Mary Baldwin College - Bluestocking Yearbook (Staunton, VA)

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6 ' Ihe Augusta Setiiinary Annual. mist, and often blazes with light like that which flashed from the holy wizard ' sbook, when the covers were unclasped. It rose slowly to a music slowly breathed, A cloud that gathered shape. The Coming of Arthur is but an introduction to the Idyls. Tennyson seems only half in earnest, for he has not yet thrown the whole power of his wonderful genius into the work. How- ever, he gives us a picture of Arthur ' s court when the Round Table was in its highest glory. The splendor of the presence of the King Throned and delivering doom, Fills the ' • long- vaulted hall. There his knights are sworn to their vows Of utter hardihood, utter gentleness And, loving, utter faithfulness in love, And uttermost obedience to the King. Arthur, the blameless King, gathers around him. A glorious company of men To serve as model for the mighty world. In the morbid jealousy of Geraint we see the first shadow of the world-taint which overthrew the glory of the Round Table. Elaine though less epical than Guinevere must be classed as one of the ' mountain summits of English poetry For pathetic sweetness and absolute beauty of narrative and rhythm, Elaine still remains dearest to the heart of maiden, youth or sage. The portrait of lyancelot is a higher, more difficult achieve- ment than that of Arthur. Tennyson here gives expression to the thought that no man can be truly happy in sin. Eancelot is not merely a man of the world, but a hero who, though he has swerved from the path of virtue, is at heart, as truly heroic, as deeply in sympathy with righteousness and honor as Arthur himelf. And now the glory of the Round Table grows less and less. At the Last Tournament it is almost gone and in Guinevere the heaven is clothed with sackcloth. There is nothing finer in modern verse than the interview between Arthur and his remorseful wife.

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The Augusta Scmmary Annual. 5 In this, the shadow of death has fallen between two spirits who have been joined together in the closest friendship. That friendship had depended for its endnrance on the community of lofty and immortal sympathies, of great thoughts, of pure and earnest afifections. It was beyond the power of death to bring it to an end. Death could only cast a veil of shadow between two friends. It is a stillness, a lofty mournfulness, rather than an overwhelming sorrow that was cast over the life of Tennyson. The grave, majestic, hymnal measure swells like the peal of an organ, yet acts as a brake or undue spasmodic outbursts of discordant grief. Perhaps in none of his minor poems has Tennyson shown the strength, tenderness and beauty of his genius to such a degree as in his epic, The Idyls of the King, where we find the old, old tales of Arthur and the Round Table retold for us, in picture-words, which take us back to the olden time when his knights swore, To reverence the king, As if he were their conscience, And conscience as their King. To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it. To lead sweet lives in purest chastity To love me maiden only, cleave to her, And worship her b} ' years of noble deeds. The Idyls appeared in a disjointed series. It is hardly probable that the poet meant at first to write an epic. They grew as Wolf conceived the Homeiic legends to have done, until the time came for them to be united in one grand epic. Wave and transept, aisle after aisle, the Gothic minister ex- tended, until with the addition of a cloister here and a chapel yonder, the structure stood complete. TheArthur of poetry is a grand ideal character, whose true greatness Guinevesre realizes but too late, when she makes her moan, Ah ! my God What might I have not made of thy fair world, Had I but loved thy brightest creature here ? The Idyls, is an epic of chivalry — our conception of what knighthood should be rather than what it really was. The whole work is sufiused with the Tennysonian glamour of golden

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The Augusta Seminary Annual. 7 Lo ! I forgive thee as enternal God Forgives: do thou for thine own soul rest. I cannot touch thy lips, they are not mine, But Lancelot ' s nay, they never were the King ' s. Let no man dream but that I Love thee still. Perchance, and so thou purify thou soul, We two may meet before high God. ' ' And Guinevere her love for the King at last awakened, cries out in her grief, Now I see thee what thou art, Thou art the highest and most noble too. Is there none will tell the King I love him though so late? The Passing of Arthur is more distinctly Homeric than any of the Idyls. Arthur wounded and dying, cries aloud, My God, thou hast forgotten me in my death. Nay, God my Christ, I pass, but shall not die. I am going a long way, To the Island valley of Avilion; Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies Deep meadow ' d, happy, fair with orchard lawns And bowery hollows crown ' d with summer sea, Where I will heal me of my grievous wound. And then Sir Bevidere places him in the black boat where the three dark queens were sitting, And watches him Till the hull look ' d one black dot against the verge of dawn. Straining his eyes beneath an arch of hand, he sees the boat that bears the king Somewhere far off, pass on and on and go From less to less and vanish into light. Sally Lane.