The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

He spoke and ceased: the Lily-maid Elaine, Won by the mellow voice before she looked, Lifted her eyes, and read his lineaments. The great and guilty love he bare the Queen, In battle with the love he bare his lord, Had marred his face, and marked it ere his time. Another sinning on such heights with one, The flower of all the west and all the world, Had been the sleeker for it; but in him His mood was often like a fiend, and rose And drove him into wastes and solitudes For agony, who was yet a living soul. Marr'd as he was, he seem'd the goodliest man That ever among ladies ate in hall, And noblest, when he lifted up his eyes. However marr'd, of more than twice her years, Seamed with an ancient sword-cut on the cheek, And bruised and bronzed, she lifted up her eyes And loved him, with that love which was her doom. Then the great knight, the darling of the Court, 270

Loved of the loveliest, into that rude hall

Stept with all grace

Whom they with meats and vintage of their best, And talk and minstrel melody entertained.

After the meal was over, Lancelot, on the invitation of Lavaine, told of Arthur's glorious wars, and concluding, said,

" I never saw his like: there lives no greater leader."

While he uttered this, Low to her heart said the Lily-maid " Save your own self, fair lord," and when he fell From talk of war to traits of pleasantry, She still took note that when the living smile Died from his lips, across him came a cloud Of melancholy severe, from which again, Whenever in her hovering to and fro The Lily-maid had striven to make him cheer, There brake a sudden-beaming tenderness Of manner and of nature: and she thought That all was nature, all, perchance, for her. And all night long his face before her lived, Dark-splendid, speaking in the silence, full Of noble things, and held her from her sleep.

The next morning she got up early to watch Lancelot and her brother go forth to the jousts, and she persuaded the former, who told her he had never yet worn favour of any lady in the lists, to wear her favour in his helmet, a red sleeve, broidered with pearls. He on his part, committed his shield to her keeping, and then the two knights rode forth, and the younger was presently informed that his companion was the great Sir Lancelot of the Lake. The jousts now presently took place, and Lancelot again defeated his competitors and won the diamond. But being severely wounded, he stayed not to receive it, but rode off to be tended by an old hermit, a friend of his, in whose cell he lay for many weeks, hovering between life and death. Meantime the king had summoned his nephew Gawain, and handing the gem over to him, commanded him to search for the stranger knight and to give him the diamond. But both king and queen sat through the banquet that concluded the jousts in no merry mood, for he learned from her that the stranger knight was Lancelot, and that therefore Lancelot had been dallying with the truth; and she learned from him that her lover had for the

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Erst time worn a lady's favour in his helm, and that not her own. In the meanwhile, Gawain, stopped on his quest at Astolat, and having discovered in Hlaine the owner of the red sleeve and told her that the shield she guarded was the shield of Lancelot, handed over to her the diamond, and returned to the Court. Elaine, anxious to tend her knight in his illness, obtained permission of her father to go to him, accompanied by her brother, Sir Torre, and, coming to the hermit's cave, handed over the diamond to Sir Lancelot. Long she waited on him in his sickness day and night, till the hermit, skilled in all the science of the time, told him that her care had saved his life.

And the sick man forgot her simple blush, Would call her friend and sister, sweet Elaine, Would listen for her coming, and regret Her parting step, and hold her tenderly; And loved her with all love except the love Of man and woman when they love their best—■ Closest and sweetest; and had died the death In any knightly fashion for her sake. And, peradventure had he seen her first, She might have made this and that other world Another world for the sick man; but now, The shackles of an old love straitened him, His honour rooted in dishonour stood, And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.

When his deadly hurt was at last whole, Sir Lancelot, Sir Lavaine, and Elaine returned to Astolat, where the great knight, anxious to show his gratitude to the Lily-maid, prest upon her that she should ask some goodly gift of him. Long she refused, but in the end she asked to be his wife, and on his telling her that he would never marry, she fell down in a swoon. Soon after, he departed for the Court, an 1, cruel only to be kind, bade her no farewell, nor waved his hand to her as he rode off. After his departure, Elaine drooped daily, and a few days before her death she gained from her father a promise that when she died her bed should be richly decked and her body, richly adorned, should be laid in it. and that the bier should be taken to the river, placed in a barge clothed in black, and so be conveyed to the Court to meet the king. These instructions were accordingly carried out; and on the very day on which Lancelot handed over the ninth diamond to the Queen—who, in her angry jealousy, flung it from her into the river, the dead Elaine, holding in her hand a letter avowing her unreturned love for Lancelot, appeared in her barge under the walls of the palace. The