"MAKE KNOWLEDGE CIRCLE WITH THE WINDS; BUT LET HER HERALD, REVERENCE, FLY

66 THESE BIRDS HAVE JOYFUL THOUGHTS. THINK YOU THEY SING,

Creeps, no precaution used, among the crowd,
Makes wicked lightnings of her eyes, and saps
The fealty of our friends, and stirs the pulse
With devil's leaps, and poisons half the young.
Worst of the worst were that man he that reigns!
Better the King's waste hearth and aching heart
Than thou reseated in thy place of light,

The mockery of thy people, and their bane."

He paused, and in the pause she crept an inch
Nearer, and laid her hands about his feet.
Far off a solitary trumpet blew.

Then waiting by the doors the war-horse neighed
As at a friend's voice, and he spake again.

"Yet think not that I come to urge thy crimes;
I did not come to curse thee, Guinevere,
I, whose vast pity almost makes me die
To see thee, laying there thy golden head,
My pride in happier summers, at my feet.

The wrath which forced my thought on that fierce law,
The doom of treason, and the flaming death
(When first I learnt thee hidden here) is past.

The pang-which while I weighed thy heart with one
Too wholly true to dream untruth in thee,
Made my tears burn-is also past, in part.
And all is past, the sin is sinned, and I,
Lo! I forgive thee, as Eternal God

Forgives do thou for thine own soul the rest.

:

But how to take last leave of all I loved?
O golden hair, with which I used to play
Not knowing! O imperial-moulded form,
And beauty such as never woman wore,

Until it came a kingdom's curse with thee !—

LIKE POETS, FROM THE VANITY OF SONG?"-ALFRED TENNYSON.

BEFORE HER TO WHATEVER SKY BEAR SEED OF MEN AND GROWTH OF MINDS."-TENNYSON.

"MORE THINGS ARE WROUGHT BY PRAYER THAN THIS WORLD DREAMS OF.

WHEREFORE,

66

THE DROWSY HOURS, DISPENSERS OF ALL GOOD,-(TENNYSON)

KING ARTHUR'S FAREWELL TO GUINEVERE. 451

I cannot touch thy lips, they are not mine,

But Lancelot's: nay, they never were the King's.

I cannot take thy hand; that too is flesh,

And in the flesh thou hast sinned; and mine own flesh,
Here looking down on thine polluted, cries,

'I loathe thee!' Yet not less, O Guinevere,

For I was ever virgin, save for thee,

My love through flesh hath wrought into my life
So far, that my doom is, I love thee still.

Let no man dream but that I love thee still.
Perchance, and so thou purify thy soul,
And so thou lean on our fair father Christ,
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.

I charge thee, my last hope.

Leave me that,

Now must I hence.

Through the thick night I hear the trumpet blow :
They summon me their King to lead mine hosts
Far down to that great battle in the west,
Where I must strike against my sister's son,

Leagued with the lords of the White Horse and Knights
Once mine, and strike him dead, and meet myself
Death, or I know not what mysterious doom.
And thou remaining here wilt learn the event;
But hither shall I never come again,
Never lie by thy side, see thee no more.
Farewell!"

And while she grovelled at his feet,

She felt the King's breath wander o'er her neck,
And in the darkness o'er her fallen head,
Perceived the waving of his hands that blest.

O'ER THE MUTE CITY STOLE, with folded wings."-TENNYSON.

LET THY VOICE RISE, LIKE A FOUNTAIN, FOR ONE NIGHT AND DAY."-TENNYSON.

"FOR WHAT ARE MEN BETTER THAN SHEEP OR GOATS THAT NOURISH A BLIND LIFE WITHIN THE BRAIN,-(ALFRED TENNYSON)

66

FOR SO THE WHOLE ROUND EARTH IS EVERY WAY-(TENNYSON)

Then, listening till those armèd steps were gone,
Rose the pale Queen, and in her anguish found
The casement: "Peradventure," so she thought,
"If I might see his face, and not be seen."
And lo, he sat on horseback at the door!
And near him the sad nuns with each a light

Stood, and he gave them charge about the Queen,
To guard and foster her for evermore.

And while he spake to these, his helm was lowered,
To which for crest the golden dragon clung
Of Britain; so she did not see the face,

Which then was as an angel's, but she saw,
Wet with the mists and smitten by the lights,
The Dragon of the great Pendragonship

Blaze, making all the night a stream of fire.
And even then he turned, and more and more
The moony vapour rolling round the King,
Who seemed the phantom of a giant in it,
Enwound him fold by fold, and made him gray
And grayer, till himself became as mist
Before her, moving ghost-like to his doom.

[From "The Idylls of the King," ed. 1859.]

IF, KNOWING god, they lift not handS OF PRAYER BOTH FOR THEMSELVES AND THOSE WHO CALL THEM FRIENDS?"-TENNYSON.

AN ISLAND IN THE TROPICS-THE SOLITARY.

seas.

[Enoch Arden has been cast away on a desert island in the Tropical
Wandering in its luxuriant solitudes, he thinks of his English home,
and imagination brings to his ear the music of the village bells.]
HE mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns
And winding glades high up like ways to heaven,
The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes,
The lightning-flash of insect and of bird,
The lustre of the long convolvuluses

That coiled around the stately stems, and ran

BOUND BY GOLD CHAINS ABOUT THE FEET OF GOD."-TENNYSON.

"LIKE MEN, LIKE MANNERS: LIKE BREEDS LIKE, THEY SAY.

KIND NATURE IS THE BEST: THESE MANNERS NEXT

BUT WHILE I MUSED CAME MEMORY WITH SAD EYES,

AN ISLAND IN THE TROPICS.

453

E'en to the limit of the land, the glows

And glories of the broad belt of the world,-
All these he saw; but what he fain had seen
He could not see-the kindly human face,
Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard
The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl,
The league-long roller thundering on the reef,
The moving whisper of huge trees that branched
And blossomed in the zenith, or the sweep
Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave,
As down the shore he ranged, or all day long
Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge,
A shipwrecked sailor, waiting for a sail :
No sail from day to day, but every day
The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts
Among the palms and ferns and precipices;
The blaze upon the waters to the east ;
The blaze upon his island overhead;
The blaze upon the waters to the west;

Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven,
The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again

The scarlet shafts of sunrise-but no sail.

There, often as he watched, or seemed to watch,
So still, the golden lizard on him paused,
A phantom made of many phantoms moved
Before him haunting him, or he himself
Moved haunting people, things and places, known
Far in a darker isle beyond the line;

The babes, their babble, Annie, the small house,
The climbing street, the mill, the leafy lanes,
The peacock yew-tree, and the lonely Hall,
The horse he drove, the boat he sold, the chill
November dawns and dewy-glooming downs,

HOLDING THE FOLDED ANNALS OF MY YOUTH."-TENNYSON.

THAT FIT US LIKE A NATURE SECOND-HAND; WHICH ARE INDEED THE MANNERS OF THE GREAT."-TENNYSON.

"A MAN IS NOT A GOD, BUT THEN MOST GODLIKE BEING MOST A MAN."-ALFRED TENNYSON.

THE SLOW SWEET HOURS THAT BRING US ALL THINGS GOOD:

ALFRED TENNYSON.

"WAIT: MY FAITH IS LARGE IN TIME, AND THAT WHICH SHAPES IT TO SOME PERFECT END."-IBID.

Once likewise, in the ringing of his ears,
Though faintly, merrily-far and far away-
He heard the pealing of his parish bells;
Then, though he knew not wherefore, started up
Shuddering, and when the beauteous hateful isle
Returned upon him, had not his poor heart
Spoken with That, which being everywhere
Lets none, who speak with Him, seem all alone,
Surely the man had died of solitude.

[From "Enoch Arden," ed. 1864.]

THE SLOW SAD HOURS THAT BRING US ALL THINGS ILL."-TENNYSON.