From noiseful arms, and acts of prowess doneIn tournament or tilt, Sir Percivale,Whom Arthur and his knighthood called The Pure,Had passed into the silent life of prayer,Praise, fast, and alms; and leaving for the cowlThe helmet in an abbey far awayFrom Camelot, there, and not long after, died. And one, a fellow-monk among the rest,Ambrosius, […]

Queen Guinevere had fled the court, and satThere in the holy house at AlmesburyWeeping, none with her save a little maid,A novice: one low light betwixt them burnedBlurred by the creeping mist, for all abroad,Beneath a moon unseen albeit at full,The white mist, like a face-cloth to the face,Clung to the dead earth, and the […]

That story which the bold Sir Bedivere,First made and latest left of all the knights,Told, when the man was no more than a voiceIn the white winter of his age, to thoseWith whom he dwelt, new faces, other minds. For on their march to westward, Bedivere,Who slowly paced among the slumbering host,Heard in his tent […]

O purblind race of miserable men,How many among us at this very hourDo forge a life-long trouble for ourselves,By taking true for false, or false for true;Here, through the feeble twilight of this worldGroping, how many, until we pass and reachThat other, where we see as we are seen! So fared it with Geraint, who […]

The brave Geraint, a knight of Arthur’s court,A tributary prince of Devon, oneOf that great Order of the Table Round,Had married Enid, Yniol’s only child,And loved her, as he loved the light of Heaven.And as the light of Heaven varies, nowAt sunrise, now at sunset, now by nightWith moon and trembling stars, so loved GeraintTo […]

Pellam the King, who held and lost with LotIn that first war, and had his realm restoredBut rendered tributary, failed of lateTo send his tribute; wherefore Arthur calledHis treasurer, one of many years, and spake,‘Go thou with him and him and bring it to us,Lest we should set one truer on his throne.Man’s word is […]

Elaine the fair, Elaine the loveable,Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat,High in her chamber up a tower to the eastGuarded the sacred shield of Lancelot;Which first she placed where the morning’s earliest rayMight strike it, and awake her with the gleam;Then fearing rust or soilure fashioned for itA case of silk, and braided thereuponAll the […]

A storm was coming, but the winds were still,And in the wild woods of Broceliande,Before an oak, so hollow, huge and oldIt looked a tower of ivied masonwork,At Merlin’s feet the wily Vivien lay. For he that always bare in bitter grudgeThe slights of Arthur and his Table, MarkThe Cornish King, had heard a wandering […]

These to His Memory–since he held them dear,Perchance as finding there unconsciouslySome image of himself–I dedicate,I dedicate, I consecrate with tears–These Idylls. And indeed He seems to meScarce other than my king’s ideal knight,`Who reverenced his conscience as his king;Whose glory was, redressing human wrong;Who spake no slander, no, nor listened to it;Who loved one […]

The last tall son of Lot and Bellicent,And tallest, Gareth, in a showerful springStared at the spate. A slender-shafted PineLost footing, fell, and so was whirled away.‘How he went down,’ said Gareth, ‘as a false knightOr evil king before my lance if lanceWere mine to use–O senseless cataract,Bearing all down in thy precipitancy–And yet thou […]

Leodogran, the King of Cameliard,Had one fair daughter, and none other child;And she was the fairest of all flesh on earth,Guinevere, and in her his one delight. For many a petty king ere Arthur cameRuled in this isle, and ever waging warEach upon other, wasted all the land;And still from time to time the heathen […]

At Francis Allen’s on the Christmas eve,– The game of forfeits done–the girls all kissed Beneath the sacred bush and past away,– The parson Holmes, the poet Everard Hall, The host, and I sat round the wassail-bowl, Then half-way ebbed: and there we held a talk, How all the old honor had from Christmas gone, […]

FROM “IN MEMORIAM.” First Year. The time draws near the birth of Christ The moon is hid; the night is still; The Christmas bells from hill to hill Answer each other in the mist. Four voices of four hamlets round, From far and near, on mead and moor, Swell out and fail, as if a […]