Up ran a score of damsels to the tower; “Avaunt,” they cried, “our lady loves thee not.” But Gawain lifting up his vizor said, “Gawain am I, Gawain of Arthur’s court, And I have slain this Pelleas whom ye hate: Behold his horse and armour. Open gates, And I will make you merry.” And down they ran, Her damsels, crying to their lady, “Lo! Pelleas is dead—he told us—he that hath His horse and armour: will ye let him in? He slew him! Gawain, Gawain of the court, Sir Gawain—there he waits below the wall, Blowing his bugle as who should say him nay.” And so, leave given, straight on through open door Rode Gawain, whom she greeted courteously. “Dead, is it so?” she asked. “Ay, ay,” said he, “And oft in dying cried upon your name.” “Pity on him,” she answered, “a good knight, But never let me bide one hour at peace.” “Ay,” thought Gawain, “and you be fair enow: But I to your dead man have given my troth, That whom ye loathe, him will I make you love.” So those three days, aimless about the land, Lost in a doubt, Pelleas wandering Waited, until the third night brought a moon With promise of large light on woods and ways. Hot was the night and silent; but a sound Of Gawain ever coming, and this lay— Which Pelleas had heard sung before the Queen, And seen her sadden listening—vext his heart, And marred his rest—“A worm within the rose.” “A rose, but one, none other rose had I, A rose, one rose, and this was wondrous fair, One rose, a rose that gladdened earth and sky, One rose, my rose, that sweetened all mine air— I cared not for the thorns; the thorns were there. “One rose, a rose to gather by and by, One rose, a rose, to gather and to wear, No rose but one—what other rose had I? One rose, my rose; a rose that will not die,— He dies who loves it,—if the worm be there.” This tender rhyme, and evermore the doubt, “Why lingers Gawain with his golden news?” So shook him that he could not rest, but rode Ere midnight to her walls, and bound his horse Hard by the gates. Wide open were the gates, And no watch kept; and in through these he past, And heard but his own steps, and his own heart Beating, for nothing moved but his own self, And his own shadow. Then he crost the court, And spied not any light in hall or bower, But saw the postern portal also wide Yawning; and up a slope of garden, all Of roses white and red, and brambles mixt And overgrowing them, went on, and found, Here too, all hushed below the mellow moon, Save that one rivulet from a tiny cave Came lightening downward, and so spilt itself Among the roses, and was lost again.