven, 
 Crowned. 
 
 Leodogran's dream is a vision of the turmoil 
 and strife of human life, the fierce war of the 
 passions clouding the moral atmosphere and bind- 
 ing men, who in the heat and rage of contest cry 
 out against their better nature, swearing that the 
 spiritual man is not to be obeyed. They burn, 
 
THE COMING OF ARTHUR 35 
 
 destroy, slay, heedless of aught save their own 
 furious purpose. Each would be sovereign, rec- 
 ognizing no law, obeying no ruler. In their dis- 
 order they perish. When the battle is over and the 
 dust of contest laid, the smoke and flame of pas- 
 sion passed, the spiritual man stands out in his 
 glory a crowned king, the only abiding presence 
 where all else has vanished. 
 
 All Leodogran's doubts are dispelled by his 
 vision. He now recognizes the kingship of the 
 spiritual man. It is no longer a question whether 
 Arthur be Uther's son or not. He has a higher 
 claim to sovereignty than the accident of royal 
 progenitors. He is king by a diviner right than 
 heredity. Sending for Arthur's ambassadors, Le- 
 odogran answers " yes " to the King's suit ; and so 
 Guinevere is given to Arthur to wife, w^hich twain 
 Dubric, the high saint, weds and blesses, saying : 
 
 Reign ye and love, and make the world 
 Other; and may thy Queen be one with thee, 
 And all this Order of thy Table Round 
 Fulfill the boundless purpose of the King I 
 
 Through the union of the flesh with the spirit 
 the world is to become other, men lifted up above 
 the brutish sense, and the spiritual order estab- 
 
30 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 lished in the Round Table to work out the bound- 
 less purpose of the King. At the marriage feast 
 the lords of Rome, the symbol of paganism, the 
 slowly fading mistress of the world, stand at the 
 portal of the church gazing in scorn at the scene, 
 while Arthur's knights proclaim the new order, 
 singing : 
 
 Blow trumpet, for the world is white with May; 
 Blow trumpet, the long night hath rolled away! 
 Blow through the living world — Let the King reign! 
 
 The King will follow Christ, and we the King, 
 In whom high God had breathed a secret thing. 
 Fall battle ax and flash brand 1 Let the King reign ! 
 
 It is the springtime of the new order. ^ It is 
 the Easter season, the time of the great resurrec- 
 tion. The night has rolled away, and the spiritual 
 sun has risen in his glory on a world white with 
 purity and the promise of the flower to come. 
 Let the spiritual man reign in Christ. He is our 
 true king. Nor Rome nor heathen shall rule where 
 Arthur reigns, the spiritual man made king in 
 Christ. 
 
 When the great lords of Rome demand tribute, 
 Arthur answers them, saying: 
 
THE COMING OF ARTHUR 37 
 
 The old order changeth, yielding place to new; 
 And we that fight for our fair father Christ, 
 Seeing that ye be grown too weak and old 
 To drive the heathen from your Roman wall, 
 No tribute will we pay. 
 
 The reign of pagan Rome is over; a new era 
 has come in, a new law is established. Hence- 
 forth men are to be ruled by a spiritual king; the 
 old allegiance to the world has been severed, and 
 a new kingdom set up in its place. So Arthur 
 and his knights strive with Rome, and, through 
 being one in will, 
 
 . . . In twelve great battles overcame 
 
 The heathen hordes and made a realm and reigned. 
 
 The spiritual order is now confirmed and Ar- 
 thur's knights wedded by their vows to the pur- 
 pose of their King : 
 
 To reverence the King as if he were 
 
 Their conscience, and their conscience as their King; 
 
 To break the heathen and uphold the Christ; 
 
 To ride abroad redressing human wrongs; 
 
 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, 
 
 Until they won her. 
 
38 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 In this way is to be brought about the cleansing 
 of the reahn, the purification of the heart and the 
 strengtliening of the will, by restraining and direct- 
 ing the desires to a pure object, and by disciplin- 
 ing them through repeated efforts to the attain- 
 ment of its ideal. In this way are the passions to 
 be subjected to right reason, not stamped out, but 
 guided to their true and proper object. So man 
 is to attain the perfect harmony of living, the af- 
 fections and the will tending in unison to the goal 
 of perfection; law, order, and justice reigning in 
 the world through the spiritual man, true king 
 and true lord. 
 
 GARETH AND LYNETTE 
 
 In GciretJi and Lynette, the second Idyll, we are 
 shown the development of the individual under the 
 directive influence of the spiritual organization. 
 The story of Gareth may be regarded as an epit- 
 ome of the theme of the Idylls. It is the history 
 of the human soul in mortal combat with the pow- 
 ers of sense. Gareth is the type of the spirit- 
 ualized man victorious over time and death. 
 
GARETH AND LYNETTE 39 
 
 Gareth is " the last tall son of Lot and Belli- 
 cent," the best beloved of his mother, who cherishes 
 him in fond solicitude apart from the busy ways 
 of men. This idle and unprofitable life grows irk- 
 some to the budding manhood of the restive youth, 
 in whose bosom flames that unquenchable aspira- 
 tion of the noble soul to the fame of great deeds 
 done for the King's sake. He urges his suit with 
 more than the keen impetuosity of youth. The 
 ardor of his aspiration burns away the natural 
 bonds of affection ; but he yields obedience and 
 seeks his mother's consent. She, in her doting love, 
 would hold him back. She pictures a life of ease 
 and safety to him on his ancestral domains " with 
 some comfortable bride and fair " and amid the 
 pleasures of the chase. But this were a life of sloth 
 and shame to a soul that sees, and will be content 
 only with the highest: 
 
 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 ? 
 
 Seeing that the comforts and allurements of the 
 senses cannot shake Gareth from his high purpose, 
 
40 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 the niotlicr, in the folly of her love, would cast 
 doubts on Arthur's kingship : 
 
 Wilt thou leave 
 
 Thine easeful hiding here, and risk thine all, 
 Life, limbs, for one that is not proven King ? 
 
 But to Gareth, the man of spiritual aspiration, 
 there is but one test of kingship — the kingly deed : 
 
 Not proven, who swept the dust of ruined Rome 
 From off the threshold of the realm, and crushed 
 The Idolaters, and made the people free ? 
 Who should be King save him who makes us free ? 
 
 So ever runs the answer of the spiritual man ; 
 kingly is as kingly does. Who succors us from 
 the thraldom of the senses proves his right to reign. 
 Such is Gareth's indomitable purpose. And his 
 mother, seeing " her son's will unwaveringly one," 
 yields to his importunity on one condition: that 
 he walk through fire and smoke to the attainment 
 of his object — he must serve a twelvemonth and a 
 day as a scullion in Arthur's kitchen. She thinks 
 the shame of such service will prove too great a 
 test to her son's pride. But to the spiritual man 
 the lowlier the service the higher the virtue. Base- 
 ness is not in the deed, but in the doer. Pride has 
 
GAEETH AND LYNETTE 41 
 
 no part in him. Humility is the root of his great- 
 ness. Gareth, a king's son, is not princely proud, 
 and sooty kitchen vassalage cannot demean him or 
 sully his noble nature. He will serve with scullions 
 and kitchen slaves for the King's sake in all noble- 
 ness, for, as he says : 
 
 The thrall in person may be free in soul. 
 
 With his mother's consent, — he will not go with- 
 out that consent, for obedience, like humility, is 
 a prime A'irtue of the spiritual man,^ — Gareth, with 
 two followers, takes his departure for Camelot, the 
 city where Arthur holds his court. Like the hench- 
 men with him, he is clad as a tiller of the soil; 
 he, a prince royal, in outer semblance as lowly as 
 the lowliest, to teach the high lesson that it is not 
 the outward show that indicates the true man. 
 
 . . When their feet were planted on the plain, 
 That broadened toward the base of Camelot, 
 Far off they saw the silver-misty morn 
 Rolling her smoke about the royal mount 
 That rose between the forest and the field. 
 At times the summit of the high city flashed ; 
 At times the spires and turrets half-way down 
 Pricked thro' the mist; at times the great gate shone 
 Only, that opened on the field below: 
 Anon, the whole fair city had disappeared. 
 
42 IDYLLS or THE KING 
 
 Gareth's henchmen grow fearful at the weird 
 appearance of the mystic city, anon flashing 
 through and then vanishing in the shifting mists 
 of morning. They become reluctant to go further, 
 and importune Gareth to turn back home and de- 
 sert an enterprise where magic seems to play the 
 chief part. But Gareth, laughing at their churl- 
 ish fears, 
 
 . . . pushed them all unwilling toward the gate, 
 
 And there was no gate like it under heaven; 
 
 For barefoot on the keystone, which was lined 
 
 And rippled like an ever fleeting wave, 
 
 The I^ady of the Lake stood; all her dress 
 
 Wept from her sides as water flowing away; 
 
 But, like the cross, her great and goodly arms 
 
 Stretched under all the cornice and upheld; 
 
 And drops of water fell from either hand ; 
 
 And down from one a sword was hung, from one 
 
 A censer, either worn with wind and storm; 
 
 And o'er her breast floated the Sacred Fish; 
 
 And in the space to left of her, and right. 
 
 Were Arthur's wars in weird devices done, 
 
 New things and old co-twisted, as if time 
 
 Were nothing, so inveterately, that men 
 
 Were giddy gazing there: and over all 
 
 High on the top were those three queens, the friends 
 
 Of Arthur, who should help him at his need. 
 
Gareth and lynette 43 
 
 The titanic image carved above the gates of the 
 mystic city is Rehgion, the Lady of the Lake. 
 Through rehgion do we enter the spiritual city of 
 Camelot. Rehgion is the gateway to Arthur's 
 court, the house of the souL The upholding arms 
 of the Lady of the Lake stretched like the cross, 
 the sign of spiritual redemption, signifies the sus- 
 taining power of religion in the social and moral 
 order ; " stretched under all the cornice and up- 
 held " ; the water flowing from her hands signifies 
 baptism and absolution, regeneration and pardon ; 
 the suspended sword, the spiritual weapons of the 
 soul; the censer, prayer and sacrifice; the sacred 
 fish, the'I^j^^u?, the ancient symbol of Christ, formed 
 from the initial letters of the Greek sentence, Jesus 
 Christ, Son of God, Saviour.^ Arthur's wars, in the 
 spaces to the right and left of her, symbolize the 
 soul's battles with sense and time; the three queens 
 above, Faith, Hope, and Charity, the three theo- 
 logical virtues, crowning all. 
 
 As Gareth and his dazed followers stand staring 
 at the great gate, a blast of music sounds, and a 
 gray-bearded sage, type of wisdom, comes out from 
 the city, and inquires who they are. Gareth re- 
 pHes that they are tillers of the soil come to see the 
 glory of Arthur's city, and at the same time begs 
 
44 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 the graybeard to convince his skeptical followers 
 of the city's reality : 
 
 These, my men 
 
 (Your city moved so weirdly in the mist), 
 
 Doubt if the King be King at all, or come 
 
 From Fairyland; and whether this be built 
 
 By magic, and by fairy kings and queens; 
 
 Or whether there be any city at all. 
 
 Or all a vision : and this music now 
 
 Hath scared them both; but tell thou these the truth. 
 
 Camelot is the spiritual cit}^, Civitas Dei, which 
 the tillers of the earth, cattle of the field, as the old 
 seer calls them, averred was no real city, but only a 
 vision. To the sensual man there is but one reality, 
 and that is matter. What is not visible to the ej^e, 
 palpable to the senses, he will not recognize as real. 
 
 Then that old seer made answer, playing on him, 
 And saying : " Son, I have seen the good ship sail 
 Keel upward and mast downward in the heavens. 
 And solid turrets topsy-turvy in air; 
 And here is truth. " 
 
 To those who are sunk in the grossness of their 
 lower nature, who make their senses the sole cri- 
 terion of the real and the true, the wonders of the 
 mirage narrated by the seer are absurd. More won- 
 
GAEETH AND LYNETTE 45 
 
 dcrful than these, the higher truth ; but how may 
 they know it who make the brute sense the measure 
 of all knowledge? Even in these physical phenom- 
 ena is truth which they cannot perceive. 
 
 But an it please thee not. 
 
 Take thou the truth as thou hast told it me. 
 
 For truly, as thou sayst, a fairy king 
 
 And fairy queens have built the city, son; 
 
 They came from out a sacred mountain-cleft 
 
 Toward the sunrise, each with harp in hand, 
 
 And built it to the music of their harps. 
 
 And, as thou sayst, it is enchanted, son, 
 
 For there is nothing in it as it seems, 
 
 Saving the King; tho' some there be that hold 
 
 The King a shadow and the city real: 
 
 Yet take thou heed of him, for, so thou pass 
 
 Beneath this archway, then wilt thou become 
 
 A thrall to his enchantments, for the King 
 
 Will bind thee by such vows as is a shame 
 
 A man should not be bound by, yet the which 
 
 No man can keep ; but, so thou dread to swear, 
 
 Pass not beneath this gateway, but abide 
 
 Without, among the cattle of the field. 
 
 For an ye heard a music, like enow 
 
 They are building still, seeing the city is built 
 
 To music, therefore never built at all. 
 
 And therefore built forever. 
 
46 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 To the sensual man all shadow and magic is this 
 city of the King, the abode of the soul. To him the 
 fleeting phenomena of sense are the only realities, 
 and Ixion-like he embraces the image, not the sub- 
 stance, of truth. Not of brick and mortar is builded 
 this city of God, but of the invisible virtues of the 
 soul, and it is built to music, to that divine harmony 
 of order which keeps the perfect concord of truth 
 and beauty and love in the spiritual kingdom ; and 
 it is ever building, and therefore built forever, for 
 this kingdom of the soul is an institution wherein 
 souls are ever being edified unto perfection. In this 
 city is nothing real saving the soul, all else being but 
 type and shadow. Who enters this city must swear 
 the King's vows, uttermost obedience to the King, 
 and to lead sweet lives of purest chastity, vows which 
 it is a shame for a man not to swear, but vows 
 which no man, simply as man, can keep ; for he can 
 fulfill them only by becoming spiritualized. Let 
 him who dreads to swear, pass not beneath the 
 mystic archway which gives entrance to the spir- 
 itual city, but abide without amongst the cattle of 
 the field, who know only the things of sense. The 
 spiritual kingdom is entered only through Relig- 
 ion. Who refuses to enter therein dwells amongst 
 the brutes, never knowing truth. Gareth, not 
 
GARETH AND LYNETTE 47 
 
 comprehending the veiled truth which the old seer 
 utters, and thinking that he is being mocked, 
 flashes into anger and retorts indignantly, up- 
 braiding the sage for mocking one who had spoken 
 him fair. The old man replies: 
 
 Know ye not, then, the riddling of the bards ? 
 " Confusion, and illusion, and relation, 
 Elusion, and occasion, and evasion ? " 
 I mock thee not but as thou mockest me. 
 
 And now thou goest up to mock the King, 
 Who cannot brook the shadow of any lie. 
 
 You, dwellers with the cattle in the fields, who are 
 blinded to the spiritual nature of things, do but take 
 the words of truth after the manner of your own 
 affliction, blindly. The truth seems confusion and 
 illusion to you, who regard it as a lie. It is not I 
 who mock you, but yourselves mocking the truth are 
 the victims of your own mockery. That clear and 
 limpid surface returns your own distorted image 
 faithfully to you, but because it reflects your own 
 dreadful features so accurately, you are loath to be- 
 lieve that there is truth in it. To admit that truth 
 is to confess your own deformity. But he who 
 
48 IDYLLS or THE KING 
 
 would enter into the spiritual city must first see 
 himself as he really is, and so learn to cleanse him- 
 self from all taint of untruth. Unless he be so puri- 
 fied, the spiritual city will be but an illusion and a 
 mockery to him. 
 
 After Gareth has served a term in sooty kitchen 
 vassalage as a scullion at the King's court, that is, 
 after he has been profoundly exercised in the vir- 
 tues of humility and obedience, the true corner- 
 stones of the spiritual life, he is at last knighted 
 and given a quest by the King, much to the disgust 
 of Kay the Seneschal, who saw not the noble soul 
 under the disguise of the kitchen knave. At this 
 time the damsel Lynette comes to Arthur's court to 
 persuade Sir Lancelot to undertake a quest against 
 four redoubtable knights who hold her sister, Ly- 
 onors, a prisoner in the Castle Perilous, around 
 which, in three loops, runs a rapid river. At each 
 of the passes of this three-looped stream abides 
 one of the four knights to guard the ford against 
 all comers ; the fourth dwells unseen under the 
 castle walls in the horror of a mysterious silence. 
 Gareth is granted the quest, to the confusion and 
 indignation of the petulant Lynette, who had 
 asked for Arthur's greatest and most renowned 
 knight, Lancelot. Lynette, type of the vanity of 
 
GARETH AND LYNETTE 49 
 
 the world, can see no virtue in lowliness, and esti- 
 mates human worth by human appearances. 
 
 . . . And lightly was her slender nose 
 Tip-tilted like the petal of a flower. 
 
 When Arthur grants the quest to Gareth, his 
 scullion, she rides away in anger, rankling under 
 the affront she deems the King has put on her. Ga- 
 reth follows, ever answering her scorn and reviling 
 with courtesy and patience, too noble in soul to heed 
 the petulant bickering of worldly vanity or the 
 flouting' of injured pride. 
 
 After an^ adventure with bandits, in which Ga- 
 reth shows his prowess, which but piques Lynette 
 to keener railing, accounting his success mere mis- 
 hap and mischance, for the world is loath to ac- 
 knowledge virtue where it has seen only lowliness, 
 they approach the first pass, guarded by the first 
 knight of the mysterious brotherhood. The banks 
 of the stream are rough, thicketed and steep, the 
 stream itself full and narrow : 
 
 . . . . And on the further side 
 Arose a silk paviHon, gay with gold 
 In streaks and rays, and all Lent-lily in hue, 
 Save that the dome was purple, and above, 
 Crimson, a slender banneret fluttering. 
 
 MEAN, IDYLLS KING — 4 
 
50 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 The guardian of this pass calls himself the 
 Morning Star. At his command three maidens 
 " in gilt and rosy raiment," whom he terms 
 Daughters of the Dawn, approach and arm him. 
 
 These arm'd him in blue arms, and gave a shield 
 Blue also, and thereon the Morning Star. 
 And Gareth silent gazed upon the knight, 
 Who stood a moment, ere his horse was brought, 
 Glorying; and in the stream beneath him, shone, 
 Immingled with Heaven's azure waveringly, 
 The gay pavilion and the naked feet. 
 His arms, the rosy raiment, and the star. 
 
 . . . And all at fiery speed the two 
 Shock'd on the central bridge, and either spear 
 Bent, but not brake, and either knight at once, 
 Hurl'd as a stone from out a catapult 
 Beyond his horse's crupper and the bridge. 
 Fell, as if dead, but quickly rose and drew; 
 And Gareth lash'd so fiercely with his brand, 
 He drove his enemy backward down the bridge, 
 The damsel crying, "Well-stricken, kitchen knave!'* 
 Till Gareth's shield was cloven; but one stroke 
 Laid him that clove it groveling on the ground. 
 
 The Knight of the Morning Star symbolizes 
 Youth, and the gay pavilion, in which he dwells with 
 
GARETH AND LYNETTE 51 
 
 his maidens in rosy raiment, is the abode of pleasure. 
 Youth, the season of pleasure, with its tempta- 
 tions, guards the first pass of the river of life, here 
 swift and narrow, which the spiritual man in his 
 mortal journey must cross. Barring his way is the 
 Knight of the Morning Star. Him must the spir- 
 itual man vanquish. Nor is this accomplished at 
 the first onset, nor without fierce struggle. Not 
 until the Knight of the Morning Star, who is 
 strong with the wine of pleasure, is brought grovel- 
 ing to the ground is victory assured. Then is he 
 at the mercy of the spiritual man, who sends him to 
 Arthur's court, there to serve, not in wantonness 
 and lawlessness, but in virtue and subjection to the 
 King. 
 
 Upon Gareth's victory, Lynette, though still re- 
 viling the victor, sings : 
 
 O morning star (not that tall felon there 
 
 Whom thou, by sorcery or unhappiness 
 
 Or some device, hast foully overthrown), 
 
 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. 
 
 It is as the messenger of the imprisoned Lady 
 Lyonors that Lynette sings the first victory of the 
 
52 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 soul over sense. It. is not tlie morning star of 
 pleasure, not the conquered felon overthrown by 
 Gareth, whom she salutes, but the morning star of 
 the spiritual world, now risen resplendent in the 
 dawn, and presaging the final victory to come. 
 
 At the second loop the Noonday Sun stands 
 guard against their passage: 
 
 Huge, on a huge red horse, and all in mail 
 
 Burnished to blinding, shone the Noonday Sun 
 
 Beyond a raging shallow. As if the flower, 
 
 That blows a globe of after arrowlets. 
 
 Ten thousand-fold had grown, flashed the fierce shield, 
 
 All sun; and Gareth's eyes had flying blots 
 
 Before them when he turned from watching him. 
 
 "Ugh!" cried the Sun, and vizoring up a red 
 And cipher face of rounded foolishness, 
 Push'd horse across the foamings of the ford. 
 Whom Gareth met midstream : no room was th ere 
 For lance or tourney skill: four strokes they struck 
 With sword, and these were mighty; the new knight 
 Had fear he might be shamed; but as the Sun 
 Heaved up a ponderous arm to strike the fifth, 
 The hoof of his horse slipt in the stream, the stream 
 Descended, and the Sun was washed away. 
 
 The Noonday Sun, ablaze with a blinding light, 
 is the season of middle age, glowing fierce with the 
 
GARETH AND LYNETTE 53 
 
 ambitions of the world. He guards the second loop 
 of the river of life, barring its ford, a raging shal- 
 low, against the passage of the spiritual man. His 
 " cipher face of rounded foolishness " is emblematic 
 of the folly of ambition, the " vanity of vanities, 
 and all is vanity," of the wise King of Holy Writ. 
 Sharp and rough the battle with him, blow for blow, 
 buffet for buffet, until he goes under, by the over- 
 balance of his own huge strength, in the slippery 
 shallows of the stream he would hold against the 
 spiritual man. 
 
 Again Lynette sings : 
 
 O Sun (not this strong fool whom thou, Sir Knave, 
 
 Hast overthrown thro' mere unhappiness), 
 
 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. 
 
 The glory of the spiritual man's victory of the 
 morn has now risen to mid-day splendor. He who 
 has conquered the passions of youth is victorious 
 over the harsher temptations of middle age. The 
 sun of his victory shines resplendent in the mid- 
 heavens. Twice has he conquered, and the promise 
 of final victory grows in brightness. 
 
54 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 At the third loop the Knight of the Evening 
 Star stands guard. He is clothed in hardened 
 skins, that fit him like his own. These, says Lyn- 
 ette, will turn the sword even if his armor be cleaved 
 from him. Gareth declares that the same strength 
 which threw the Morning Star can throw the Even- 
 ing Star. 
 
 Then that other blew 
 A hard and deadly note upon the horn. 
 "Approach and arm me!" With slow steps from out 
 An old storm-beaten, russet, many-stained 
 Pavilion, forth a grizzled damsel came. 
 And arm'd him in old arms, and brought a helm 
 With but a drying evergreen for crest. 
 And gave a shield whereon the Star of Even, 
 Half tarnished and half bright, his emblem, shone. 
 But when it glittered o'er the saddle bow. 
 They madly hurled together on the bridge; 
 And Gareth overthrew him, lighted, drew, 
 There met him drawn, and overthrew him again, 
 But up like fire he started ; and as oft 
 As Gareth brought him groveling on his knees, 
 So many a time he vaulted up again, 
 Till Gareth panted hard, and his great heart, 
 Foredooming all his trouble was in vain. 
 Labored within him, for he seemed as one 
 That all in later, sadder age, begins 
 To war against ill uses of a life. 
 
GARETH AND LYNETTE 55 
 
 But these from all his life arise, and cry, 
 
 " Thou hast made us lords, and canst not put us down." 
 
 It is in the figure here that we have the literal 
 truth. The Knight of the Evening Star is old age, 
 encased in the toughened habits of a lifetime, fit- 
 ting like a hardened skin as close as his own. Who 
 has not overcome the passions of youth, conquered 
 the ambitions of manhood, will not subdue the 
 vicious uses of a lifetime that have become a second 
 nature in old age. He wars against the ill uses of 
 a life that have become his masters. But, as Gareth 
 declares, the strength that threw the Morning Star 
 can throw the Evening Star: 
 
 . . . . Till at length Gareth's brand 
 Clashed his, and brake it utterly to the hilt. 
 "I have thee now!" but forth that other sprang. 
 And all unknighdike, writhed his wiry arms 
 Around him, till he felt, despite his mail. 
 Strangled, but, straining ev'n his uttermost. 
 Cast, and so hurl'd him headlong o'er the bridge 
 Down to the river, sink or swim. 
 
 The virtue which overcame the Morning Star has 
 overthroAvn the Evening Star. Thrice has victory 
 shone on the spiritual man. He is conqueror at 
 
56 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 the third loop of hfe's river, where the current 
 flows broad and deep. Again Lynette sings: 
 
 O trefoil, sparkling on the rainy plain, 
 O rainbow with three colors after rain. 
 Shine sweetly : thrice my love hath smiled on me. 
 
 Gareth's threefold victory has at last beaten 
 down Lynette's worldly prejudices. She confesses 
 her shame at having reviled him. She thought the 
 King had scorned her and hers in sending one so 
 ignoble on the quest, when she had asked for the 
 noblest. Gareth replies simply that she should not 
 have doubted the King : " You said your say, mine 
 answer was the deed." Let the world revile as it 
 may, the deed is the answer of the spiritual man in 
 the service of the King. Lynette now conducts the 
 thrice victorious Gareth to a cave hard by, provided 
 by Lady Lyonors with meat and wine for her com- 
 ing champion : 
 
 Anon they past a narrow comb, wherein 
 Were slabs of rock with figures, knights on horse 
 Sculptured and deckt in slowly-waning hues. 
 " Sir Knight, my knight, a hermit once was here, 
 Whose holy hand hath fashioned on the rock 
 The war of time against the soul of man. 
 
GARETH AND LYNETTE 57 
 
 And yon four fools have sucked their allegory 
 From these damp walls, and taken but the form. 
 Know ye not these ?" And Gareth lookt and read, 
 
 " Phosphorus," then " Meridies," — " Hesperus" — 
 " Nox " — " Mors," beneath five figures, armed men 
 Slab after slab, their faces forward all. 
 And running down the Soul, a Shape that fled 
 With broken wings, torn raiment and loose hair, 
 For help and shelter to the hermit's cave. 
 
 This passage not only sounds the keynote of the 
 present Idyll in particular, but gives us the motif 
 of the entire Round Table series. The Soul in its 
 journey through Time is assailed by all the powers 
 of Sense, by the temptations of the flesh in youth, 
 by the allurements of pride in middle age, and in 
 old age by the vicious habits engendered by the past 
 indulgence of both. Pursued by the powers of evil 
 the Soul flies for help and shelter to the hermit's 
 cave, where alone she finds succor against her foes. 
 The truth shines through the allegory. It is in 
 the spiritual life that the Soul finds consolation and 
 strength to battle against the powers that would 
 destroy her. Lynette says that the four knights- — 
 fools, she calls them — against whom Gareth has 
 
58 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 undertaken the quest, have sucked their allegory 
 from the sculpture on the walls of the hermit's 
 cave. Lynette, still looking with the eyes of the 
 world, sees only a fool's allegory in the conduct of 
 the four knights who guard the passes of the river 
 and hold the Lady Lyonors prisoner. But it is the 
 figure of the actual warfare which Sense wages 
 against Soul. Just as Lynette fails to recognize 
 the true nobility of Gareth under his humble garb 
 of scullion, and only admits it after the success of 
 his arms forces her to bow to established merit, so 
 now she sees only the exterior fashion of the truth. 
 It is a fool's allegory, after all. The world is 
 blind to the warfare waged by the powers of Sense 
 against the Soul. 
 
 There yet remains another knight for Gareth to 
 overthrow before the Lady Lyonors is free ; he is 
 the fourth knight of the allegory, sometimes called 
 Nox and sometimes Mors. He is huge of limb and 
 of boundless savagery. Lynette says of him: 
 
 God wot, I never looked upon the face, 
 Seeing he never rides abroad by day; 
 But watched him have I like a phantom pass 
 Chilling the night : nor have I heard the voice. 
 Always he made his mouthpiece of a page 
 Who came and went, and still reported him 
 
GARETH AND LYNETTE 59 
 
 As closing in himself the strength of ten, 
 And when his anger tare him, massacring 
 Man, woman, lad and girl — yea, the soft babe! 
 
 But Gareth is nothing daunted by the terror of 
 Lynette's description of his antagonist. Lynette 
 trembles with fear as they approach the walls of 
 Castle Perilous, and Lancelot, who meantime has 
 joined them, feels a chill strike through his blood. 
 
 And all the three were silent, seeing, pitched 
 Beside the Castle Perilous on flat field, 
 A huge pavilion like a mountain peak 
 Sunder the glooming crimson of the marge. 
 Black, with black banner, and a long black horn 
 Beside it hanging, which Sir Gareth grasped, 
 And so, before the two could hinder him. 
 Sent all his heart and breath thro' all the horn. 
 
 But when the Prince 
 
 Three times had blown, after long hush, at last 
 The huge pavilion slowly yielded up, 
 Thro' those black foldings, that which housed therein. 
 High on a nightblack horse, in nightblack arms, 
 With white breast-bone, and barren ribs of Death, 
 And crown'd with fleshless laughter, some ten steps, 
 In the half light, thro' the dim dawn, advanced 
 The monster, and then paused and spake no word. 
 
60 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 Gareth and Death hurl together: 
 
 Then those that did not bhnk the terror, saw 
 That Death was cast to ground, and slowly rose. 
 But with one stroke Sir Gareth split the skull. 
 Half fell to right and half to left and lay. 
 Then with a stronger buffet he clove the helm 
 As throughly as the skull; and out from this 
 Issued the bright face of a blooming boy 
 Fresh as a flower new-born, and crying, "Knight, 
 Slay me not : my three brethren bade me do it, 
 To make a horror all about the house. 
 And stay the world from Lady Lyonors. 
 They never dreamed the passes would be past." 
 
 So the spiritual man who has overcome Pleasure, 
 Ambition, and their ill uses, by that same strength 
 overthrows Death. The ghastly imageries of Death 
 do not appall him, for death has fears for him only 
 who has misused life. The powers of Sense had 
 hoped to hold the Soul, whom Lady Lyonors here 
 symbolizes, prisoner against the coming of the spir- 
 itual man. They never dreamed the passes would 
 be passed. If the powers of Sense be suffered to 
 usurp all the uses of life the Soul is held in bond- 
 age, and Death rides triumphant in all the ghastly 
 imageries of that which Life has done with. It is 
 
GERAINT AND ENID 61 
 
 the knightly quest of the spiritual man to combat 
 and overcome these evil powers. Victory over 
 them makes victory over Death easy. So is Death 
 stripped of all its terrors, and only dreadful in the 
 foolish fears of the slaves of Sense: 
 
 Then sprang the happier day from iindergroimd; 
 And Lady Lyonors and her house, with dance 
 And revel and song, made merry over Death, 
 As being, after all their foolish fears 
 And horrors, only proven a blooming boy. 
 
 A happier day and a new life rise for the soul 
 upon the victory of the spiritual man. Freed from 
 the despotism of Sense and the terror of Death the 
 new order is established and the King reigns. 
 
 GERAINT AND ENID 
 
 In Geraint and Enid we hear the first note of 
 discord in the city built to music by Arthur. As yet 
 the trouble is the mere shadow of that sin of sense 
 which is to undo the great work of the King. It 
 is a brief cloud blown across an open sky, presaging 
 the distant storm, and, for the instant, shadowing 
 the summer glory of the happy fields below and 
 
62 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 hushing the song of birds. Geraint, who had 
 wedded Enid, daughter of old Earl Yniol, brought 
 his wife to court, and there rejoiced to see the com- 
 mon love between Enid and the Queen. 
 
 But when a rumor rose about the Queen, 
 Touching her guilty love for Lancelot, 
 Tho' yet there lived no proof, nor yet was heard 
 The world's loud whisper breaking into storm, 
 
 not less Geraint believed it; and there fell 
 
 A horror on him, lest his gentle wife. 
 Through that great tenderness for Guinevere, 
 Had suffered or should suffer any taint 
 In nature. 
 
 It was Lancelot who had gone to Leodogran's 
 court to escort Guinevere to King Arthur. Though 
 the betrothed of the King, her fancy was snared by 
 " the warmth and color " she found in Arthur's 
 chief knight. " That pure severity of perfect 
 light " in the spiritual man she imagined too high 
 for her, and so suffered herself to descend to the 
 lesser man. It was the rumor of this guilty love 
 that led Geraint to withdraw from court and take 
 Enid with him to his own land. There he sinks 
 into uxorious idleness, forgetful of his promise to 
 
GERAINT AND ENID 63 
 
 the King to cleanse his marches of bandit earls and 
 caitiff* knights. Enid reproaches herself as the 
 cause of her husband's idleness, now become the 
 common talk of his people. Waking from sleep one 
 morning, Geraint overhears her, in the poignancy 
 of her self-upbraiding, accusing herself: 
 
 O me^ I fear that I am no true wife ! 
 
 His fancy, haunted by the rumor of the Queen's 
 guilt, flashes into unknightly suspicion of his wife's 
 faithfulness. Seized by the rough passion of the 
 moment, he rushes off" into the wilderness on a 
 bootless quest, compelling Enid to accompany him 
 appareled in her " worst and meanest dress," in 
 which he had wooed her in the midst of broken for- 
 tunes. 
 
 In this episode of Geraint's jealous madness we 
 see how the taint of Guinevere's sin brings its bitter- 
 ness, the first dread fruits of the poison of the flesh 
 to innocent hearts, and throws its baleful shadow 
 over the happiness of guiltless souls. Geraint rides 
 madly, venting his rough mood upon the meek Enid, 
 whom he commands to absolute silence, and stub- 
 bornly refuses, in the sullen wrath of his unjust 
 suspicion, to ask her aught of explanation of her 
 
64 idylLs of the king 
 
 reproachful words. After various encounters with 
 lawless knights, they happen upon the realm of Earl 
 Doorm. Wounded in the combat with the follow- 
 ers of the riotous Limours, Geraint, OA^ercome by the 
 heat of the noonday sun, suddenly sinks uncon- 
 scious from his horse on a bank of grass by the road- 
 side. Here Earl Doorm finds him with Enid wail- 
 ing by his side, and orders him to be carried to his 
 castle hall. Earl Doorm is the antithesis of King 
 Arthur, and his riotous following the loathsome 
 opposite of the Round Table. His is the household 
 of the flesh. It is a scene of lawlessness, riot, and 
 confusion. 
 
 But in the falling afternoon returned 
 
 The huge Earl Doorm with phmder to the hall. 
 
 His histy spearmen followed him with noise: 
 
 Each hurling down a lieap of things that rang 
 
 Against the pavement, cast his lance aside^, 
 
 And doffed his helm ; and then there fluttered in 
 
 Half-bold^ half-frighted^ with dilated eyes, 
 
 A tribe of women, dress'd in many hues, 
 
 And mingled with the spearmen : And Earl Doorm 
 
 Struck with a knife's haft hard against the board, 
 
 And call'd for flesh and wine to feed his spears ; 
 
 And men brought in whole hogs and quarter beeves. 
 
 And all the hall was dim with steam of flesh : 
 
GERAINT AND ENID 65 
 
 And none spake word^, but all sat down at once, 
 And ate with tumult in the naked hall. 
 Feeding like horses when you hear them feed ; 
 Till Enid shrank far back into herself, 
 To shun the wild ways of the lawless tribe. 
 
 Earl Doorm would force Enid to eat and drink, 
 and offers to make her the mistress of his lawless 
 household, one with the creatures around his board, 
 gay with the meretricious splendor of their shame. 
 Upon Enid's loathing refusal, the ruffian smites 
 her on the cheek, and at her plaintive cry, Geraint, 
 having regained consciousness, starts up, and with 
 one stroke severs Doorm's head from his body. 
 Amidst the consternation and confusion that fol- 
 low, Geraint and Enid take to horse and escape, 
 and meet Arthur on his way to deliver judgment 
 against the lawless earl. 
 
 Geraint's unworthy suspicion of Enid's faith, 
 his obstinate pride, urging him to a foolish quest, 
 wherein he brought shame and danger to Enid with 
 both the lawless Limours and the brutal Doorm, 
 were evidence of a man not fully spiritualized, of a 
 knight who had not become complete master of him- 
 self. Arthur rebukes him for his headlong quest, 
 which he had undertaken, not for the King's cause 
 
 MEAN. IDYLLS KING 5 
 
66 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 and the sake of justice, but out of the caprice of his 
 own narrow and falsely jealous pride. Who con- 
 quers himself, says the King, is the true Knight of 
 the Round Table. 
 
 A thousandfold more great and wonderful 
 Than if some knight of mine^ risking his life, 
 My subject with my subjects under him. 
 Should make an onslaught single on a realm 
 Of robbers, tho' he slew them one by one, 
 And were himself nigh wounded to the death. 
 
 In Edyrn, Geraint's former rival, whom the lat- 
 ter had overthrown in the height of his pride, we see 
 one who has by grace and will plucked " the vicious 
 quitch of blood and custom wholly out of him." 
 After his overthrow by Geraint, he learns the essen- 
 tial lessons of humility and obedience at Arthur's 
 court, and becomes one of the noblest, most valorous, 
 sanest, and most obedient of the King's knights. 
 
 In the story of Geraint and Enid we see the be- 
 ginnings of the tragedy which culminates in the 
 destruction of the Round Table. As yet the evil 
 has not taken visible shape ; it is still a mere rumor. 
 
 Not yet was heard 
 
 The world's loud whisper breaking into storm. 
 
BALIN AND BALAN 67 
 
 But it is the shadow of sin falling upon blameless 
 souls, the black passion of the flesh gathering the 
 wrath of the storm to come. Its breath has passed 
 over the tranquil surface of pure souls and shatters 
 the calm image of heaven mirrored there. Geraint 
 suff*ers through the noisome presence of Lancelot's 
 sin. Its dark shadow has driven the sunlight from 
 his soul, and, not being fully spiritualized, the evil 
 seed strikes bitter root in his heart. In the gross 
 household of Earl Doorm we discover a picture of 
 the very antithesis of the Round Table. Here the 
 sensual man has full sway; his unbridled passions 
 are the ruling forces of his soul, and he passes his 
 years in riot and confusion, all law broken to whim 
 and caprice and sin. It is a picture of all that 
 obtains where the spiritual man does not reign. 
 
 BALIN AND BALAN 
 
 In Balin and Balan we are introduced to a still 
 darker phase of the tragedy, which had for the 
 moment so deeply engloomed the lives of Geraint 
 and Enid. It marks the transition of the sin of 
 sense into the sin of malice in the baleful appear- 
 ance of Vivien upon the scene, tempting and urging 
 
68 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 on the distraught Bahn to his own destruction. 
 Sir Balin, whose savage nature is wont to flame into 
 sudden heats of passion, seeks to overcome the vio- 
 lence of his disposition under the courtly discipline 
 of Arthur's hall : 
 
 And all the knights 
 
 Approved him, and the Queen, and all the world 
 Made music, and he felt his being move 
 In music with his Order and the King. 
 
 But chancing one day upon Sir Lancelot and the 
 Queen he sees the more than courtesy that passes 
 between them, and is awakened to a suspicion of the 
 faithlessness of the two noblest and highest in 
 Arthur's court. 
 
 And in him gloom on gloom 
 Deepened: he sharply caught his lance and shield, 
 Nor stayed to crave permission of the King, 
 But, mad for strange* adventure, dashed away. 
 
 After his adventure at King Pellam's court — 
 wherein we have a picture of the external show of 
 spirituality without its soul ^ — Balin comes upon 
 Vivien in the forest. Under the subtle malice of 
 her words, pouring the poison of calumny into his 
 already suspicious soul, she rouses him to a blind 
 fury: 
 
MERLIN AND VIVIEN 69 
 
 She ceased; his evil spirit upon him leapt; 
 He ground his teeth together, sprang with a yell, 
 Tore from the branch, and cast on earth, the shield. 
 Drove his mailed heel athwart the royal crown. 
 Stamped all into defacement, hurl'd it from him 
 Among the forest weeds, and cursed the tale, 
 The told-of, and the teller. 
 
 His brother, Sir Balan, riding in quest of Sir 
 Garlon, the invisible knight who slew others un- 
 aware, takes Sir Balin, now without his shield, for 
 the "Wood Devil" he came to quell. The brothers 
 rush together in onset and either slays the other, 
 while Vivien rides mockingly away.^' The beast 
 in the man let loose in Sir Balin's breast, awakened 
 by the apprehension of the faithlessness of Guine- 
 vere and Sir Lancelot, throws off all restraint 
 under the lash of Vivien's words, and blindly hurls 
 itself and others to destruction. 
 
 MERLIN AND VIVIEN^ 
 
 In Merlin and Vivien, the subtlest and most 
 highly wrought of the Idylls, is brought into view 
 still another element working to the destruction of 
 
70 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 the spiritual order. Heretofore we have seen only the 
 sin of sense diffusing its poison through the mem- 
 bership of the Round Table. Envy and treachery, 
 the sin of sense become the sin of malice, now begin 
 their work of undermining the spiritual founda- 
 tions of Arthur's kingdom. Mark, King of Corn- 
 wall, "the scorn of Arthur and his Table," is the 
 type of the crime of malice, as Doorm is the ex- 
 emplar of the lawless brutal passions. The exalted 
 ideal of purity and justice, the spiritual standard 
 to which Arthur swore his knights with such 
 straight vows, stirred the vilest dregs of Mark's 
 vicious nature to seething hatred. The height to 
 which he could not climb he railed against, the 
 virtue he possessed not he mocked and scoffed at, 
 and doubted all men pure, who knew himself 
 impure : 
 
 This Arthur pure! 
 
 Great Nature, through the flesh herself hath made. 
 Gives him the He! There is no being pure, 
 My cherub. Saith not Holy Writ the same ? 
 
 The wily Vivien, a creature of his own craft, to 
 whom, as to Mark, virtue was but the mask of vice, 
 a soul fashioned after Mark's own malicious will, a 
 scoffer and a hater of purity, her, — too willing tool 
 
MERLIN AND VIVIEN 71 
 
 of the Cornish King's mahce, — Mark instigates to 
 go to Arthur's court to spread the contagion of her 
 vileness. 
 
 Here are snakes within the grass ; 
 And you, methinks, O Vivien, save ye fear 
 The monkish manhood, and the mask of pure 
 Worn by this court, can stir them till they sting. 
 
 Vivien makes her boast: 
 
 I bring thee back. 
 When I have ferreted out their burrovi^ings. 
 The hearts of all this Order in mine hand — 
 Ay — so that fate and craft and folly close. 
 Perchance, one curl of Arthur's golden beard. 
 
 So Vivien seeks Arthur's court and there 
 subtly, cunningly, treacherously spreads her toils 
 for the Knights of the Round Table, and even seeks 
 to tempt the blameless King himself. 
 
 Then as Arthur in the highest 
 Leaven'd the world, so Vivien in the lowest. 
 Arriving at a time of golden rest. 
 And sowing one ill hint from ear to ear. 
 While all the heathen lay at Arthur's feet. 
 And no quest came, but all was joust and play, 
 Leaven'd his hall. They heard and let her be. 
 
72 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 Vivien, balked in her malicious design, withdraws 
 from court. But, not to be thwarted, she sets her- 
 self with infinite guile to ensnare Merlin : 
 
 And after that she set herself to gain 
 
 Him, the most famous man of all those times. 
 
 Merlin is the type of wisdom, the eyes of the soul. 
 He is the argus-eyed sage guarding the treasures 
 of the spiritual kingdom. If Vivien can but put 
 him to sleep under the charm of woven paces and 
 waving hands, then will she have worked her work 
 and gained her end. For, until Merlin be overcome, 
 in vain do the powers of sense or malice assault the 
 spiritual kingdom. 
 
 Then fell on Merlin a great melancholy; 
 
 He walked with dreams and darkness, and he found 
 
 A doom that ever poised itself to fall, 
 
 An ever-moaning battle in the mist. 
 
 World-war of dying flesh against the life. 
 
 Death in all life, and lying in all love, 
 
 The meanest having power upon the highest 
 
 And the high purpose broken by the worm. 
 
 Here is wisdom foreseeing the wrath of the time 
 to come, sown by the sins of the present. In the 
 
MERLIN AND VIVIEN 73 
 
 mirror of his prescience, Merlin sees reflected dimly 
 the dreadful image of the monster spawn of the 
 Queen's unfaithfulness, and the presage of his own 
 doom in the gloom of that dreadful shadow. 
 
 Vivien follows Merlin in his dark mood to the 
 woods of Broceliande, and there plies the sage with 
 all her wiles to extort from him the secret of the 
 charm of woven paces and waving hands, giving 
 power, to whomsoever uses it, to put him into a deep 
 sleep, wherein he lies as dead to all save the one who 
 exercises the secret charm. In the episode between 
 Merlin and Vivien we see the world-old story of 
 Samson and Delilah, Solomon and the corrupter 
 of his wisdom. Flattering, cajoling, playing upon 
 his pity, praying a compensating word for her in- 
 jured innocence, sighing over her abused virtue, 
 which she has too confidingly intrusted to him, 
 abandoning herself to his honor, throwing herself, 
 on his mercy, petulant, playful, prayerful, tearful, 
 meek, indignant, now all passion and now all ice, 
 now letting her lissome beauty burst glorious in the 
 sunlight of her smile, now making it rainbow 
 through the lucent tears that his harsh upbraiding 
 draws from the fountains of her melted eyes, she at 
 last wrests the fateful secret from him, overtalked 
 and overworn : 
 
74 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 . And what should not have been had been, 
 For MerUn, overtalked and overworn, 
 Had yielded, told her all the charm, and slept. 
 Then, in one moment, she put forth the charm 
 Of woven paces and of waving hands, 
 And in the hollow oak he lay as dead. 
 And lost to life and use and name and fame. 
 
 The charm of woven paces and waving hands is 
 that sensual draught of forgetfulness which brings 
 Lethe upon the soul that has once relaxed its vig- 
 ilance over its higher faculties and has become im- 
 mersed in the things of sense. Merlin has yielded : 
 the wisdom, upon whose vigilance the integrity of 
 the spiritual kingdom depends, has been put to 
 sleep. Vivien, the masked image of Mark's hate, 
 the personification of the crime of sense become the 
 crime of malice, lust become hate, has extinguished 
 the light of wisdom in the soul and sown the death 
 to come. Of herself she says : 
 
 . . . . Born from death was I 
 Among the dead and sown upon the wind. 
 
 She would drag down to her own vile level the 
 pure and virtuous even as the hags in Doorm's 
 
LANCELOT AND ELAINE 75 
 
 household would have helped him to drag Enid 
 down : 
 
 . . . Whose souls, the old serpent long had drawn 
 Down as the worm draws in the withered leaf 
 And makes it earth. 
 
 LANCELOT AND ELAINE 
 
 Now that the light of wisdom has been extin- 
 guished in the soul, the deadly work of corruption 
 goes on more rapidly. 
 
 In the story of Elaine, the darkness that is slowly 
 drawing near Arthur's court grows deeper as the 
 Queen's sin spreads its poison amongst the Knights 
 of the Round Table. Its somber gloom had fallen 
 athwart the lives of Geraint and Enid to cloud them 
 but not to blast them. Upon the innocent Elaine 
 the black thunderbolt fell and killed. She loved 
 Lancelot, the guilty lover of the guilty Queen, from 
 whose crime of sense issued the sin of malice, bring- 
 ing that corruption which is death. Lancelot had 
 won in tourney eight of the nine diamonds plucked 
 from the crown of the dead king chanced upon by 
 Arthur beside the lonely tarn. These the King had 
 set up as prizes to be j ousted for, one every year : 
 
76 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 For so, by nine years' proof, we needs must learn 
 Which is our mightiest, and ourselves shall grow 
 In use of arms and manhood, till we drive 
 The heathen, who, some say, shall rule the land 
 Hereafter, which God hinder. 
 
 Did he win the ninth, Lancelot designed to pre- 
 sent the Queen with the completed circlet. But the 
 ninth proves a baleful prize for Arthur's chiefest 
 knight, for, attending the lists in disguise, that not 
 the prowess of his name but sheer skill of arms may 
 win for him, he is gravely wounded. Elaine nurses 
 him through the long sickness of his wound, and 
 through her gentle care brings him back to life from 
 the shadows of death. Her innocence, her beauty, 
 her purity, and her sweet tenderness half win him 
 from his guilty passion. 
 
 And peradventure had he seen her first 
 
 She might have made this and that other world 
 
 Another world for the sick man; but now 
 
 The shackles of an old love straitened him, 
 
 His honor rooted in dishonor stood. 
 
 And faith unfaithful made him falsely true. 
 
 Lancelot's sin clings to him like some poisonous 
 vine to the oak, stifling all the sturdy growth of his 
 manhood and sending its noisome humor into his 
 
LANCELOT AND ELAINE 77 
 
 blood. He rejects the pure love of Elaine for the 
 unhallowed passion of Guinevere, and loves not as 
 the King had ordained his knights should love. So 
 the Queen's false love undoes the work of the Round 
 Table, and Arthur's nearest and best prove traitors 
 to his house. 
 
 The death of Elaine and the petulant jealousy of 
 the Queen drive the sword of remorse deep into 
 Lancelot's soul. He wrestles with the demon of his 
 sin, a noble soul fighting a great vice : 
 
 For what am I ? What profits me my name 
 Of greatest knight ? I fought for it, and have it: 
 Pleasure to have it, none; to lose it, pain; 
 Now grown a part of me: but what use in it ? 
 To make men worse by making my sin known. 
 Or sin seem less, the sinner seeming great ? 
 
 But Lancelot does not come out victor in the 
 struggle with himself. Name and fame, trumpeted 
 in men's mouths, are yet dear to him, and he has not 
 the spiritual hardihood to pluck the vice out of his 
 blood that holds him in guilty bondage to the 
 Queen. Instead of wresting himself with violence 
 from his passion, he weakly puts his will in the 
 Queen's keeping. If she will it, then will he 
 consent to break the bonds that so defame him. 
 
78 IDYIJ.S or THE KING 
 
 Lancelot is not spiritualized enough to be free. In 
 spite of his great effort to release himself from this 
 degrading dominion of passion, the vacillating 
 effort of a half desire to hold to his sin keeps him 
 an ignoble prisoner to his shame. 
 
 So the current of iniquity sweeps onward, broad- 
 ening as it flows, its bitter source the poisoned fount 
 of the Queen's guilty love. All that fair life, 
 builded up to the music of order and justice into 
 the spiritual city, is seeping into ruins. The canker 
 is eating into the heart of the Round Table. First 
 comes Geraint's foolish trouble, nearly wrecking his 
 own and Enid's happiness. Then out of the dead 
 fruit of Guinevere's unholy passion, like the worm 
 out of corruption, is begot the crime of malice, 
 and Vivien throws the fatal toils of her treachery 
 about the soul, putting wisdom, its sentinel, to sleep 
 forever. Elaine falls a pure victim to its blight. 
 She comes to Camelot in the silence of death, "like 
 a star in blackest night," bearing mute testimony 
 to the death to come that has been sown by that 
 fatal sin of sense. 
 
 So Arthur bade the meek Sir Percivale 
 
 And pure Sir Galahad to uplift the maid, 
 
 And reverently tliey bore her into hall. 
 
 Then came the fine Gawain and wondered at her. 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL 79 
 
 And Lancelot later came and mused at her, 
 And last the Queen herself and pitied her. 
 
 Elaine's pure love, slain by that guilty love of 
 Lancelot, is the first deadly fruit of Guinevere's 
 failure to love the highest when she saw it. And 
 all the court wondered at her, the fine Gawain, 
 light o' love, and Lancelot, knowing his own sin 
 to be the cause of this fair lily's blight, and the 
 Queen, whose jealous passion had raged against 
 her, whose purity in death shone so fair beside 
 Guinevere's soiled splendor; but none may touch 
 her, save the meek Sir Percivale and the pure Sir 
 Galahad. And her coming was a silent judgment 
 upon the Queen and Lancelot, the fairness of her 
 purity a reproach to the blackness of their sin 
 " like a star in blackest night." 
 
 THE HOLY GRAIL 
 
 None may see the Holy Grail but the utterly 
 pure. Whomsoever sin has tainted, or the love of 
 earthly things holds in bondage, to him the Holy 
 Cup, symbol of spiritual contemplation, will never 
 be manifest.** 
 
 Of all Arthur's knights, most of whom rashly 
 
80 ' IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 swore the vow of the quest of the Holy Grail, but 
 one saw fully, and but two caught a fleeting glimpse 
 of the Sacred Object. The King upbraids his 
 knights for their rash presumption in swearing to 
 undertake a quest beyond their powers. Such a 
 quest becomes Sir Galahad, a knight of utter 
 purity, and Percivale ranging next to him, but it 
 is not given to everyone to pursue that high vision 
 till its rapt ecstasy snatch him up to the City of 
 the Saints. 
 
 "What are ye ? Galahads ? No, nor Percivales." 
 
 . . . "Nay," said he, "but men 
 With strength and will to right the wronged, of power 
 To lay the sudden heads of violence flat. 
 Knights that in twelve great battles splashed and dyed 
 The strong White Horse in his own heathen blood — 
 But one hath seen, and all the blind will see." 
 
 In this kingdom of the Soul it is not for all to be 
 contemplatives, to transcend the active life in vision 
 of the unveiled truth. The few alone become so 
 perfectly spiritualized as to see the truth unveiled. 
 It is in the active life that most are called to work 
 out their perfection, and rash and presumptuous is 
 he who would follow the Holy Grail, deserting the 
 work at hand when not expressly called to the 
 higher life. 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL 81 
 
 Sir Galahad, whom "God had made as good as he 
 was beautiful," is the perfectly spiritualized man, 
 who sees the vision, and, rapt in ecstasy, follows it 
 and passes to the higher life a Sir Percivale, who 
 also undertakes the Holy Quest, sees the Holy Grail 
 only after he has been cleansed of the sins that 
 stain his soul. He had not lost himself to find 
 himself as Galahad, and not until he had purged 
 his soul of self and donned the lowly garment of 
 humility. 
 
 The highest virtue, mother of them all, 
 
 was the veil of grossness lifted from before his e^^es. 
 He had set out upon the quest in a spirit of self- 
 elation. He had come off the victor in the tourna- 
 ment of the day before, and started upon the search 
 with the pride of his victory lifting up his soul : 
 
 And I was Hfted up in heart, and thought 
 
 Of all my late shown prowess in the lists; 
 
 How my strong lance had beaten down the knights. 
 
 Many and famous names. 
 
 With his heart full of pride, he went forth on 
 the quest; but fruitlessly, for his vice had blinded 
 him : 
 
 Thereafter, the dark warning of our King, 
 That most of us would follow wandering fires, 
 
 MEAN. IDYl.L?; KING— G 
 
82 IDYLLS or THE KING 
 
 Came like a driving gloom athwart my mind. 
 
 Then every evil word I had spoken once, 
 
 And every evil thought I had thought of old, 
 
 And every evil deed I ever did, 
 
 Awoke and cried, "This quest is not for thee!" 
 
 And lifting up mine eyes I found myself 
 
 Alone, and in a land of sand and thorns; 
 
 And I was thirsty even unto death; 
 
 And I, too, cried, "This quest is not for thee!" 
 
 Percivalc has become conscious of the barrenness 
 of his own soul; it is a land of sand and thorns, a 
 desert land where grows no fruit. Wheresoever he 
 goes, there does he find an image of the desolation 
 in his own soul, whatsoever he touches falls into 
 dust: 
 
 But even while I drank the brook and ate 
 The goodly apples, all these things at once 
 Fell into dust and I was left alone. 
 And thirsting, in a land of sand and thorns. 
 
 In the midst of his bootless wanderings he comes 
 across 
 
 A holy hermit in a hermitage. 
 
 To whom I told my phantoms, and he said: 
 
 "O son, thou hast not true humility, 
 
 The highest virtue, mother of them all; 
 
 For when the Lord of all things made Himself 
 
 Naked of glory for His mortal change, 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL 83 
 
 'Take thou my robe,' she said, 'for all is thine.' 
 And all her form shone forth with sudden light. 
 So that the angels were amazed and she 
 Followed Him down, and like a flying star 
 I^ed on the gray -haired wisdom of the East; 
 But her thou hast not known: for what is this 
 Thou thoughtest of thy prowess and thy sins ? 
 Thou hast not lost thyself to save thyself 
 As Galahad." 
 
 Humility is the all essential virtue to spiritual 
 insight. Not until Percivale has purged his soul of 
 the gro$sness of pride may he see the Holy Grail. 
 But Galahad saw from the beginning. With him 
 the eyes of the soul have never been blinded by sin, 
 and the Holy Grail, the spiritual vessel, was ever 
 present to him : 
 
 . . . And in the strength of this I rode. 
 
 Shattering all evil customs everywhere. 
 
 And passed through pagan realms and made them mine, 
 
 And clashed with pagan hordes and bore them down. 
 
 And broke through all, and in the strength of this 
 
 Come victor. 
 
 In the presence of Sir Percivale he mystically 
 passes into the higher life. At the sanje moment the 
 Sacred Vessel becomes visible to Percivale himself: 
 
84 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 And thrice above him all the heavens 
 Opened and blazed with thunder, such as seemed 
 Shouting of all the sons of God : and first 
 At once I saw him far on the great sea 
 In silver shining armor starry clear. 
 And o'er his head the Holy Vessel hung, 
 Clothed in white samite or a luminous cloud, 
 And with exceeding swiftness ran the boat. 
 
 And o'er his head the Holy Vessel hung, 
 
 Redder than any rose, a joy to me, 
 
 For now I knew the veil had been withdrawn. 
 
 This glimpse of the Holy Vessel sets Pcrcivalc's 
 soul aflame with an unquenchable desire for the 
 things of the spiritual world, and abandoning the 
 haunts of men he passes into the silent life. 
 
 And so with the other knights who undertake the 
 quest of the Holy Grail. In proportion to their 
 spirituality do they enjoy the sacred vision. 
 
 Sir Lancelot, who had undertaken the sacred 
 quest in the hope of ridding himself of his great sin, 
 gets the merest glimpse of the Holy Vessel veiled. 
 He recounts to the King: 
 
 . . . But in me lived a sin 
 
 So strange, of such a kind, that all of pure, 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL 85 
 
 Noble and knightly in me twined and clung 
 Round that one sin, until the wholesome flow^er 
 And poisonous grew together, each as each, 
 Not to be plucked asunder; and when thy knights 
 Sware, I sware with them only in the hope 
 That could I touch or see the Holy Grail 
 They might be plucked asunder. 
 
 The madness of his sin seizes upon him at the 
 very outset, the rage of the remorseful struggle 
 between his better and his lower self. Unlike Tris- 
 tram, Lancelot never abandons himself to the lusts 
 of the flesh nor accepts the doctrine of free-love as 
 the gospel of his conduct. He clings to his sin, it 
 is true, with affection — and this is the radical vice 
 of his tentative efforts at repentance — but he sees 
 the wrong, deplores it bitterly, and strives in a way 
 to battle against it. Yet he lacks the entire will to 
 eradicate it, and therefore the ignominious failure 
 of his quest, whose achievement is granted only to 
 the pure in heart. His great sin drains him of even 
 his wonted prowess, and he falls before the lances of 
 lesser knights in his wanderings : 
 
 There was I beaten down by little men, 
 Mean knights, to whom the moving of my sword 
 And shadow of my spear had been enow 
 To scare them from me once. 
 
86 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 He comes at length, after drifting seven days and 
 nights upon the sea in a Httle boat, to the enchanted 
 castle of Carbonek: 
 
 A castle like a rock upon a rock, 
 
 With chasm-like portals open to the sea 
 
 And steps that met the breaker. 
 
 Two great beasts bar the entrance. They will 
 tear to pieces him who doubts, but the man of 
 faith — and such is Lancelot, though a sinner — is 
 suffered to enter. None may pass into the spiritual 
 house, wherein the Holy Grail abides, save he who 
 is panoplied in the armor of faith. Had Tristram 
 or Gawain essayed, either would have been torn 
 piecemeal by the two lions. Lancelot, on entering, 
 hears a sweet voice singing in the topmost tower to 
 the eastward : 
 
 . . . Up I climbed a thousand steps 
 With pain ; as in a dream I seemed to climb 
 Forever : at the last I reached a door ; 
 A light was in the crannies, and I heard, 
 "Glory and joy and honor to our Lord 
 And to the Holy Vessel of the Grail." 
 Then in my madness I essayed the door; 
 It gave; and thro' a stormy glare, a heat 
 As from a seven-times heated furnace, I, 
 
THE HOLY GRAIL 87 
 
 Blasted and burnt, and blinded as I was, 
 With such a fierceness that I swooned away — 
 O, yet methought I saw the Holy Grail, 
 All pall'd in crimson samite, and around 
 Great angels, awful shapes, and wings and eyes. 
 And but for all my madness and my sin, 
 And then my swooning, I had sworn I saw 
 That which I saw ; but what I saw was veil'd 
 And cover'd; and this quest was not for me. 
 
 Impure of heart, Lancelot would have achieved 
 the quest by violence, but is smitten down, burned 
 and blasted for his rashness. Yet, insomuch as he 
 still aspires to higher things, even in the slough of 
 his sin, he is vouchsafed a glimpse of the Holy 
 Vessel, but veiled and covered, a prevenient grace to 
 move him to that life of penance which, in the old 
 Romance, he afterward followed with ardor and 
 wholesome sincerity.^ 
 
 When Arthur reproaches his knights with having 
 sworn hastily and rashly to undertake the quest of 
 the Holy Grail, inasmuch as they were not all Gala- 
 hads nor Percivales, and therefore not destined to 
 the higher life, he tells them that he himself would 
 not have sworn the vow had he been present when 
 the Holy Grail flashed upon the vision of the as- 
 sembled Order of the Round Table ; for it behooves 
 
88 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 the King to remain at the plow, like tlic hind to 
 whom is given his allotted space of land, and who 
 may not desert his task until his work be done : 
 
 . . . But being done, 
 Let visions of the night or of the day 
 Come, as they will; and many a time they come. 
 Until this earth he walks on seems not earth, 
 This light that strikes his eyeball is not light, 
 This air that smites his forehead is not air, 
 But vision — yea, his very hand and foot — 
 In moments when he feels he cannot die, 
 And knows himself no vision to himself. 
 Nor the high God a vision, nor that One 
 Who rose again. 
 
 Tliis is the King's — the spiritual man's — asser- 
 tion of the eternal truth and reality of the spiritual 
 life as against the evanescent contingencies of tem- 
 poral things. At the same time, it is the declara- 
 tion of the duty of the spiritual man, excepting 
 Galahads and Percivales, who are especially called, 
 to fulfill his appointed task in the round of years 
 allotted to him, and to await, in patience, release 
 from the bonds of time. True life is in the con- 
 summation of the Divine presence b}" faith in Him 
 who rose again ; there, the substance of the spirit- 
 ual life, and its last fruition. 
 
PEI.LEAS AND ETTARllE 89 
 
 Gawain not only has not seen but scoffs at the 
 don : 
 
 "By mine eyes and by mine ears I swear, 
 I will be deafer than the bhie-eyed cat, 
 And thrice as blind as any noon-day owl 
 To holy virgins in their ecstasies 
 Henceforward." 
 
 "Deafer," said the blameless king, 
 "Gawain, and blinder unto holy things, 
 Hope not to make thyself by idle vows. 
 Being too blind to have desire to see." 
 
 PELLEAS AND ETTARRE 
 
 This is the same Gawain who swore to aid Sir 
 Pelleas in winning the love of the cruel Ettarre. 
 Sir Pelleas's soul is aflame with the ideal of knight- 
 hood and love. He says to Arthur : 
 
 Make me thy knight, because I know, Sir King. 
 All that belongs to knighthood, and I love. 
 
 At the court of Arthur he seeks the realization of 
 his fine ideal. The perfect image of true love and 
 the chivalrous life burns in his soul, and he but 
 seeks their realization in the offices of the Round 
 
90 IDYLLS or THE KING 
 
 Table. The Queen, in his youthful eyes, is the fair 
 model of his lady love, whom he is yet to find : 
 
 Where ? 
 
 O where ? I love thee, the' I know thee not. 
 For fair thou art and pure as Guinevere, 
 And I will make thee with my spear and sword 
 As famous, O my Queen, my Guinevere, 
 For I will be thine Arthur when we meet. 
 
 On the way to the court he meets Ettarre, also 
 traveling thither, and pours out upon her the great 
 abundance of his pent-up love. 
 
 And Pelleas looked 
 
 Noble among the noble, for he dreamed 
 
 His lady loved him, and he knew himself 
 
 Loved of the King; and him his new-made knight 
 
 Worshipt, whose lightest whisper moved him more 
 
 Than all the ranged reasons of the world. 
 
 The petulance and cruelty of Ettarre are to him 
 but the chivalrous trials of love, to be borne cour- 
 teously and submissively by the knight who would 
 win the guerdon of his lady's faith. Ettarre is 
 only a weaker Vivien. She hates the King and his 
 knighthood. The loyal persistence of Pelleas, in his 
 service to win her love, enrages her. She mocks him 
 and rails at him, thrice thrusting him out of door, 
 
PELLEAS AND ETTARRE 91 
 
 bound and humiliated, but he still believes that she 
 is only testing his knightly loyalty. It is only when 
 he finds himself betrayed by Gawain that he awak- 
 ens to the hideous reality of her falseness and wan- 
 tonness. When he discovers the false Ettarre and 
 her brutish crew slumbering after their red-revel 
 in their golden-peaked pavilions, and Gawain a 
 traitor in the midst of them, the very framework 
 of his being is shattered, and he bursts out in a 
 storm of agonized reproach: 
 
 . . . . O towers so strong, 
 
 Huge, solid, would that even while T gaze, 
 
 The crack of earthquake shivering to your base 
 
 Split you, and hell burst up your harlot roofs 
 
 Bellowing, and charred you thro' and thro' within, 
 
 Black as the harlot's heart, hollow as a skull! 
 
 Frenzied and maddened, he rushes from the pol- 
 luting sight, and in his headlong precipitancy 
 meets Lancelot, 
 
 Riding airily. 
 
 Warm with a gracious parting from the Queen, 
 
 On whom the boy 
 
 Across the silent-seeded meadow-grass 
 
 Borne, clashed: And Lancelot, saying, "What name 
 
 hast thou 
 That ridest here so blindly and so hard ?" 
 
92 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 "No name, no name," he shouted; " a scourge am I 
 
 To lash the treasons of the Table Round." 
 
 "Yea, but thy name?" "I have many names," he cried. 
 
 "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." 
 
 Pelleas, in his madness, is but the dire image of 
 Lancelot's sin. He typifies the sensual man blown 
 about by the fury of his own passions, a poisonous 
 wind, to blast and kill. Passion is a fury, and 
 drives its victims forever on the wings of eternal 
 blasts, a picture presented to us by Dante in that 
 circle of the Inferno where Francesca and Paolo 
 bemoan their sin, where 
 
 The stormy blast of hell 
 
 With restless fury drives the spirits on, 
 
 Whirled round and dashed amain with sore annoy. 
 
 Pelleas, after his overthrow by Lancelot, breaks 
 headlong into the hall in the presence of Guine- 
 vere and her knight and dames, and the Queen offers 
 consolation to the stricken youth, saying : 
 
 "Or hast thou other griefs ? If I, the Queen, 
 
 May help them, loose thy tongue, and let me know." 
 
PELLEAS AND ETTARRE 93 
 
 But Pel leas lifted up an eye so fierce 
 
 She quailed, and he, hissing "T have no sword," 
 
 Sprang from the door into the dark. The Queen 
 
 Looked hard upon her lover, he on her, 
 
 x\nd each foresaw the dolorous day to be; 
 
 And all talk died, as in a grove all song 
 
 Beneath the shadow of some bird of prey; 
 
 Then a long silence came upon the hall, 
 
 And Modred thought, "The time is hard at hand." 
 
 Until now the sin of Lancelot and the Queen had 
 been working in the veins, subtly and silently poi- 
 soning and sowing the seed of the wrath to come. 
 In the Idyll of Pelleas and Ettarre it at last bursts 
 forth in fury, and the foul ensample drawn from 
 noble names makes pollution throughout the land. 
 Modred, the traitor, has been waiting the fatal 
 hour when he might strike, in the assurance that 
 the sin of the flesh has undermined the fair structure 
 of the Round Table. In Geraint and Enid the 
 shadow of the great sin had fallen ominously but 
 not fatally ; in Balm and Balan it leads to violence, 
 and disaster in the slaughter of the two brothers; 
 in Pelleas and Ettarre it blasts the great ideal of 
 the Round Table and rolls its black wave to the 
 foot of the throne itself; in The Last Tournament 
 its murky waters rise to engulf all. 
 
94 IDYLLS or THE KING 
 
 THE LAST TOURNAMENT 
 
 When Arthur was made one with Guinevere by 
 Dubric, the high priest, the world was white with 
 May ; it was the springtime, the season of the blos- 
 som and the promise of the fullness of the time to 
 come. The chronological setting of The Last 
 Tournament is in the season of the yellowing woods 
 and the falling leaf, and we find King Arthur fight- 
 ing his last great battle in the west, 
 
 . . . That day when the great light of heaven 
 Burn'd at his lowest in the rolling year. 
 
 This temporal framework is the external symbol- 
 ism of the seasons of human life, the spiritual 
 passage through the avenues of time from birth to 
 death : 
 
 From the great deep to the great deep he goes. 
 
 It is also the symbol of the moral growth and then 
 the decadence of the Round Table through the 
 corrupting influence of the Queen's great sin. The 
 sad presage of dying nature in Autumn's melan- 
 choly englooms the events of the last tournament 
 
THE LAST TOURNAMENT 95 
 
 given by Arthur, the " Tournament of the Dead 
 Innocence." 
 
 The prize is a carcanet of rubies found about the 
 neck of a maiden babe rescued by Arthur and Lance- 
 lot from an eagle's nest. The babe is given to 
 Guinevere to rear, but dies, and the Queen, deliver- 
 ing the necklace to the King, says : 
 
 Take thou the jewels of this dead innocence^ 
 And make them, an thou wilt, a tourney-prize. 
 
 Perchance — who knows ? — the purest of thy knights 
 May. win them for the purest of my maids 
 
 Guinevere's words are interpreted into a broad 
 irony by Tristram's winning the carcanet of rubies, 
 Tristram, the lover of Isolt, the wife of King Mark, 
 and the faithless husband of Isolt of Brittany. 
 Dagonet, the King's jester, makes fine raillery over 
 the untoward outcome of the Tournament of the 
 Dead Innocence, in his reply to the caviling 
 Tristram : 
 
 But Dagonet, with one foot poised in his hand, 
 " Friend, did ye mark that fountain yesterday 
 Made to run wine ? But this had run itself 
 All out like a long life to a sour end ; 
 
96 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 And them that round it sate with golden cups 
 
 To hand the wine to wliosoever came — 
 
 The twelve small damosels white as Innocence, 
 
 In honor of poor Innocence the babe, 
 
 Who left the gems which Innocence the Queen 
 
 Lent to the King, and Innocence the King 
 
 Gave for a prize — and one of those white slips 
 
 Handed her cup, and piped, the pretty one, 
 
 ' Drink, drink, Sir Fool,' and thereupon I drank, 
 
 Spat — pish — ^the cup was gold, the draught was mud." 
 
 Yes, it is the last tournament, the tournament of 
 the dead innocence of Guinevere, fittingly won by 
 Tristram, the free-lover. The golden cup of 
 Arthur's table now holds but the muddy lees of 
 Lancelot's and her sin. Tristram now openly pro- 
 claims the doctrine of lust : 
 
 Free love — free field — we love but while we may ; 
 The woods are hushed, their music is no more ; 
 The leaf is dead, the yearning past away : 
 New leaf, new life, the days of frost are o'er ; 
 New life, new love, to suit the newer day : 
 New loves are sweet as those that went before ; 
 Free love — free field — ^we love but while we may. 
 
 Tristram expostulates with Dagonct, the King's 
 jester, for not dancing to the music of his song. 
 
THE LAST TOURNAMENT 97 
 
 And while he twanged^ Httle Dagonet stood 
 
 Quiet as any water-sodden log 
 
 Stayed in the wandering warble of a brook. 
 
 Dagonet declares that there is no music in Tris- 
 tram's harping. It is nothing but discord, says the 
 jester, because it breaks the heavenly harmony of 
 the Round Table. " In heaven," says Dagonet, 
 " there is a star we call the harp of Arthur." 
 
 " Do ye see it ? Do ye see the star ? " 
 "Nay, fool/' said Tristram, "not in open day." 
 And Dagonet, "Nay nor will ; I see it and hear. 
 It makes a silent music up in heaven, 
 And I, and Arthur, and the angels hear. 
 And then we skip." "ho, fool," he said, "ye talk 
 Fool's treason ; is the King thy brother fool ? " 
 Then little Dagonet clapped his hands and shrilled, 
 "Ay, ay, my brother fool, the king of fools." 
 
 Arthur's music is the soul's harmony to which is 
 built the city of God, up in heaven, therefore. The- 
 beautiful house which the soul has builded up to 
 the music of truth and goodness falls into ruin 
 under the weight of sin. Tristram cannot hear 
 Arthur's music, for he has sinned viciously and 
 wantonly ; the ears of his soul are clogged with the 
 lusts of the flesh. Discord has silenced the music of 
 
 MEAN. IDYLLS KING 7 
 
98 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 the spiritual house; the flesh lias rebelled against 
 the sovereignty of the soul, and Arthur's work is 
 thus undone. Lancelot and the Queen are the first 
 to break that bond. Then follows the sin of Tris- 
 tram and Isolt. 
 
 Then others, following these my mightiest knights, 
 And drawing foul ensample from fair names, 
 Sinned also. 
 
 GUINEVERE 
 
 The passions, let loose from the bridle of re- 
 straint, finally leap beyond all curb. One defection 
 succeeds another ; treachery, treason, and war 
 quickly follow ; peace dies and strife is again born. 
 The Queen flees and seeks refuge in the monastery 
 of Almesbury. 
 
 Her cause of flight 
 
 Sir Modred; he that like a subtle beast 
 Lay couchant with his eyes upon the throne, 
 Ready to spring, waiting a chance. 
 
 Treason, making its way through the breach 
 wrought by passion, plays its sinister part. Pas- 
 sion and malice alike combine against the stricken 
 soul. 
 
 To Almesbury the great King comes to forgive 
 
THE PASSING OF ARTHUR 99 
 
 Guinevere, but to reproach her as well with his 
 great undoing: 
 
 . . . Prone from off her seat she fell, 
 And groveled with her face against the floor; 
 There, with her milkwhite arms and shadowy hair. 
 She made her face a darkness from the King. 
 
 "Lo, I forgive thee as eternal God 
 
 Forgives; do thou for thine own soul the rest." 
 
 Arthur passes from her presence in the hope that 
 
 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. 
 
 THE PASSING OF ARTHUR 
 
 The smoldering fires of treason have now broken 
 out in open rebellion, and from Almesburj the King 
 goes to fight that last great fight before he passes.^ ^ 
 Arthur is forewarned of his coming departure by 
 the ghost of Gawain, who, blown 
 
 Along a wandering wind and past his ear 
 Went shrilling, "Hollow, hollow, all delight! 
 
100 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 Hail, Kin^, to-morrow thou shalt pass away; 
 Farewell ! There is an isle of rest for thee. 
 And I am blown along a Avandcring wind. 
 And hollow, hollow, all delight." 
 
 This is Gawain, light of love and faithless to his 
 friend, the mocker of holy virgins in their ecstasies, 
 and now forever blown about upon a wandering 
 wind, and, like Dante's Francesca, bewailing that 
 irrevocable past, once reveled in as the ver}^ sub- 
 stance of life, now found empty, the vanity of the 
 world. But to Arthur, the spiritual man, who has 
 stood firm amidst the shocks of conflict and the 
 onslaughts of temptation, he promises rest and 
 peace, and then passes on with his perpetual wail of 
 sorrow. 
 
 Then follows the great battle in the west with its 
 Homeric proportions. 
 
 And there, that day, when the great light of heaven 
 
 Burned at his lowest in the rolling year. 
 
 On the waste sand by the waste sea they closed. 
 
 . . . But when the dolorous day 
 Grew drearier, toward twilight falling, came 
 A bitter wind, clear from the North, and blew 
 The mist aside, and with that wind the tide 
 Rose, and the pale King glanced across the field 
 
THE PASSING OF ARTHUR 101 
 
 Of battle; but no man was moving there, 
 
 Nor any cry of Christian heard thereon, 
 
 Nor yet of heathen, only the wan wave 
 
 Brake in among dead faces, to and fro 
 
 Swaying the lielpless hands, and up and down 
 
 Tumbling the hollow helmets of the fallen, 
 
 And shivered brands that once had fought with Rome; 
 
 And rolling far along the gloomy shores 
 
 The voice of days of old and days to be. 
 
 The work of destruction had been done; desola- 
 tion and sorrow and silence had fallen upon the 
 soul, and Arthur, sorely wounded, lay smitten, 
 
 And all his greaves and cuisses dashed with drops 
 
 Of onset, and the light and lustrous curls— 
 
 That made his forehead like a rising sun 
 
 High from the dais-throne — were parched with dust, 
 
 Or, clotted into points and hanging loose, 
 
 Mixed with the knightly growth that fringed his lips. 
 
 So, like a shattered column, lay the King. 
 
 Arthur and Bedivere remain alone upon the field, 
 and Bedivere, in the full puissance of faith, hails 
 him King even in that last extremity : 
 
 My King, 
 
 King everywhere; and so the dead have kings, 
 There also will I worship thee as King. 
 
102 IDYLLS or THE KING 
 
 Modred, the traitor, suddenly appears near them, 
 and Bedivere points him out to the stricken King: 
 
 He that brought 
 
 The heathen back among us yonder stands, 
 Modred, unharmed, the traitor of thine house. 
 Then spake the King: "My house has been m}' doom, 
 But call not thou this traitor of my house. 
 Who hath but dwelt beneath one roof with me. 
 My house are rather tliose who sware my vows, 
 Yea, even while they brake them, owned me King. 
 And well for thee, saying, in my dark hour. 
 When all the purport of my throne hath failed. 
 That, quick or dead, thou boldest me for King; 
 King am I, whatsoever be their cry." 
 
 Through Modred's treason the heathen have 
 been brought back ; internal discord has opened 
 the doors to the foes without ; the lower man, 
 through sin, has betrayed the peace and unity of 
 the soul, whose integrity, now shattered, lies ex- 
 posed to the attacks of all malignants. Bedivere 
 still owms Arthur King, and reiterates his fidelity 
 and allegiance. The spiritual man, in the midst of 
 all afflictions, rebelled against and betrayed, still 
 asserts his authority, and, rising up in the dignit3; 
 of his right, cries out : 
 
THE PASSING OF ARTHUR 103 
 
 King am I, whatsoever be their cry. 
 
 Those arc of his household who swear his vows, 
 and even in the breaking of them, spite of their 
 perfidy, must own him King, as did Gawain, in the 
 vision, when he addressed Arthur, " Hail, King ! " 
 Sorely wounded, Arthur commands Sir Bedivere to 
 throw his brand Excalibur into the lake, and then 
 report to him what happens. After being twice 
 faithless, through temptation of the riches of the 
 hilt, Bedivere flings Excalibur into the mere, and 
 reports to Arthur: 
 
 Then with both hands I flung him, wheeling him, 
 But when I looked again, behold, an arm 
 Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful. 
 That caught him by the hilt and brandished him 
 Three times, and drew him under in the mere. 
 
 The soul's spiritual weapon, by which it had 
 smitten its enemies in the battle of life, is returned 
 to Religion, the Lady of the Lake ; for there is no 
 longer need of it on the journey to the Isles of 
 Rest, where is no warfare, but peace and ease. 
 Arthur is borne by Bedivere to the shore, where 
 lies a black barge, whose 
 
104 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 . . . Decks were dense with stately forms, 
 Black-stoled, })lack-hooded, like a dream — by these 
 Three queens with crowns of gold. 
 
 These are the three queens who should help 
 Arthur at his need ; the three theological virtues, 
 now come to the assistance of the faithful soul 
 passing to the eternity beyond, there to crown it. 
 Bedivere, at the King's command, places him on 
 the barge, whence Arthur addresses him before 
 departing : 
 
 The old order changeth, yielding place to new, 
 
 And God fulfills Himself in many ways. 
 
 Lest one good custom should corru])t the world. 
 
 The time has come when the pearl is to be sun- 
 dered from the shell, when the soul passes from 
 the old order, life in the flesh, to the new order 
 beyond space and time. Slowly moves the sable 
 barge from the shore, and, Avith its wailing figures, 
 vanishes beyond the horizon, and Bedivere stands 
 gazing after it. 
 
 Straining his eyes beneath an arch of hand. 
 
 He has passed ; the spiritual fight is over. 
 
 And the new sun rose, bringing the new year. 
 
NOTES 
 
 1. Geoffrey's or Malonfs [Malkor's'] book;, the source of the 
 Arthurian legends which Tennyson followed/! The Geoffrey al- 
 luded to is Geoft'rey of INFonmouth, probably a Benedictine monk 
 of ]Monniouth, author of the Hisforia Regum Britannia' (History 
 of the Kings of Britain), written in Tatin. He lived in the 
 twelfth century and was consecrated Bishop of St. Asaph in 1152, 
 and died some two years after. ,His history professes to be de- 
 rived from an ancient Cymric chronicle brought from Brittany by 
 Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford. Some critics allege that Geoffrey's 
 Historia was compiled from the I^atin Nennius (a reputed author 
 of the Historia Britorium, about the ninth century) and a book of 
 Breton legends now lost. The story of King Arthur, who is sup- 
 posed to have reigned in the sixth century, was made current 
 generally by Geoffrey's book. "The publication of this book," 
 says the Dictionary of National 'Biography, "marks an epoch in 
 the literary history of Europe; in less than fifty years the Arthurian 
 and Round Table romances based on it were naturalized in 
 Germany and Italy as well as in France and England." 
 
 It is from Malory's book Morte Darthur that Tennyson im- 
 mediately drew the materials and the story of the Idylls of the 
 King. .' Sir Thomas IMalory lived in the fifteenth century, 
 and, according to his own words, was a knight. Some have 
 inferred that he was also a priest, from his statement that he 
 was "a servant of Jesu both day and night"; but the illation is 
 by no means flawless, as a layman in that age of outspoken piety 
 might as readily have so characterized himself. Malory tell" us 
 that he finished the book in the ninth year of Edward IV's reign, 
 
 105 
 
106 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 or in 1470. Fifteen years afterwards, in 1485, it was published 
 by Caxton, the first EngHsh printer. Tennyson follows Malory's 
 story in its main narrative and in its ethical lines, while he smoothes 
 away its inconsistencies and its confusions and refines with a mod- 
 ern touch its rugged contour. 
 
 Sir Edward Strachy, in his introduction to the Globe editions 
 of Morte Darthur (Macmillan & Co.), summarizes the char- 
 acter of Malory's book as follows: "The plan of the book is 
 properly epic. While the glory of Arthur, as the head of the 
 kingdoms no less than of the chivalry of Christendom, is only in its 
 early dawn. Merlin warns him that the seeds of death will spring 
 up in all this fair promise through the sin of himself and of his 
 Queen. Still the fame and the honor of the King and his knights 
 of the Round Table open continually into new and brighter forms, 
 whTch-*€€m~ab©v&-ibe-i:each ot^iw-^atk^rse-fa+e^ till the coming 
 of the Sancgrael, into the quest of which all the knights enter 
 with that self-reliance which had become them so well in the 
 field of worldly chivalry, but which would be of no avail now. 
 They are now to be tried by other tests than those by which they 
 had been proved 'earthly knights and lovers,' tests which even 
 Launcelot, Ector de Maris, Gawain, and the other chiefest of the 
 fellowship could not stand. The quest is achieved by the holy 
 knights alone/two depart from this life to a higher, while Sir Bors, 
 not quite spotless, yet forgiven and sanctified, the link between the 
 earthly and the spiritual worlds, returns to aid in restoring the 
 glory of the feasts and tournaments at Camelot and Westminster. 
 But the curse is at work: the se veran ce between good and evil 
 which had been declared through the Sancgrael cannot be closed 
 again; and the tragic end comes on, in spite of the efforts — tmjch- 
 iag^'fTPomliieir-Jtery.jveakiress— of Arthur and Launcelot ttra:vert 
 the-wCe, the one by vainly trying to resist temptation, the other 
 by refusing to believe e\'il of his wife and his dearest friend. .The 
 black clouds open for a moment as the sun goes down, ^^a we 
 see Arthur in the barge which bears iiim to the Holy Isle; Guin- 
 
NOTES 107 
 
 evere, the nun of Almesbury, li\ing in fasting, prayers, and alms- 
 deeds ; and Launcelot with his fellowship, once knights, now her- 
 mit-priests, 'doing bodily all manner of service.' ^ 
 
 It will be seen from the above outline how closely Tennyson 
 adheres in its broad lines to the fashion of his original. But it 
 must not be imagined that the author of the Idylls of the King 
 sought merely to versify Malory's story. While faithful to the 
 inspiration of his source, the poet not only remodeled and refined 
 Malory's crude material, but has recreated the story without 
 losing its profound ethical value, and adapted it with consum- 
 mate artistic skill to modern appreciation without sacrificing its 
 mediseval spirit. \ .His Arthur, "the faultless King, that passiopate 
 perfection," is not altogether Malory's hero, who is by no means 
 blameless, and whose sin, as well as Guinevere's and Lancelot's, 
 concurs in bringing about the destruction of the Round Table. 
 Tennyson gives us a perfect king and gentleman, whose char- 
 acter is a sublimation of Malory's ancient emperor, and yet in 
 general contour reflects, idealized, it is true, the heroic features 
 of the legendary son of Uther Pendragon. \ As he has idealized 
 Arthur without losing the mediaeval character of the royal hero, 
 so has he treated in general the "old imperfect tale, new-old," on 
 idealized lines, lifting it out of its ruder historic-legendary setting 
 and adapting it to his purpose of " shadowing sense at war with 
 soul," that it might point a moral to his own generation. "A 
 truth looks freshest in the fashion of the day" was Everard 
 Hall's (Tennyson's) reason for not publishing his epic of King 
 Arthur. But a riper judgment led the poet to enshrine that 
 truth in the old legend made anew by his genius. 
 
 2. The episode of Arthiu^'s "desire to be joined with Guinevere" 
 strikes a profound note of Tennyson's muse, which sounds, in an 
 especial way, throughout the Idylls and in his greater poems. 
 An insistent doctrine in his philosophy of life is the fundamental 
 need of the purity and permanency of the family in order to insure 
 human groTvth and progress. In pure and stable wedded love is 
 
108 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 at once the hope and perfection of man's social life. No poet 
 sings the promise or fulfillment of wedded passion with a purer 
 and clearer note. To break the bond of marital affection and 
 faith is to destroy human society at its foundation, and it is this 
 dire sin in Guinevere which brings about the ruin of Arthur's 
 kingdom. It is only in wedded union with the Queen that 
 the King 
 
 Has power on this dark land to lighten it, 
 And power on this dead world to make it live. 
 
 Tennyson's lofty ideal of the married state may be gathered 
 from the severe probation which Arthur imposes upon his knights 
 before they may attain the goal of their desire: 
 
 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 break the heathen and uphold the Christ, 
 
 To ride abroad redressing hmnan wrongs, 
 
 To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it. 
 
 To honor their own word as if their God's, 
 
 To lead sweet lives in purest chastity. 
 
 To love one maiden only, cleave to her. 
 
 And worship her by years of noble deeds, 
 
 Until they won her. 
 
 In The Tuo Voices, in wliich the problem is suicide as it ad- 
 dresses itself to the modern skeptic under the burden of life's ills, 
 we find the gloom of doubt and despair utterly dispelled in the 
 contemplation of the serene unity of the family in the father, 
 the mother, and the child: 
 
 These three made unity so sweet, 
 My frozen heart began to beat. 
 Remembering its ancient heat. 
 
 I })lest them, and they wandered on; 
 I spoke, but answer came there none: 
 llie dull and bitter voice was gone. 
 
NOTES 109 
 
 In The Princess, wliose theme is the very modern question of 
 the proper sphere of woman, the solution comes with no uncertain 
 voice that in the family life alone, as wife and mother, is to be found 
 her true place, her real equality, and the divinely ordained com- 
 plement of her nature: 
 
 The woman's cause is man's: they rise or sink 
 Together, dwarf'd or godlike, bond or free. 
 
 For woman is not undeveloped man. 
 
 But diverse: could we make her as the man, 
 
 Sweet Love were slain; his dearest bond is this. 
 
 Not like to like, biit like in dill^erence. 
 
 Yet in the long years liker must they grow ; 
 
 The man be more of woman, she of man: 
 
 He gain in sweetness and in moral height, 
 
 Nor lose the wrestling thews tliat throw the world; 
 
 She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care, 
 
 Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind; 
 
 Till at the last she set herself to man, 
 
 Like perfect music unto noble words. 
 
 In Mcmoriam, whose song rises by degrees from the wail of 
 the threnody through the swelling note of Hope into the triumphant 
 acclaim of Faith and Love, concludes with a wedding song, the 
 mystery of death answered and solved by the mystery of life, 
 whose fountains lie in the unity and purity of the family. Here 
 issues the stream of humanity to that 
 
 . . . One far-off di\ane event 
 To which the whole creation moves. 
 
 3. The time-element in the Idylls develops with their ethicn! 
 movement and symbolizes it. It is in the earlier spring that 
 Lancelot goes to the court of Leodogran to escort Guinevere to 
 King Arthur: 
 
 And Lancelot past away among the flowers 
 (For then was latter April) and returned 
 Among the flowers, in May, with Guinevere. 
 
110 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 It is when "the world is white with INIay " that Dubric, the 
 high priest, marries Arthur and Guinevere. It was "past the 
 time of Easterday" when Gareth set forth for the mystic city of 
 Camel ot. It is just after Whitsuntide that Geraint goes on the 
 quest which results in his marriage with Enid. I In the first 
 three Idylls, The Coming of Arthur, Gareth and Lynettc, and The 
 Marriage of Geraint, we see the springtime of the Round Table, 
 when all is fresh and fair, without taint or flaw amongst Arthur's 
 knighthood. Beginning with Geraint and Enid, the summer sets 
 in, and continuous throughout the action (in the order here enu- 
 merated) of Balin and Balan, Merlin and Vivien, Lancelot and 
 Elaine, The Holy Grail, and comes to its close in Pelleas and 
 Ettarre. An ever-deepening note of menace to Arthur's work 
 swells with the advancing summertide, as the poison of Guine- 
 vere's sin spreads throughout the Order of the Round Table, 
 until it moans through the "yellowing woods," the hour of the 
 "withered leaf," the season of the Last Tournament. 
 
 All in a death-dumb autumn dripping gloom. 
 
 Guinevere and The Passing of Arthur close the symbolic time- 
 cycle in the deep winter. Beyond the convent walls, where the 
 guilty Queen harbors. 
 
 The white mist, like a face-cloth to the face. 
 Clung to the dead earth, and the land was still. 
 
 Arthur's last great battle is in midwinter in the barren land 
 of Lyonesse: 
 
 There the pursuer could pursue no more, 
 
 And he that fled no further fly the King; 
 
 And there, that day when the great light of heaven 
 
 Burned at his lowest in tlie rolling year. 
 
 On the waste sand by the waste sea they closed. 
 
 Arthur, "a naked babe," is cast at the feet of Merlin by the 
 ninth wave of the great deep on the " night of the new year." He 
 
NOTES 111 
 
 passes now at tlic close of the old year out into the great deep 
 again, according to INIerlin's words, 
 
 From the great deep to the great deep he goes, j] 
 
 4. In the early Church during the Roman persecutions there 
 grew up an exigent custom of carefully guarding the graver 
 mysteries of the Faith from the heathen, and also from neophj-tes 
 who were still under instruction. Symbols of the more sacred 
 doctrines and rites were often used between Christians, which 
 to them conveyed a hidden meaning, but were unintelligible to 
 the heathen about them. Amongst these symbols the most con- 
 spicuous was the Greek word for fish, 'Ix^i^^, to indicate Christ, as 
 the letters composing this word made the initials of the sentence: 
 'lr]<ro£s xp'o''''os Oeov vtos (Tcar-rip, Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour. 
 The Christian inscription discovered at Autun, France, in 1839, 
 has reference to Christ in the Holy Eucharist under the symbol 
 of the sacred fish: "Take the food sweet as honey of the Savior 
 of the holy ones, eat and drink holding the fish in the hands." 
 It was the custom in the primitive Church to receive the sacred 
 Species first in the hands, then in the mouth, of the comnmni- 
 cant. Ecclesiastical historians call this practice of concealing the 
 mysteries from the heathen and neophytes, Disciplina Arcani, 
 The Discipline of the Secret. 
 
 I 5. Tennyson, in Balinand Z?aZan, depicts the household of King 
 'Pellam as 'an instance of religious el«eft4eiwe in contrast with 
 the pure and active piety of Arthur's court. Pellam's castle is 
 filled with spurious relics, which absorb the false devotion of the 
 decrepit King, who makes claim to be the descendant of Joseph 
 of Arimathea. The spear which Balin seizes in Pellam's chapel, 
 when pursued by the latter's followers, is not the true spear which 
 pierced Christ's side; its point is painted red to simulate the blood 
 which ever moistens the sanctified tip of the true weapon. Malory, 
 however, draws no such contrast between Pellam's and Arthur's 
 courts, and speaks of the spear with which Balin wounds King 
 
112 IDYLLS or THE KING 
 
 Pellarn as the authentic lance. When BaHn sacrilegiously uses 
 tlie sacred glaive, the castle falls in ruins about him and King 
 I'ellam. Cf. Morte Darfhiir, Book IT., Chaps, xiv., xv. 
 
 6. The element of pure malice, in the person of Vivien, appears 
 for the first time in Balin ajid Balan. Vivien is the incarnation of 
 envy and hate. She describes herself in the succeeding Idyll as 
 one "born from death" and "sown upon the wind." Her song in 
 Balin arid Balan chimes significantly with Tristram's free-love 
 rhymes in The Last Tournamerit. In her words soimds the dread 
 menace of the undoing of the Round Table. She sings the 
 renaissance of the ancient paganism, the old sun-worship of the 
 land, and bitterly scoffs at the Christian teachings of self-repres- 
 sion and chastity: 
 
 Old priest, who mumbles worship in your quire, 
 Old monk and nun, ye scorn the world's desire. 
 Yet in your frosty cells ye feel the fire ! 
 The fire of heaven is not the flame of hell. 
 
 She loathes Arthur and his Round Table, whose ideal is the 
 direct opposite of the sensual paganism she proclaims. She 
 would destroy him and his knighthood and bring back the old 
 sun-worship, which Christianity has supplanted in the land: 
 
 Then turning to her squire, "This fire of heaven, 
 This old sun-worship, boy, will rise again. 
 And beat the cross to earth, and break the King 
 And all his Table." 
 
 7. "The hart with golden horns," whose pursuit by the 
 Knights of the Round Table is narrated by ]\Ierlin, appears to be 
 glory or fame. The second story told by Merlin, of 
 
 A maid so smooth, so white, so wonderful, 
 They said a liglit came from her when she moved, 
 
 would seem to convey the symbol of the image of beauty, whose 
 "isle-nurtured eyes" waged such unwilling though successful 
 
NOTES 113 
 
 war The "little glassy-headed, hairless man" to whom the 
 wall, 
 
 That sunders ghosts and shadow-casting men, 
 ^ Became a crystal, and he saw them thro' it. 
 And heard their voices talk behind the wall. 
 And learnt their elemental secrets, powers. 
 And forces, 
 
 I take to be wisdom. He alone knows the charm to overcome 
 the power of beauty and hold it boimd. 
 
 8. In the concluding lines of Lancelot and Elaine, Tennyson 
 gives us a hint of Sir Lancelot's end: 
 
 So groaned Sir Lancelot in remorseful pain, 
 Not knowing lie should die a holy man. 
 
 It would not have been consistent with the scope and purpose 
 of the Idylls of the King to pursue the career of Sir Lancelot 
 to the end. The passing of King Arthur is clearly the fit conclu- 
 sion. In Malory's story. Sir I^ancelot repents and becomes a 
 monk, doing penance for his past sins tluring the last seven years 
 of his life, and is buried at his castle of Joyous Gard- See Morte 
 Darthur, Book XXL, Chap. ix. et seq. . 
 
 9. The Holy Grail or Sancgrael was the vessel or cup used by 
 Our Lord and His disciples at the last supper, and afterwards by 
 Joseph of Arimathea to receive the blood from the wounds of 
 Christ on the cross. The author of The High History of the 
 Holy Grail (probably the original of the Grail legends of the 
 Middle Ages) says in his opening words: "Hear ye the history 
 of the most holy vessel that is called Grail, wherein the precious 
 blood of the Savior was received on the day that He was put on 
 rood and crucified in order that He might redeem His people from 
 the pains of hell." (Translation by Sebastian Evans in The 
 Temple Classics.) A passage from the Chronicle of Helinand 
 (about 1220), quoted by Mr. Evans in the epilogue to his trans 
 lation of The High History of the Holy Grail, gives the following 
 
 MEAN. IDYLLS KING — 8 
 
114 IDYLLS OF THE KING 
 
 account of the Sancgrael: "At this time a certain marvelous vision 
 was revealed by an angel to a certain hermit in Britain concerning 
 St. Joseph, the decurion who deposed from the cross the body of 
 Our Lord, as w-ell as concerning the paten or dish in the which 
 Our Lord supped with His disciples, whereof the history was 
 written out by the said hermit and is called 'Of the Grail' {de 
 Gradali). Now a platter, broad and somewhat deep, is called 
 in French gradalis or gradale, wherein costly meats with their 
 sauce are wont to ])e set before rich folk by degrees (gradatim), 
 one morsel after another in divers orders, and in vulgar speech 
 it is called graalz, for that it is grateful and acceptable to him 
 that eateth therein, as well for that which containeth the victual, 
 for that haply it is of silver or other precious metal, as for the 
 contents thereof, to wit, the manifold courses of costly meats." 
 This cup or grail containing the precious blood was brought, 
 according to the legend, by Joseph of Arimathea, the aforesaid 
 decurion, to Glastonbury. When the people of the land fell 
 into wickedness it \\as taken up to heaven, to return only when 
 they shall have once more entered into the ways of holiness. 
 j 10. In Arthur's words, just before the great battle in the west, 
 is expressed the agony of the spiritual man seeing how the evil 
 of life would seem to trample down the good: 
 
 I found Him in the shining of the stars, 
 
 I marked Him in the flowering of His fields. 
 
 But in His ways with men I find Him not. 
 
 I waged His wars, and now I pass and die. 
 
 O me ! for why is all around us here 
 
 As if some lesser god had made the world. 
 
 But had not force to shape it as he would 
 
 Till the High God behold it from beyond, 
 
 And enter it and make it beautiful ? 
 
 Or else as if the world were wholly fair, 
 
 But that these eyes of men are dense and dim, 
 
 And have not power to see it as it is: 
 
 Perchance, because we see not to the close; 
 
 For I, being simple, thought to work His will, 
 
NOTES 115 
 
 And have but stricken with the sword in vain; 
 x\nd all whereon I leaned in ^\ ife and friend 
 Is traitor to my peace, and all my realm 
 Reels back into the beast, and is no more. 
 My God, thou hast forgotten me in my death: 
 Nay — God, my Christ — I pass, but shall not die. 
 
 Notwithstanding the darkness that comes over his soul, his 
 faith rises triumphant in this his hour of agony. His faith is all 
 in Christ, through whom he shall not die. In the closing scene 
 of The Passing of Arthur, Tennyson follows Malory's account 
 in spirit and substance. Cf. Morte DarthuT, Book XXI., Chaps, 
 iv. and v. 
 
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