Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron, 1809-1892
“And while they listen’d for the distant hunt,
And chiefly for the baying of Cavall,
King Arthur’s hound of deepest mouth, there rode
Full slowly by a knight, lady, and dwarf;
Whereof the dwarf lagg’d latest, and the knight
Had vizor up, and show’d a youthful face,
Imperious, and of haughtiest lineaments.
And Guinevere, not mindful of his face
In the King’s hall, desired his name, and sent
Her maiden to demand it of the dwarf;
Who being vicious, old and irritable,
And doubling all his master’s vice of pride,
Made answer sharply that she should not know.
‘Then will I ask it of himself,’ she said.
‘Nay, by my faith, thou shalt not,’ cried the dwarf;
‘Thou art not worthy ev’n to speak of him’;
And when she put her horse toward the knight,
Struck at her with his whip, and she return’d
Indignant to the Queen; whereat Geraint
Exclaiming, ‘Surely I will learn the name,’
Made sharply to the dwarf, and ask’d it of him,
Who answer’d as before; and when the Prince
Had put his horse in motion toward the knight,
Struck at him with his whip, and cut his cheek.
The Prince’s blood spirted upon the scarf,
Dyeing it; and his quick, instinctive hand
Caught at the hilt, as to abolish him:
But he, from his exceeding manfulness
And pure nobility of temperament,
Wroth to be wroth at such a worm, refrain’d
From ev’n a word.”
The self-restraint of Geraint, who does not slay the dwarf,
“From his exceeding manfulness
And pure nobility of temperament,”
may appear “too polite,” and too much in accord with the still
undiscovered idea of “leading sweet lives.” However, the uninvented idea
does occur in the Welsh original: “Then Geraint put his hand upon the
hilt of his sword, but he took counsel with himself, and considered that
it would be no vengeance for him to slay the dwarf,” while he also
reflects that he would be “attacked unarmed by the armed knight.”
Perhaps Tennyson may be blamed for omitting this obvious motive for
self-restraint. Geraint therefore follows the knight in hope of finding
arms, and arrives at the town all busy with preparations for the
tournament of the sparrow-hawk. This was a challenge sparrow-hawk: the
knight had won it twice, and if he won it thrice it would be his to keep.
The rest, in the tale, is exactly followed in the Idyll. Geraint is
entertained by the ruined Yniol. The youth bears the “costrel” full of
“good purchased mead” (the ruined Earl not brewing for himself), and Enid
carries the manchet bread in her veil, “old, and beginning to be worn
out.” All Tennyson’s own is the beautiful passage—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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