The brave Geraint,a knight of Arthur's court,A tributary prince of Devon,one Of that great Order of the Table Round,Had married Enid,Yniol's only child,And loved her,as he loved the light of Heaven.
And as the light of Heaven varies,now At sunrise,now at sunset,now by night With moon and trembling stars,so loved Geraint To make her beauty vary day by day,In crimsons and in purples and in gems.
And Enid,but to please her husband's eye,Who first had found and loved her in a state Of broken fortunes,daily fronted him In some fresh splendour;and the Queen herself,Grateful to Prince Geraint for service done,Loved her,and often with her own white hands Arrayed and decked her,as the loveliest,Next after her own self,in all the court.
And Enid loved the Queen,and with true heart Adored her,as the stateliest and the best And loveliest of all women upon earth.
And seeing them so tender and so close,Long in their common love rejoiced Geraint.
But when a rumour rose about the Queen,Touching her guilty love for Lancelot,Though yet there lived no proof,nor yet was heard The world's loud whisper breaking into storm,Not less Geraint believed it;and there fell A horror on him,lest his gentle wife,Through that great tenderness for Guinevere,Had suffered,or should suffer any taint In nature:wherefore 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,Assassins,and all flyers from the hand Of Justice,and whatever loathes a law:
And therefore,till the King himself should please To cleanse this common sewer of all his realm,He craved a fair permission to depart,And there defend his marches;and the King Mused for a little on his plea,but,last,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 the falcon and the hunt,Forgetful of the tilt and tournament,Forgetful of his glory and his name,Forgetful of his princedom and its cares.
And this forgetfulness was hateful to her.
And by and by the people,when they met In twos and threes,or fuller companies,Began to scoff and jeer and babble of him As of a prince whose manhood was all gone,And molten down in mere uxoriousness.
And this she gathered from the people's eyes:
This too the women who attired her head,To please her,dwelling on his boundless love,Told Enid,and they saddened her the more:
And day by day she thought to tell Geraint,But could not out of bashful delicacy;While he that watched her sadden,was the more Suspicious that her nature had a taint.
At last,it chanced that on a summer morn (They sleeping each by either)the new sun Beat through the blindless casement of the room,And heated the strong warrior in his dreams;Who,moving,cast the coverlet aside,And bared the knotted column of his throat,The massive square of his heroic breast,And arms on which the standing muscle sloped,As slopes a wild brook o'er a little stone,Running too vehemently to break upon it.
And Enid woke and sat beside the couch,Admiring him,and thought within herself,Was ever man so grandly made as he?
Then,like a shadow,past the people's talk And accusation of uxoriousness Across her mind,and bowing over him,Low to her own heart piteously she said:
'O noble breast and all-puissant arms,Am I the cause,I the poor cause that men Reproach you,saying all your force is gone?
I am the cause,because I dare not speak And tell him what I think and what they say.
And yet I hate that he should linger here;
I cannot love my lord and not his name.
Far liefer had I gird his harness on him,And ride with him to battle and stand by,And watch his mightful hand striking great blows At caitiffs and at wrongers of the world.
Far better were I laid in the dark earth,Not hearing any more his noble voice,Not to be folded more in these dear arms,And darkened from the high light in his eyes,Than that my lord through me should suffer shame.
Am I so bold,and could I so stand by,And see my dear lord wounded in the strife,And maybe pierced to death before mine eyes,And yet not dare to tell him what I think,And how men slur him,saying all his force Is melted into mere effeminacy?
O me,I fear that I am no true wife.'
Half inwardly,half audibly she spoke,And the strong passion in her made her weep True tears upon his broad and naked breast,And these awoke him,and by great mischance He heard but fragments of her later words,And that she feared she was not a true wife.
And then he thought,'In spite of all my care,For all my pains,poor man,for all my pains,She is not faithful to me,and I see her Weeping for some gay knight in Arthur's hall.'
Then though he loved and reverenced her too much To dream she could be guilty of foul act,Right through his manful breast darted the pang That makes a man,in the sweet face of her Whom he loves most,lonely and miserable.
At this he hurled his huge limbs out of bed,And shook his drowsy squire awake and cried,'My charger and her palfrey;'then to her,'I will ride forth into the wilderness;For though it seems my spurs are yet to win,I have not fallen so low as some would wish.
And thou,put on thy worst and meanest dress And ride with me.'And Enid asked,amazed,'If Enid errs,let Enid learn her fault.'
But he,'I charge thee,ask not,but obey.'
Then she bethought her of a faded silk,A faded mantle and a faded veil,And moving toward a cedarn cabinet,Wherein she kept them folded reverently With sprigs of summer laid between the folds,She took them,and arrayed herself therein,Remembering when first he came on her Drest in that dress,and how he loved her in it,And all her foolish fears about the dress,And all his journey to her,as himself Had told her,and their coming to the court.
