Part 13 (1/2)

Our bond, as not the bond of man and wife, Should have in it an absoluter trust To make up that defect: let rumours be: When did not rumours fly? these, as I trust That you trust me in your own nobleness, I may not well believe that you believe'

While thus he spoke, half turn'd away, the Queen Brake fro vine Leaf after leaf, and tore, and cast thereen; Then, when he ceased, in one cold passive hand Received at once and laid aside the gems There on a table near her, and replied:

'It may be, I am quicker of belief Than you believe me, Lancelot of the Lake

Our bond is not the bond of ood is in it, whatsoe'er of ill, It can be broken easier I for you ThisTo one whoe nobler What are these?

Diaift, had you not lost your own

To loyal hearts the value of all gifts Must vary as the giver's Not for me!

For her! for your new fancy Only this Grant me, I pray you: have your joys apart

I doubt not that however changed, you keep So raceful: and myself Would shun to break those bounds of courtesy In which as Arthur's Queen I move and rule: So cannot speak e one! yet I take it with Amen

So pray you, add my diamonds to her pearls; Deck her with these; tell her, she shi+nes ard, or a necklace for a neck O as much fairer--as a faith once fair Was richer than these diamonds--hers not mine - Nay, by the mother of our Lord himself, Or hers or mine, mine noorkwhich she seized, And, thro' the case them, and down they flash'd, and smote the stream

Then from the smitten surface flash'd, as it were, Diamonds to meet them, and they past away

Then while Sir Lancelot leant, in half disdain At love, life, all things, on theledge, Close underneath his eyes, and right across Where these had fallen, slowly past the barge Whereon the lily ht”

This affair of the diamonds is the chief addition to the old tale, in which we already see the curse of lawless love, fallen upon the jealous Queen and the long-enduring Lancelot ”This is not the first time,” said Sir Lancelot, ”that ye have been displeased with me causeless, but, madame, ever I must suffer you, but what sorrow I endure I take no force” (that is, ”I disregard”)

The romance, and the poet, in his own despite, cannot but make Lancelot the man we love, not Arthur or another Huainst the Blah: 'Arthur, , That passionate perfection, aze upon the Sun in heaven?

He never spake word of reproach to limpse of leaue has tamper'd with hi men to vows impossible, To make them like himself: but, friend, to me He is all fault who hath no fault at all: For who loves me must have a touch of earth; The low sun makes the colour: I am yours, Not Arthur's, as ye know, save by the bond”

It is not the beautiful Queen ins us, our hearts are with ”the innocence of love” in Elaine But Lancelot has the charm that captivated Lavaine; and Tennyson's Arthur remains

”The moral child without the craft to rule, Else had he not lost me”

Indeed the romance of Malory makes Arthur deserve ”the pretty popular naards Guinevere when she is accused by her enemies in the later chapters Yet Malory does not finally condone the sin which baffles Lancelot's quest of the Holy Grail

Tennyson at first was in doubt as to writing on the Grail, for certain respects of reverence When he did approach the theme it was in a method of extreth even of ly confused, as was natural, if that hypothesis which regards the story as a Christianised form of obscure Celtic myth be correct Sir Percivale's sister, in the Idyll, has the first vision of the Grail:-

”Sweet brother, I have seen the Holy Grail: For, waked at dead of night, I heard a sound As of a silver horn froht, 'It is not Arthur's use To hunt by ht'; and the slender sound As fro upon ht we bloith breath, or touch with hand, Was like that music as it came; and then Strea beas in it, as if alive, Till all the white walls ofon the wall; And then the music faded, and the Grail Past, and the beas died into the night

So now the Holy Thing is here again A us, brother, fast thou too and pray, And tell thy brother knights to fast and pray, That so perchance the vision may be seen By thee and those, and all the world be heal'd”

Galahad, son of Lancelot and the first Elaine (who becaic), then vows himself to the Quest, and, after the vision in hall at Cahts, except Arthur, follow his exa fires!” Probably, or perhaps, the poet indicates dislike of hasty spiritual enthusiasn,” and of the es, es of doubt Men desired the witness of the senses to the truth of what the Church taught, they wished to see that naked child of the romance ”smite himself into” the wafer of the Sacraes such vain and too curious inquiries as helped to rend the Church, and divided Christendohtly forical research into the unsearchable; undertaken, often in a secular spirit of adventure, by sinful s:-

”'O brother,' ask'd Ambrosius,--'for in sooth These ancient books--and they would win thee--teem, Only I find not there this Holy Grail, With miracles and marvels like to these, Not all unlike; which oftentime I read, Who read but on o forth and pass Down to the little thorpe that lies so close, And almost plaster'd like a le with our folk; And knowing every honest face of theirs As well as ever shepherd knew his sheep, And every hoossip and old wives, And ills and aches, and teethings, lyings-in, Andhalf a league away: Or lulling randos at the market-cross, Rejoice, small man, in this ss”'

This appears to be Tennyson's original reading of the Quest of the Grail His own mysticish ht, is expressed in Arthur's words:-

”'”And spake I not too truly, O hts?