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A horror on him, lest his gentle wife

Through that great tenderness for Guinevere,

Had suffered, or should suffer, any taint

In nature: wherefor going to the king,

He made this pretext, that his princedom lay

Close on the borders of a territory

Wherein were bandit earls and caitiff knights;

He therefore craved permission to depart,

And there defend his marches; and the King

Allowing it, the Prince and Enid rode,

And fifty knights rode with them, to the shores

Of Severn, and they past to their own land;

Where, thinking, that if ever yet was wife

True to her lord, mine shall be so to me,

He compassed her with sweet observances

And worship, never leaving her, and grew

Forgetful of his promise to the King,

Forgetful of his glory and his name,

Forgetful of his princedom and its cares.

dinary energy of production and single-mindedness of purpose to his art. In 1850 he was appointed Poet Laureate in succession to Wordsworth, and in 1884 was raised to the peerage. He died on October 6, 1892, in full possession of all his faculties and still actively engaged in writing, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Four years later the lady whom he had married in 1850 also died in her eighty-second year. The first series of " The Idylls of the King," containing the four poems which we give here, and embodying the Arthurian legends (c/. Vol. VI, p. 145), first appeared in 1859, and at once achieved a popular success beyond the experience of any other poet save possibly Scott, Byron, or Victor Hugo. Together with those poems in which the theme he chose was of a more contemporary interest, such as " Locksley Hall," " Maud," " The Princess," and " The Northern Farmer," and the shorter lyrical pieces, " CEnone," " The Lotus-Eaters," " Ulysses," or the elegy " In Memoriam," " The Idylls " rank with the best of Tennyson's work and serve to illustrate those qualities which are at once his strength and his weakness as a poet—namely, a too great elegance or refinement of thought and imagery, at the expense of dramatic intensity and originality of ideas, but yet conjoined with such a noble ease and richness of harmonious diction as to constitute him one of the world's master singers.

262

Enid grieved over her husband's uxoriousness, and one morning, before they had risen, some words which she uttered as she lay awake, to the effect that she was no true wife (or she would rouse him from his effeminacy) came to his ears; and Geraint, hearing but fragments of her speech, feared she was sighing after some gay knight at Camelot, and rousing himself, and ordering his charger and her palfrey to be saddled, said he would ride forth into the wilderness and bade her ride with him clad in her worst and meanest dress. So Enid, still anxious to please, though not understanding, donned a faded silk dress, the very same in which Geraint had first met her, when having taken shelter at her father's castle, he had overthrown her cousin Edyrn, the " Sparrowhawk," in the tourney and so restored to Yniol the earldom and possessions which his nephew had so long usurped.

That morning, when they both had got to horse,

Perhaps because he loved her passionately,

And felt that tempest brooding round his heart,

Which, if he spoke at all, would break perforce

Upon a head so dear, in thunder said:

" Not at my side! I charge you ride before,

Ever a good way on before; and this

I charge you, on your duty as a wife,

Whatever happens, not to speak to me,

No, not a word! " And Enid was aghast;

And forth they rode: and then he cried again,

" To the wilds! " And Enid leading down the tracks

Through which he bade her lead him on, they past

The marches, and by bandit-haunted holds,

Grey swamps and pools, waste places of the hern,

And wilderness, perilous paths, they rode.

Round was their pace at first, but slackened soon:

A stranger meeting them had surely thought,

They rode so slowly, and they looked so pale,

That each had suffered some exceeding wrong.

For he was ever saying to himself

" O, I that wasted time to tend upon her,

To compass her with sweet observances "

And there he broke the sentence in his heart Abruptly, as a man upon his tongue 263

May break it, when his passion masters him. And she was ever praying the sweet heavens To save her dear lord whole from any wound. And ever in her mind she cast about For that unnoticed failing in herself, Which made him look so cloudy and so cold; Till the great plover's human whistle amazed Her heart, and glancing round the waste she feared In every wavering brake an ambuscade; Then thought again, "If there be such in me I might amend it by the grace of heaven, If he would only speak and tell me of it."

As they rode on Enid, who was in front, was aware of three tall knights waiting, mounted and armed, behind a rock, and she went back, and, disregarding his command that she should keep silence, warned Geraint of his danger. But he answered her but wrathfully, and having slain the knights, bound their suits of armour to their horses and bade Enid drive them on before her. Again they rode on, and presently Enid noticed in the shade of a deep wood three more horsemen waiting, wholly armed. Once more she turned back and warned her husband, and he again answered her angrily, encountered the horsemen, slew them, and bound their suits of armour tc their horses, and he now bade her drive all six horses on before her. That night they stopped in a little town where Earl Limours, a former suitor of Enid's, had his palace; and Geraint entertained Limours nobly, who, however, the next day, being desirous of seizing Enid, repaid the kindness of his host by attacking him on the road. But Geraint overthrew Limours and dispersed his followers, not, however, without receiving a wound which obliged Enid and himself to be the guests of another caitiff earl, Doorm, surnamed the Bull. Doorm, thinking Geraint to be next door to death, kept on insulting Enid by proffers of his love, till at last Geraint, who was but feigning extreme illness, having watched the boor smite her lightly on the cheek, sprang from the hollow shield in which he lay, and with one sweep of his sword, struck Doorm's head from his shoulders, a feat which caused every man and woman in the hall to fly.