Is tawnier than her cygnet's: these are words: Your beauty is your beauty, and I sin Perchance, we both can pardon: but, my I hear of rumours flying thro' your court. 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 Where these had fallen, slowly past the barge Whereon the lily maid of Astolat Being your gift, had you not lost your Lay smiling, like a star in blackest night. would I, But Arthur, who beheld his cloudy brows, More specially were he, she wedded, poor, | Approach'd him, and with full affection Estate them with large land and territory In mine own realm beyond the narrow seas, To keep them in all joyance: more than this said, 'Lancelot, my Lancelot, thou in whom I have Most joy and most affiance, for I know I could not; this she would not, and she What thou hast been in battle by my side, died.' And many a time have watch'd thee at the tilt He pausing, Arthur answer'd, 'O my Strike down the lusty and long practised 'Free love, so bound, were freest,' said the King. Let love be free; free love is for the best: For what am I? what profits me my name Of greatest knight? I fought for it, and have it : Pleasure to have it, none; to lose it, pain; And, after heaven, on our dull side of Now grown a part of me: but what use in half Beneath a world-old yew-tree, darkening But spake with such a sadness and so low We heard not half of what he said. What is it? The cloisters, on a gustful April morn That puff'd the swaying branches into smoke Above them, ere the summer when he died, The monk Ambrosius question'd Percivale : 'O brother, I have seen this yew-tree smoke, Spring after spring, for half a hundred years: For never have I known the world without, Nor ever stray'd beyond the pale: but Arimathæan Joseph, journeying brought thee, To Glastonbury, where the winter thorn Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of our Lord. And there awhile it bode; and if a man Could touch or see it, he was heal'd at once, By faith, of all his ills. But then the times To whom the monk: From our old books I know That Joseph came of old to Glastonbury, And there the heathen Prince, Arviragus, Gave him an isle of marsh whereon to build; And there he built with wattles from the marsh A little lonely church in days of yore, seem Mute of this miracle, far as I have read. But who first saw the holy thing to-day?' 'A woman,' answer'd Percivale, a nun, And one no further off in blood from me Than sister; and if ever holy maid With knees of adoration wore the stone, A holy maid; tho' never maiden glow'd, But that was in her earlier maidenhood, With such a fervent flame of human love, |