"... There rose

A hubbub in the court of half the maids
Gather'd together: from the illumined hall
Long lanes of splendour slanted o'er a press
Of snowy shoulders, thick as herded ewes,
And rainbow robes, and gems and gemlike eyes,
And gold and golden heads; they to and fro
Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, some pale,
All open-mouth'd, all gazing to the light,

Some crying there was an army in the land,
And some that men were in the very walls,
And some they cared not; till a clamour grew
As of a new-world Babel, woman-built,

And worse-confounded: high above them stood
The placid marble Muses, looking peace."

The father of the prince has come with his army to deliver him, and has seized King Gama as a hostage. The princess is obliged to release the young man. With distended nostrils, waving hair, a tempest raging in her heart, she thanks him with bitter irony. She trembles with wounded pride; she stammers, hesitates; she tries to constrain herself in order the better to insult him, and suddenly breaks out:

"You have done well and like a gentleman,

And like a prince: you have our thanks for all:
And you look well too in your woman's dress:
Well have you done and like a gentleman.
You saved our life: we owe you bitter thanks:
Better have died and spilt our bones in the flood-
Then men had said-but now-What hinders me
To take such bloody vengeance on you both ?—
Yet since our father-Wasps in our good hive,
You would-be quenchers of the light to be,
Barbarians, grosser than your native bears-
O would I had his sceptre for one hour!

You that have dared to break our bound, and gull'd
Our servants, wronged and lied and thwarted us—
I wed with thee! I bound by precontract

Your bride, your bondslave! not tho' all the gold
That veins the world were pack'd to make your crown,

And every spoken tongue should lord you. Sir,
Your falsehood and yourself are hateful to us :

I trample on your offers and on you:

Begone: we will not look upon you more.
Here, push them out at gates.'

112

1 The Princess, a Medley, 12th ed. 1864 iv. 99.

2 Ibid. iv. 102.

How is this fierce heart to be softened, fevered with feminine anger, embittered by disappointment and insult, excited by long dreams of power and ascendency, and rendered more savage by its virginity! But how anger becomes her, and how lovely she is! And how this fire of sentiment, this lofty declaration of independence, this chimerical ambition for reforming the future, reveal the generosity and pride of a young heart, enamored of the beautiful! It is agreed that the quarrel shall be settled by a combat of fifty men against fifty other men. The prince is con quered, and Ida sees him bleeding on the sand. Slowly, gradually, in spite of herself, she yields, receives the wounded in her palace, and comes to the bedside of the dying prince.

Before his weakness and his wild delirium pity expands, then tenderness, then love:

"From all a closer interest flourish'd up

Tenderness touch by touch, and last, to these,
Love, like an Alpine harebell hung with tears
By some cold morning glacier; frail at first
And feeble, all unconscious of itself,

But such as gather'd colour day by day.”1

One evening he returns to consciousness, exhausted, his eyes still troubled by gloomy visions; he sees Ida before him, hovering like a dream, painfully opens his pale lips, and "utter'd whisperingly:"

“If you be, what I think you, some sweet dream,

I would but ask you to fulfil yourself:

But if you be that Ida whom I knew,

I ask you nothing: only, if a dream,

Sweet dream be perfect. I shall die to-night.
Stoop down and seem to kiss me ere I die.'

. . . She turned; she paused;

She stoop'd; and out of languor leapt a cry;
Leapt fiery Passion from the brinks of death;
And I believe that in the living world
My spirit closed with Ida's at the lips;
Till back I fell, and from mine arms she rose
Glowing all over noble shame; and all
Her falser self slipt from her like a robe,
And left her woman, lovelier in her mood
Than in her mould that other, when she came

1 The Princess, a Medley, v. 163.

From barren deeps to conquer all with love;

And down the streaming crystal dropt; and she
Far-fleeted by the purple island-sides,

Naked, a double light in air and wave."1

This is the accent of the Renaissance, as it left the heart of Spenser and Shakespeare; they had this voluptuous adoration of form and soul, and this divine sentiment of beauty.

V.

There is another chivalry, which inaugurates the Middle Age, as this closes it; sung by children, as this by youths; and restored in the Idylls of the King, as this in the Princess. It is the legend of Arthur, Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table. With admirable heart, Tennyson has modernized the feelings and the language; this pliant soul takes all tones, in order to give itself all pleasures. This time he has become epic, antique and ingenuous, like Homer, and like the old trouvères of the chansons de Geste. It is pleasant to quit our learned civilization, to rise again to the primitive age and manners, to listen to the peaceful discourse which flows copiously and slowly, as a river in a smooth channel. The distinguishing mark of the ancient epic is clearness and calm. The ideas were new-born; man was happy and in his infancy. He had not had time to refine, to cut down and adorn his thoughts; he showed them bare. He was not yet pricked by manifold lusts; he thought at leisure. Every idea interested him; he unfolded it curiously, and explained it. His speech never jerks; he goes step by step, from one object to another, and every object seems lovely to him: he pauses, observes, and takes pleasure in observing. This simplicity and peace are strange and charming; we abandon ourselves, it is well with us; we do not desire to go more quickly; we fancy we would gladly remain thus, and forever. For primitive thought is wholesome thought; we have but marred it by grafting and cultivation; we return to it as our familiar element, to find contentment and repose.

But of all epics, this of the Round Table is distinguished by purity. Arthur, the irreproachable king, has assembled

"A glorious company, the flower of men,
To serve as model for the mighty world,

The Princess, a Medley, v. 165.

And be the fair beginning of a time.

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 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.”1

There is a sort of refined pleasure in having to do with such a world; for there is none in which purer or more touching fruits could grow. I will show one-" Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat" -who, having seen Lancelot once, loves him when he has departed, and for her whole life. She keeps the shield, which he has left in a tower, and every day goes up to look at it, counting "every dint a sword had beaten in it, and every scratch a lance had made upon it," and living on her dreams. He is wounded: she goes to tend and heal him:

"She murmur'd, 'vain, in vain: it cannot be.
He will not love me: how then? must I die?'
Then as a little helpless innocent bird,
That has but one plain passage of few notes,
Will sing the simple passage o'er and o'er
For all an April morning, till the ear
Wearies to hear it, so the simple maid

Went half the night repeating, 'must I die?'" 2

At last she confesses her secret; but with what modesty and spirit! He cannot marry her; he is tied to another. She droops and fades; her father and brothers try to console her, but she will not be consoled. She is told that Lancelot has sinned with the queen; she does not believe it:

"At last she said, 'Sweet brothers, yester night

I seem'd a curious little maid again,

As happy as when we de't among the woods,
And when you used to take me with the flood
Up the great river in the boatman's boat.
Only you would not pass beyond the cape
That hast the poplar on it; there you fixt
Your limit, oft returning with the tide.
And yet I cried because you would not pass
Beyond it, and far up the shining flood

Idylls of the King, 1864; Guinevere, 249.

2 Ibid.; Elaine, 193.

Until we found the palace of the King.
... Now shall I have my will.'” 1

She dies, and her father and brothers did what she had asked them to do:

"But when the next sun brake from underground,

Then, those two brethren slowly with bent brows
Accompanying, the sad chariot-bier

Past like a shadow thro' the field, that shone
Full summer, to that stream whereon the barge,
Pall'd all its length in blackest samite, lay.
There sat the lifelong creature of the house,
Loyal, the dumb old servitor, on deck,
Winking his eyes, and twisted all his face.
So those two brethren from the chariot took
And on the black decks laid her in her bed,
Set in her hand a lily, o'er her hung
The silken case with braided blazonings
And kiss'd her quiet brows, and saying to her:
'Sister, farewell for ever,' and again
'Farewell, sweet sister,' parted all in tears.

Then rose the dumb old servitor, and the dead
Steer'd by the dumb went upward with the flood-

In her right hand the lily, in her left

The letter-all her bright hair streaming down—
And all the coverlid was cloth of gold

Drawn to her waist, and she herself in white
All but her face, and that clear-featured face
Was lovely, for she did not seem as dead

But fast asleep, and lay as tho' she smiled." 2

Thus they arrive at Court in great silence, and King Arthur read the letter before all his knights and weeping ladies :

"Most noble lord, Sir Lancelot of the Lake,

I, sometime call'd the maid of Astolat,
Come, for you left me taking no farewell,
Hither, to take my last farewell of you.

I loved you, and my love had no return,

And therefore my true love has been my death.

And therefore to our lady Guinevere,

And to all other ladies, I make moan.

Pray for my soul, and yield me burial.
Pray for my soul thou too, Sir Lancelot,
As thou art a knight peerless." 3

1 Idylls of the King, 1864; Elaine, 201.

2 Ibid. 206.

3 Ibid. 213.