<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341643" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Guinevere</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Queen Guinevere had fled the court, and sat <br>There in the holy house at Almesbury <br>Weeping, none with her save a little maid, <br>A novice: one low light betwixt them burned <br>Blurred by the creeping mist, for all abroad, <br>Beneath a moon unseen albeit at full, <br>The white mist, like a face-cloth to the face, <br>Clung to the dead earth, and the land was still. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">For hither had she fled, her cause of flight <br>Sir Modred; he that like a subtle beast <br>Lay couchant with his eyes upon the throne, <br>Ready to spring, waiting a chance: for this <br>He chilled the popular praises of the King <br>With silent smiles of slow disparagement; <br>And tampered with the Lords of the White Horse, <br>Heathen, the brood by Hengist left; and sought <br>To make disruption in the Table Round <br>Of Arthur, and to splinter it into feuds <br>Serving his traitorous end; and all his aims <br>Were sharpened by strong hate for Lancelot. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">For thus it chanced one morn when all the court, <br>Green-suited, but with plumes that mocked the may, <br>Had been, their wont, a-maying and returned, <br>That Modred still in green, all ear and eye, <br>Climbed to the high top of the garden-wall <br>To spy some secret scandal if he might, <br>And saw the Queen who sat betwixt her best <br>Enid, and lissome Vivien, of her court <br>The wiliest and the worst; and more than this <br>He saw not, for Sir Lancelot passing by <br>Spied where he couched, and as the gardener's hand <br>Picks from the colewort a green caterpillar, <br>So from the high wall and the flowering grove <br>Of grasses Lancelot plucked him by the heel, <br>And cast him as a worm upon the way; <br>But when he knew the Prince though marred with dust, <br>He, reverencing king's blood in a bad man, <br>Made such excuses as he might, and these <br>Full knightly without scorn; for in those days <br>No knight of Arthur's noblest dealt in scorn; <br>But, if a man were halt or hunched, in him <br>By those whom God had made full-limbed and tall, <br>Scorn was allowed as part of his defect, <br>And he was answered softly by the King <br>And all his Table. So Sir Lancelot holp <br>To raise the Prince, who rising twice or thrice <br>Full sharply smote his knees, and smiled, and went: <br>But, ever after, the small violence done <br>Rankled in him and ruffled all his heart, <br>As the sharp wind that ruffles all day long <br>A little bitter pool about a stone <br>On the bare coast. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"> But when Sir Lancelot told <br>This matter to the Queen, at first she laughed <br>Lightly, to think of Modred's dusty fall, <br>Then shuddered, as the village wife who cries <br>`I shudder, some one steps across my grave;' <br>Then laughed again, but faintlier, for indeed <br>She half-foresaw that he, the subtle beast, <br>Would track her guilt until he found, and hers <br>Would be for evermore a name of scorn. <br>Henceforward rarely could she front in hall, <br>Or elsewhere, Modred's narrow foxy face, <br>Heart-hiding smile, and gray persistent eye: <br>Henceforward too, the Powers that tend the soul, <br>To help it from the death that cannot die, <br>And save it even in extremes, began <br>To vex and plague her. Many a time for hours, <br>Beside the placid breathings of the King, <br>In the dead night, grim faces came and went <br>Before her, or a vague spiritual fear-- <br>Like to some doubtful noise of creaking doors, <br>Heard by the watcher in a haunted house, <br>That keeps the rust of murder on the walls-- <br>Held her awake: or if she slept, she dreamed <br>An awful dream; for then she seemed to stand <br>On some vast plain before a setting sun, <br>And from the sun there swiftly made at her <br>A ghastly something, and its shadow flew <br>Before it, till it touched her, and she turned-- <br>When lo! her own, that broadening from her feet, <br>And blackening, swallowed all the land, and in it <br>Far cities burnt, and with a cry she woke. <br>And all this trouble did not pass but grew; <br>Till even the clear face of the guileless King, <br>And trustful courtesies of household life, <br>Became her bane; and at the last she said, <br>`O Lancelot, get thee hence to thine own land, <br>For if thou tarry we shall meet again, <br>And if we meet again, some evil chance <br>Will make the smouldering scandal break and blaze <br>Before the people, and our lord the King.' <br>And Lancelot ever promised, but remained, <br>And still they met and met. Again she said, <br>`O Lancelot, if thou love me get thee hence.' <br>And then they were agreed upon a night <br>(When the good King should not be there) to meet <br>And part for ever. Vivien, lurking, heard. <br>She told Sir Modred. Passion-pale they met <br>And greeted. Hands in hands, and eye to eye, <br>Low on the border of her couch they sat <br>Stammering and staring. It was their last hour, <br>A madness of farewells. And Modred brought <br>His creatures to the basement of the tower <br>For testimony; and crying with full voice <br>`Traitor, come out, ye are trapt at last,' aroused <br>Lancelot, who rushing outward lionlike <br>Leapt on him, and hurled him headlong, and he fell <br>Stunned, and his creatures took and bare him off, <br>And all was still: then she, `The end is come, <br>And I am shamed for ever;' and he said, <br>`Mine be the shame; mine was the sin: but rise, <br>And fly to my strong castle overseas: <br>There will I hide thee, till my life shall end, <br>There hold thee with my life against the world.' <br>She answered, `Lancelot, wilt thou hold me so? <br>Nay, friend, for we have taken our farewells. <br>Would God that thou couldst hide me from myself! <br>Mine is the shame, for I was wife, and thou <br>Unwedded: yet rise now, and let us fly, <br>For I will draw me into sanctuary, <br>And bide my doom.' So Lancelot got her horse, <br>Set her thereon, and mounted on his own, <br>And then they rode to the divided way, <br>There kissed, and parted weeping: for he past, <br>Love-loyal to the least wish of the Queen, <br>Back to his land; but she to Almesbury <br>Fled all night long by glimmering waste and weald, <br>And heard the Spirits of the waste and weald <br>Moan as she fled, or thought she heard them moan: <br>And in herself she moaned `Too late, too late!' <br>Till in the cold wind that foreruns the morn, <br>A blot in heaven, the Raven, flying high, <br>Croaked, and she thought, `He spies a field of death; <br>For now the Heathen of the Northern Sea, <br>Lured by the crimes and frailties of the court, <br>Begin to slay the folk, and spoil the land.' </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And when she came to Almesbury she spake <br>There to the nuns, and said, `Mine enemies <br>Pursue me, but, O peaceful Sisterhood, <br>Receive, and yield me sanctuary, nor ask <br>Her name to whom ye yield it, till her time <br>To tell you:' and her beauty, grace and power, <br>Wrought as a charm upon them, and they spared <br>To ask it. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"> So the stately Queen abode <br>For many a week, unknown, among the nuns; <br>Nor with them mixed, nor told her name, nor sought, <br>Wrapt in her grief, for housel or for shrift, <br>But communed only with the little maid, <br>Who pleased her with a babbling heedlessness <br>Which often lured her from herself; but now, <br>This night, a rumour wildly blown about <br>Came, that Sir Modred had usurped the realm, <br>And leagued him with the heathen, while the King <br>Was waging war on Lancelot: then she thought, <br>`With what a hate the people and the King <br>Must hate me,' and bowed down upon her hands <br>Silent, until the little maid, who brooked <br>No silence, brake it, uttering, `Late! so late! <br>What hour, I wonder, now?' and when she drew <br>No answer, by and by began to hum <br>An air the nuns had taught her; `Late, so late!' <br>Which when she heard, the Queen looked up, and said, <br>`O maiden, if indeed ye list to sing, <br>Sing, and unbind my heart that I may weep.' <br>Whereat full willingly sang the little maid. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">`Late, late, so late! and dark the night and chill! <br>Late, late, so late! but we can enter still. <br>Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">`No light had we: for that we do repent; <br>And learning this, the bridegroom will relent. <br>Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">`No light: so late! and dark and chill the night! <br>O let us in, that we may find the light! <br>Too late, too late: ye cannot enter now. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">`Have we not heard the bridegroom is so sweet? <br>O let us in, though late, to kiss his feet! <br>No, no, too late! ye cannot enter now.' </div><div style="margin:10px 0">So sang the novice, while full passionately, <br>Her head upon her hands, remembering <br>Her thought when first she came, wept the sad Queen. <br>Then said the little novice prattling to her, <br>`O pray you, noble lady, weep no more; <br>But let my words, the words of one so small, <br>Who knowing nothing knows but to obey, <br>And if I do not there is penance given-- <br>Comfort your sorrows; for they do not flow <br>From evil done; right sure am I of that, <br>Who see your tender grace and stateliness. <br>But weigh your sorrows with our lord the King's, <br>And weighing find them less; for gone is he <br>To wage grim war against Sir Lancelot there, <br>Round that strong castle where he holds the Queen; <br>And Modred whom he left in charge of all, <br>The traitor--Ah sweet lady, the King's grief <br>For his own self, and his own Queen, and realm, <br>Must needs be thrice as great as any of ours. <br>For me, I thank the saints, I am not great. <br>For if there ever come a grief to me <br>I cry my cry in silence, and have done. <br>None knows it, and my tears have brought me good: <br>But even were the griefs of little ones <br>As great as those of great ones, yet this grief <br>Is added to the griefs the great must bear, <br>That howsoever much they may desire <br>Silence, they cannot weep behind a cloud: <br>As even here they talk at Almesbury <br>About the good King and his wicked Queen, <br>And were I such a King with such a Queen, <br>Well might I wish to veil her wickedness, <br>But were I such a King, it could not be.' </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then to her own sad heart muttered the Queen, <br>`Will the child kill me with her innocent talk?' <br>But openly she answered, `Must not I, <br>If this false traitor have displaced his lord, <br>Grieve with the common grief of all the realm?' </div><div style="margin:10px 0">`Yea,' said the maid, `this is all woman's grief, <br>That SHE is woman, whose disloyal life <br>Hath wrought confusion in the Table Round <br>Which good King Arthur founded, years ago, <br>With signs and miracles and wonders, there <br>At Camelot, ere the coming of the Queen.' </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then thought the Queen within herself again, <br>`Will the child kill me with her foolish prate?' <br>But openly she spake and said to her, <br>`O little maid, shut in by nunnery walls, <br>What canst thou know of Kings and Tables Round, <br>Or what of signs and wonders, but the signs <br>And simple miracles of thy nunnery?' </div><div style="margin:10px 0">To whom the little novice garrulously, <br>`Yea, but I know: the land was full of signs <br>And wonders ere the coming of the Queen. <br>So said my father, and himself was knight <br>Of the great Table--at the founding of it; <br>And rode thereto from Lyonnesse, and he said <br>That as he rode, an hour or maybe twain <br>After the sunset, down the coast, he heard <br>Strange music, and he paused, and turning--there, <br>All down the lonely coast of Lyonnesse, <br>Each with a beacon-star upon his head, <br>And with a wild sea-light about his feet, <br>He saw them--headland after headland flame <br>Far on into the rich heart of the west: <br>And in the light the white mermaiden swam, <br>And strong man-breasted things stood from the sea, <br>And sent a deep sea-voice through all the land, <br>To which the little elves of chasm and cleft <br>Made answer, sounding like a distant horn. <br>So said my father--yea, and furthermore, <br>Next morning, while he past the dim-lit woods, <br>Himself beheld three spirits mad with joy <br>Come dashing down on a tall wayside flower, <br>That shook beneath them, as the thistle shakes <br>When three gray linnets wrangle for the seed: <br>And still at evenings on before his horse <br>The flickering fairy-circle wheeled and broke <br>Flying, and linked again, and wheeled and broke <br>Flying, for all the land was full of life. <br>And when at last he came to Camelot, <br>A wreath of airy dancers hand-in-hand <br>Swung round the lighted lantern of the hall; <br>And in the hall itself was such a feast <br>As never man had dreamed; for every knight <br>Had whatsoever meat he longed for served <br>By hands unseen; and even as he said <br>Down in the cellars merry bloated things <br>Shouldered the spigot, straddling on the butts <br>While the wine ran: so glad were spirits and men <br>Before the coming of the sinful Queen.' </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then spake the Queen and somewhat bitterly, <br>`Were they so glad? ill prophets were they all, <br>Spirits and men: could none of them foresee, <br>Not even thy wise father with his signs <br>And wonders, what has fallen upon the realm?' </div><div style="margin:10px 0">To whom the novice garrulously again, <br>`Yea, one, a bard; of whom my father said, <br>Full many a noble war-song had he sung, <br>Even in the presence of an enemy's fleet, <br>Between the steep cliff and the coming wave; <br>And many a mystic lay of life and death <br>Had chanted on the smoky mountain-tops, <br>When round him bent the spirits of the hills <br>With all their dewy hair blown back like flame: <br>So said my father--and that night the bard <br>Sang Arthur's glorious wars, and sang the King <br>As wellnigh more than man, and railed at those <br>Who called him the false son of Gorlos: <br>For there was no man knew from whence he came; <br>But after tempest, when the long wave broke <br>All down the thundering shores of Bude and Bos, <br>There came a day as still as heaven, and then <br>They found a naked child upon the sands <br>Of dark Tintagil by the Cornish sea; <br>And that was Arthur; and they fostered him <br>Till he by miracle was approven King: <br>And that his grave should be a mystery <br>From all men, like his birth; and could he find <br>A woman in her womanhood as great <br>As he was in his manhood, then, he sang, <br>The twain together well might change the world. <br>But even in the middle of his song <br>He faltered, and his hand fell from the harp, <br>And pale he turned, and reeled, and would have fallen, <br>But that they stayed him up; nor would he tell <br>His vision; but what doubt that he foresaw <br>This evil work of Lancelot and the Queen?' </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then thought the Queen, `Lo! they have set her on, <br>Our simple-seeming Abbess and her nuns, <br>To play upon me,' and bowed her head nor spake. <br>Whereat the novice crying, with clasped hands, <br>Shame on her own garrulity garrulously, <br>Said the good nuns would check her gadding tongue <br>Full often, `and, sweet lady, if I seem <br>To vex an ear too sad to listen to me, <br>Unmannerly, with prattling and the tales <br>Which my good father told me, check me too <br>Nor let me shame my father's memory, one <br>Of noblest manners, though himself would say <br>Sir Lancelot had the noblest; and he died, <br>Killed in a tilt, come next, five summers back, <br>And left me; but of others who remain, <br>And of the two first-famed for courtesy-- <br>And pray you check me if I ask amiss- <br>But pray you, which had noblest, while you moved <br>Among them, Lancelot or our lord the King?' </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then the pale Queen looked up and answered her, <br>`Sir Lancelot, as became a noble knight, <br>Was gracious to all ladies, and the same <br>In open battle or the tilting-field <br>Forbore his own advantage, and the King <br>In open battle or the tilting-field <br>Forbore his own advantage, and these two <br>Were the most nobly-mannered men of all; <br>For manners are not idle, but the fruit <br>Of loyal nature, and of noble mind.' </div><div style="margin:10px 0">`Yea,' said the maid, `be manners such fair fruit?' <br>Then Lancelot's needs must be a thousand-fold <br>Less noble, being, as all rumour runs, <br>The most disloyal friend in all the world.' </div><div style="margin:10px 0">To which a mournful answer made the Queen: <br>`O closed about by narrowing nunnery-walls, <br>What knowest thou of the world, and all its lights <br>And shadows, all the wealth and all the woe? <br>If ever Lancelot, that most noble knight, <br>Were for one hour less noble than himself, <br>Pray for him that he scape the doom of fire, <br>And weep for her that drew him to his doom.' </div><div style="margin:10px 0">`Yea,' said the little novice, `I pray for both; <br>But I should all as soon believe that his, <br>Sir Lancelot's, were as noble as the King's, <br>As I could think, sweet lady, yours would be <br>Such as they are, were you the sinful Queen.' </div><div style="margin:10px 0">So she, like many another babbler, hurt <br>Whom she would soothe, and harmed where she would heal; <br>For here a sudden flush of wrathful heat <br>Fired all the pale face of the Queen, who cried, <br>`Such as thou art be never maiden more <br>For ever! thou their tool, set on to plague <br>And play upon, and harry me, petty spy <br>And traitress.' When that storm of anger brake <br>From Guinevere, aghast the maiden rose, <br>White as her veil, and stood before the Queen <br>As tremulously as foam upon the beach <br>Stands in a wind, ready to break and fly, <br>And when the Queen had added `Get thee hence,' <br>Fled frighted. Then that other left alone <br>Sighed, and began to gather heart again, <br>Saying in herself, `The simple, fearful child <br>Meant nothing, but my own too-fearful guilt, <br>Simpler than any child, betrays itself. <br>But help me, heaven, for surely I repent. <br>For what is true repentance but in thought-- <br>Not even in inmost thought to think again <br>The sins that made the past so pleasant to us: <br>And I have sworn never to see him more, <br>To see him more.' </div><div style="margin:10px 0"> And even in saying this, <br>Her memory from old habit of the mind <br>Went slipping back upon the golden days <br>In which she saw him first, when Lancelot came, <br>Reputed the best knight and goodliest man, <br>Ambassador, to lead her to his lord <br>Arthur, and led her forth, and far ahead <br>Of his and her retinue moving, they, <br>Rapt in sweet talk or lively, all on love <br>And sport and tilts and pleasure, (for the time <br>Was maytime, and as yet no sin was dreamed,) <br>Rode under groves that looked a paradise <br>Of blossom, over sheets of hyacinth <br>That seemed the heavens upbreaking through the earth, <br>And on from hill to hill, and every day <br>Beheld at noon in some delicious dale <br>The silk pavilions of King Arthur raised <br>For brief repast or afternoon repose <br>By couriers gone before; and on again, <br>Till yet once more ere set of sun they saw <br>The Dragon of the great Pendragonship, <br>That crowned the state pavilion of the King, <br>Blaze by the rushing brook or silent well. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But when the Queen immersed in such a trance, <br>And moving through the past unconsciously, <br>Came to that point where first she saw the King <br>Ride toward her from the city, sighed to find <br>Her journey done, glanced at him, thought him cold, <br>High, self-contained, and passionless, not like him, <br>`Not like my Lancelot'--while she brooded thus <br>And grew half-guilty in her thoughts again, <br>There rode an armd warrior to the doors. <br>A murmuring whisper through the nunnery ran, <br>Then on a sudden a cry, `The King.' She sat <br>Stiff-stricken, listening; but when armd feet <br>Through the long gallery from the outer doors <br>Rang coming, prone from off her seat she fell, <br>And grovelled with her face against the floor: <br>There with her milkwhite arms and shadowy hair <br>She made her face a darkness from the King: <br>And in the darkness heard his armd feet <br>Pause by her; then came silence, then a voice, <br>Monotonous and hollow like a Ghost's <br>Denouncing judgment, but though changed, the King's: </div><div style="margin:10px 0">`Liest thou here so low, the child of one <br>I honoured, happy, dead before thy shame? <br>Well is it that no child is born of thee. <br>The children born of thee are sword and fire, <br>Red ruin, and the breaking up of laws, <br>The craft of kindred and the Godless hosts <br>Of heathen swarming o'er the Northern Sea; <br>Whom I, while yet Sir Lancelot, my right arm, <br>The mightiest of my knights, abode with me, <br>Have everywhere about this land of Christ <br>In twelve great battles ruining overthrown. <br>And knowest thou now from whence I come--from him <br>From waging bitter war with him: and he, <br>That did not shun to smite me in worse way, <br>Had yet that grace of courtesy in him left, <br>He spared to lift his hand against the King <br>Who made him knight: but many a knight was slain; <br>And many more, and all his kith and kin <br>Clave to him, and abode in his own land. <br>And many more when Modred raised revolt, <br>Forgetful of their troth and fealty, clave <br>To Modred, and a remnant stays with me. <br>And of this remnant will I leave a part, <br>True men who love me still, for whom I live, <br>To guard thee in the wild hour coming on, <br>Lest but a hair of this low head be harmed. <br>Fear not: thou shalt be guarded till my death. <br>Howbeit I know, if ancient prophecies <br>Have erred not, that I march to meet my doom. <br>Thou hast not made my life so sweet to me, <br>That I the King should greatly care to live; <br>For thou hast spoilt the purpose of my life. <br>Bear with me for the last time while I show, <br>Even for thy sake, the sin which thou hast sinned. <br>For when the Roman left us, and their law <br>Relaxed its hold upon us, and the ways <br>Were filled with rapine, here and there a deed <br>Of prowess done redressed a random wrong. <br>But I was first of all the kings who drew <br>The knighthood-errant of this realm and all <br>The realms together under me, their Head, <br>In that fair Order of my Table Round, <br>A glorious company, the flower of men, <br>To serve as model for the mighty world, <br>And be the fair beginning of a time. <br>I made them lay their hands in mine and swear <br>To reverence the King, as if he were <br>Their conscience, and their conscience as their King, <br>To break the heathen and uphold the Christ, <br>To ride abroad redressing human wrongs, <br>To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it, <br>To honour his own word as if his God's, <br>To lead sweet lives in purest chastity, <br>To love one maiden only, cleave to her, <br>And worship her by years of noble deeds, <br>Until they won her; for indeed I knew <br>Of no more subtle master under heaven <br>Than is the maiden passion for a maid, <br>Not only to keep down the base in man, <br>But teach high thought, and amiable words <br>And courtliness, and the desire of fame, <br>And love of truth, and all that makes a man. <br>And all this throve before I wedded thee, <br>Believing, &quot;lo mine helpmate, one to feel <br>My purpose and rejoicing in my joy.&quot; <br>Then came thy shameful sin with Lancelot; <br>Then came the sin of Tristram and Isolt; <br>Then others, following these my mightiest knights, <br>And drawing foul ensample from fair names, <br>Sinned also, till the loathsome opposite <br>Of all my heart had destined did obtain, <br>And all through thee! so that this life of mine <br>I guard as God's high gift from scathe and wrong, <br>Not greatly care to lose; but rather think <br>How sad it were for Arthur, should he live, <br>To sit once more within his lonely hall, <br>And miss the wonted number of my knights, <br>And miss to hear high talk of noble deeds <br>As in the golden days before thy sin. <br>For which of us, who might be left, could speak <br>Of the pure heart, nor seem to glance at thee? <br>And in thy bowers of Camelot or of Usk <br>Thy shadow still would glide from room to room, <br>And I should evermore be vext with thee <br>In hanging robe or vacant ornament, <br>Or ghostly footfall echoing on the stair. <br>For think not, though thou wouldst not love thy lord, <br>Thy lord hast wholly lost his love for thee. <br>I am not made of so slight elements. <br>Yet must I leave thee, woman, to thy shame. <br>I hold that man the worst of public foes <br>Who either for his own or children's sake, <br>To save his blood from scandal, lets the wife <br>Whom he knows false, abide and rule the house: <br>For being through his cowardice allowed <br>Her station, taken everywhere for pure, <br>She like a new disease, unknown to men, <br>Creeps, no precaution used, among the crowd, <br>Makes wicked lightnings of her eyes, and saps <br>The fealty of our friends, and stirs the pulse <br>With devil's leaps, and poisons half the young. <br>Worst of the worst were that man he that reigns! <br>Better the King's waste hearth and aching heart <br>Than thou reseated in thy place of light, <br>The mockery of my people, and their bane.' </div><div style="margin:10px 0">He paused, and in the pause she crept an inch <br>Nearer, and laid her hands about his feet. <br>Far off a solitary trumpet blew. <br>Then waiting by the doors the warhorse neighed <br>At a friend's voice, and he spake again: </div><div style="margin:10px 0">`Yet think not that I come to urge thy crimes, <br>I did not come to curse thee, Guinevere, <br>I, whose vast pity almost makes me die <br>To see thee, laying there thy golden head, <br>My pride in happier summers, at my feet. <br>The wrath which forced my thoughts on that fierce law, <br>The doom of treason and the flaming death, <br>(When first I learnt thee hidden here) is past. <br>The pang--which while I weighed thy heart with one <br>Too wholly true to dream untruth in thee, <br>Made my tears burn--is also past--in part. <br>And all is past, the sin is sinned, and I, <br>Lo! I forgive thee, as Eternal God <br>Forgives: do thou for thine own soul the rest. <br>But how to take last leave of all I loved? <br>O golden hair, with which I used to play <br>Not knowing! O imperial-moulded form, <br>And beauty such as never woman wore, <br>Until it became a kingdom's curse with thee-- <br>I cannot touch thy lips, they are not mine, <br>But Lancelot's: nay, they never were the King's. <br>I cannot take thy hand: that too is flesh, <br>And in the flesh thou hast sinned; and mine own flesh, <br>Here looking down on thine polluted, cries <br>&quot;I loathe thee:&quot; yet not less, O Guinevere, <br>For I was ever virgin save for thee, <br>My love through flesh hath wrought into my life <br>So far, that my doom is, I love thee still. <br>Let no man dream but that I love thee still. <br>Perchance, and so thou purify thy soul, <br>And so thou lean on our fair father Christ, <br>Hereafter in that world where all are pure <br>We two may meet before high God, and thou <br>Wilt spring to me, and claim me thine, and know <br>I am thine husband--not a smaller soul, <br>Nor Lancelot, nor another. Leave me that, <br>I charge thee, my last hope. Now must I hence. <br>Through the thick night I hear the trumpet blow: <br>They summon me their King to lead mine hosts <br>Far down to that great battle in the west, <br>Where I must strike against the man they call <br>My sister's son--no kin of mine, who leagues <br>With Lords of the White Horse, heathen, and knights, <br>Traitors--and strike him dead, and meet myself <br>Death, or I know not what mysterious doom. <br>And thou remaining here wilt learn the event; <br>But hither shall I never come again, <br>Never lie by thy side; see thee no more-- <br>Farewell!' </div><div style="margin:10px 0"> And while she grovelled at his feet, <br>She felt the King's breath wander o'er her neck, <br>And in the darkness o'er her fallen head, <br>Perceived the waving of his hands that blest. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then, listening till those armd steps were gone, <br>Rose the pale Queen, and in her anguish found <br>The casement: `peradventure,' so she thought, <br>`If I might see his face, and not be seen.' <br>And lo, he sat on horseback at the door! <br>And near him the sad nuns with each a light <br>Stood, and he gave them charge about the Queen, <br>To guard and foster her for evermore. <br>And while he spake to these his helm was lowered, <br>To which for crest the golden dragon clung <br>Of Britain; so she did not see the face, <br>Which then was as an angel's, but she saw, <br>Wet with the mists and smitten by the lights, <br>The Dragon of the great Pendragonship <br>Blaze, making all the night a steam of fire. <br>And even then he turned; and more and more <br>The moony vapour rolling round the King, <br>Who seemed the phantom of a Giant in it, <br>Enwound him fold by fold, and made him gray <br>And grayer, till himself became as mist <br>Before her, moving ghostlike to his doom. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then she stretched out her arms and cried aloud <br>`Oh Arthur!' there her voice brake suddenly, <br>Then--as a stream that spouting from a cliff <br>Fails in mid air, but gathering at the base <br>Re-makes itself, and flashes down the vale-- <br>Went on in passionate utterance: </div><div style="margin:10px 0"> `Gone--my lord! <br>Gone through my sin to slay and to be slain! <br>And he forgave me, and I could not speak. <br>Farewell? I should have answered his farewell. <br>His mercy choked me. Gone, my lord the King, <br>My own true lord! how dare I call him mine? <br>The shadow of another cleaves to me, <br>And makes me one pollution: he, the King, <br>Called me polluted: shall I kill myself? <br>What help in that? I cannot kill my sin, <br>If soul be soul; nor can I kill my shame; <br>No, nor by living can I live it down. <br>The days will grow to weeks, the weeks to months <br>The months will add themselves and make the years, <br>The years will roll into the centuries, <br>And mine will ever be a name of scorn. <br>I must not dwell on that defeat of fame. <br>Let the world be; that is but of the world. <br>What else? what hope? I think there was a hope, <br>Except he mocked me when he spake of hope; <br>His hope he called it; but he never mocks, <br>For mockery is the fume of little hearts. <br>And blessd be the King, who hath forgiven <br>My wickedness to him, and left me hope <br>That in mine own heart I can live down sin <br>And be his mate hereafter in the heavens <br>Before high God. Ah great and gentle lord, <br>Who wast, as is the conscience of a saint <br>Among his warring senses, to thy knights-- <br>To whom my false voluptuous pride, that took <br>Full easily all impressions from below, <br>Would not look up, or half-despised the height <br>To which I would not or I could not climb-- <br>I thought I could not breathe in that fine air <br>That pure severity of perfect light-- <br>I yearned for warmth and colour which I found <br>In Lancelot--now I see thee what thou art, <br>Thou art the highest and most human too, <br>Not Lancelot, nor another. Is there none <br>Will tell the King I love him though so late? <br>Now--ere he goes to the great Battle? none: <br>Myself must tell him in that purer life, <br>But now it were too daring. Ah my God, <br>What might I not have made of thy fair world, <br>Had I but loved thy highest creature here? <br>It was my duty to have loved the highest: <br>It surely was my profit had I known: <br>It would have been my pleasure had I seen. <br>We needs must love the highest when we see it, <br>Not Lancelot, nor another.' </div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Here her hand <br>Grasped, made her vail her eyes: she looked and saw <br>The novice, weeping, suppliant, and said to her, <br>`Yea, little maid, for am I not forgiven?' <br>Then glancing up beheld the holy nuns <br>All round her, weeping; and her heart was loosed <br>Within her, and she wept with these and said, </div><div style="margin:10px 0">`Ye know me then, that wicked one, who broke <br>The vast design and purpose of the King. <br>O shut me round with narrowing nunnery-walls, <br>Meek maidens, from the voices crying &quot;shame.&quot; <br>I must not scorn myself: he loves me still. <br>Let no one dream but that he loves me still. <br>So let me, if you do not shudder at me, <br>Nor shun to call me sister, dwell with you; <br>Wear black and white, and be a nun like you, <br>Fast with your fasts, not feasting with your feasts; <br>Grieve with your griefs, not grieving at your joys, <br>But not rejoicing; mingle with your rites; <br>Pray and be prayed for; lie before your shrines; <br>Do each low office of your holy house; <br>Walk your dim cloister, and distribute dole <br>To poor sick people, richer in His eyes <br>Who ransomed us, and haler too than I; <br>And treat their loathsome hurts and heal mine own; <br>And so wear out in almsdeed and in prayer <br>The sombre close of that voluptuous day, <br>Which wrought the ruin of my lord the King.' </div><div style="margin:10px 0">She said: they took her to themselves; and she <br>Still hoping, fearing `is it yet too late?' <br>Dwelt with them, till in time their Abbess died. <br>Then she, for her good deeds and her pure life, <br>And for the power of ministration in her, <br>And likewise for the high rank she had borne, <br>Was chosen Abbess, there, an Abbess, lived <br>For three brief years, and there, an Abbess, past <br>To where beyond these voices there is peace.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Alfred+Lord+Tennyson">Alfred Lord Tennyson</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341643" data-title="Guinevere de Alfred Lord Tennyson" data-description="Queen Guinevere had fled the court, and sat There in the holy house at Almesbury Weeping, none with her save a little maid, A novice: one low light betwixt them burned Blurred by the creeping mist, for all abroad, Beneath a moon unseen albeit..."></div> </div> </div>

solid border dashed border dotted border double border groove border ridge border inset border outset border no border blue green red purple cyan gold silver black