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To wreck thee villainously: but, O Sir Knight,

What dame or damsel have ye kneel'd to last?'

And Tristram, Last to my Queen Paramount,

Here now to my Queen. Paramount of love

And loveliness - ay, lovelier than when first

Her light feet fell on our rough Lyo

nesse,

Sailing from Ireland.'

Softly laugh'd Isolt; Flatter me not, for hath not our great Queen

My dole of beauty trebled?' and he said, 'Her beauty is her beauty, and thine

thine,

And thine is more to me-soft, gracious, kind

Save when thy Mark is kindled on thy lips

Most gracious; but she, haughty, ev'n to him,

Lancelot; for I have seen him wan enow To make one doubt if ever the great Queen

Have yielded him her love.'

To whom Isolt, 'Ah then, false hunter and false harper,

thou

Who brakest thro' the scruple of my bond,

Calling me thy white hind, and saying

to me

That Guinevere had sinn'd against the highest,

And I misyoked with such a want of

man

That I could hardly sin against the lowest.'

He answer'd, 'O my soul, be comforted!

If this be sweet, to sin in leading-strings, If here be comfort, and if ours be sin, Crown'd warrant had we for the crowning sin

That made us happy: but how ye greet me- - fear

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And, saddening on the sudden, spake
Isolt,

'I had forgotten all in my strong joy
To see theeyearnings?—ay! for, hour
by hour,

Here in the never-ended afternoon,
O sweeter than all memories of thee,
Deeper than any yearnings after thee
Seem'd those far-rolling, westward-
smiling seas,

Watch'd from this tower. Isolt of Britain dash'd

Before Isolt of Brittany on the strand, Would that have chill'd her bride-kiss? Wedded her?

Fought in her father's battles? wounded there?

The King was all fulfill'd with grateful

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And Isolt answer'd, 'Yea, and why not I?

Mine is the larger need, who am not meek, Pale-blooded, prayerful. Let me tell thee now.

Here one black, mute midsummer night I sat,

Lonely, but musing on thee, wondering where,

Murmuring a light song I had heard thee sing,

And once or twice I spake thy name aloud. Then flash'd a levin-brand; and near me stood,

In fuming sulphur blue and green, a fiend

Mark's way to steal behind one in the dark

For there was Mark: "He has wedded her," he said,

Not said, but hiss'd it: then this crown of towers

So shook to such a roar of all the sky, That here in utter dark I swoon'd away, And woke again in utter dark, and cried, "I will flee hence and give myself to God"

And thou wert lying in thy new leman's arms.'

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How darest thou, if lover, push me

even

In fancy from thy side, and set me far
In the gray distance, half a life away,
Her to be loved no more? Unsay it,
unswear!

Flatter me rather, seeing me so weak,
Broken with Mark and hate and solitude,
Thy marriage and mine own, that I
should suck

Lies like sweet wines: lie to me: I believe.

Will ye not lie? not swear, as there ye kneel,

And solemnly as when ye sware to him, The man of men, our King- My God, the power

Was once in vows when men believed the King!

They lied not then, who sware, and thro' their vows

The King prevailing made his realm:I say,

Swear to me thou wilt love me ev'n when old,

Gray-hair'd, and past desire, and in despair.'

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every knight

Believed himself a greater than himself, And every follower eyed him as a God; Till he, being lifted up beyond himself, Did mightier deeds than elsewise he had done,

And so the realm was made; but then their vows

First mainly thro' that sullying of our Queen

Began to gall the knighthood, asking whence

Had Arthur right to bind them to himself? Dropt down from heaven? wash'd up from out the deep?

They fail'd to trace him thro' the flesh and blood

Of our old kings: whence then? a doubtful lord

To bind them by inviolable vows, Which flesh and blood perforce would violate :

For feel this arm of mine. -the tide within

Red with free chase and heather-scented air,

Pulsing full man; can Arthur make me

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She rose, and set before him all he will'd; And after these had comforted the blood With meats and wines, and satiated their hearts

Now talking of their woodland paradise, The deer, the dews, the fern, the founts,

the lawns;

Now mocking at the much ungainliness, And craven shifts, and long crane legs of Mark

Then Tristram laughing caught the harp, and sang:

'Ay, ay, O ay the winds that bend the brier!

4

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Climb'd to the high top of the gardenwall

To spy some secret scandal if he might, And saw the Queen who sat betwixt her best

Enid, and lissome Vivien, of her court The wiliest and the worst; and more than this

He saw not, for Sir Lancelot passing by Spied where he couch'd, and as the gardener's hand

Picks from the colewort a green caterpillar,

So from the high wall and the flowering grove

Of grasses Lancelot pluck'd him by the heel,

And cast him as a worm upon the way; But when he knew the Prince tho' marr'd with dust,

He, reverencing king's blood in a bad

man,

Made such excuses as he might, and these Full knightly without scorn; for in those days

No knight of Arthur's noblest dealt in

scorn;

But, if a man were halt or hunch'd, in him

By those whom God had made fulllimb'd and tall,

Scorn was allow'd as part of his defect, And he was answer'd softly by the King And all his Table. So Sir Lancelot holp To raise the Prince, who rising twice or thrice

Full sharply smote his knees, and smiled, and went:

But, ever after, the small violence done
Rankled in him and ruffled all his heart,
As the sharp wind that ruffles all day
long

A little bitter pool about a stone
On the bare coast.

But when Sir Lancelot told This matter to the Queen, at first she laugh'd

Lightly, to think of Modred's dusty fall, Then shudder'd, as the village wife who cries

'I shudder, some one steps across my grave;'

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