Excerpts from Idylls of the King (I)

As when we dwell upon a word we know,
Repeating, till the word we know so well
Becomes a wonder, and we know not why,
So dwelt the father on her face, and thought
'Is this Elaine?'

That's from the few pages of Tennyson's Idylls of the King that I read tonight. It describes a phenomenon that I think we've all experienced: saying a familiar word over and over until it seems strange.

I've been reading a few pages of Idylls of the King every day, as far as I can manage it. Poetry should be a part of daily life, in my view. And yet I'm not great at living up to this. The truth is that it's easier to read ten pages of prose than one page of poetry, because poetry is more demanding.

But it's much more rewarding, when it's good poetry. And, in my view, Idylls of the King is wonderful poetry. People don't read it because it doesn't have the same reputation as Paradise Lost or The Canterbury Tales, but it deserves to be one of the great landmarks of English poetry.

I especially like it because it speaks to my priggishness. Idylls of the King is the highest of high romance, all valiant knights and courtly ladies and coats of arms and lofty ideals. Nothing about it is ironic or self-parodic or subversive. Here is its idealism at its most lyrical:

I made them lay their hands in mine, and swear
To reverence the King as if he were
Their conscience, and their conscience as their King,
To break the heathen and uphold the Christ,
To ride abroad redressing human wrongs,
To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it,
To honor his own word as if his God’s,
To lead sweet lives in purest chastity,
To love one maiden only, cleave to her,
And worship her by years of noble deeds
Until they won her; for indeed I knew
Of no more subtle master under heaven
Than is the maiden passion for a maid,
Not only to keep down the base in man,
But teach high thought, and amiable words,
And courtliness, and the desire of fame,
And love of truth, and all that makes a man.

Not that the poem is sugar-coated at all. In fact, it's quite dark and pessimistic. Tennyson seems to have been a depressive and the suggestion in Idylls of the Kings is that Camelot was too good for this world. Nearly all of Arthur's knights, noble as they are, fail to live up to his high standards for them, leading to the final battle where everybody except Arthur and Sir Bedivere are slaughtered (and King Arthur has to be carried to the island of Avalon by the Lady of the Lake, to recover from his wounds).

My plan is for this to be the first in a series of excerpts I take from the poem.