A Literary History of the English People, from the Origins to the RenaissanceJusserand, J. J. (Jean Jules)
History
A Literary History of the English People, from the Origins to the Renaissance
Jusserand, J. J. (Jean Jules)
English literature -- History and criticism
On the fourth day Gawayne starts with a guide, and reaches the Green
Chapel; the Green Giant is there, ready to give him back the blow
received a year before. Gawayne stoops his head under the dreadful axe,
and just as it falls cannot help bending his shoulders a little. You are
not that Gawayne, says the giant, held in such high esteem. At this,
Arthur's knight straightens himself; the giant lifts his axe again and
strikes, but only inflicts a slight wound. All is now explained: for the
kisses Gawayne should have received mortal blows, but he gave them back;
he kept the belt, however, and this is why he will bear through life a
scar on his neck. Vexed, he throws away the belt, but the giant returns
it to him, and consoles him by admitting that the trial was a superhuman
one, that he himself is Bernlak de Haut-Desert, and that his guest has
been the sport of "Morgan the fairy," the companion of his hostess:
Thurgh myght of Morgne la Faye that in my hous lenges (dwells).
Gawayne declares that should he ever be tempted by pride, he need only
look at the belt, and the temptation will vanish. He rejoins Arthur and
his peers, and tells his adventures, which afford food both for laughter
and for admiration.
The poem is anonymous. The same manuscript contains another, on a
totally different subject, which seems to be by the same author. This
poem has been called "The Pearl;"[580] it is a song of mourning. It must
have been written some time after the sad event which it records, when
the bitterness of sorrow had softened. The landscape is bathed in
sunlight, the hues are wonderfully bright. The poet has lost his
daughter, his pearl, who is dead; his pearl has fallen in the grass, and
he has been unable to find it; he cannot tear himself away from the spot
where she had been. He entered in that arbour green; it was August, that
sunny season, when the corn has just fallen under the sickle; there the
pearl had "trendeled doun" among the glittering, richly-coloured plants,
gilly-flowers, gromwell seed, and peonies, splendid in their hues,
sweeter in their smell.[581] He sees a forest, rocks that glisten in
the sun, banks of crystal; birds sing in the branches, and neither
cistern nor guitar ever made sweeter music. The sound of waters, too, is
heard; a brook glides over pebbles shining like the stars in a winter's
night, at the hour when the weary sleep.[582]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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