Arthur, with the Scots and Northern knights, means to encounter all comers at a Whitsuntide tourney. Guinevere is ill, and cannot go to the jousts, while Lancelot makes excuse that he is not healed of a wound. "Wherefore the King was heavy and passing wroth, and so he departed towards Winchester." The Queen then blamed Lancelot:
people will say they deceive Arthur. "Madame," said Sir Lancelot, "Iallow your wit; it is of late come that ye were wise." In the Idyll Guinevere speaks as if their early loves had been as conspicuous as, according to George Buchanan, were those of Queen Mary and Bothwell.
Lancelot will go to the tourney, and, despite Guinevere's warning, will take part against Arthur and his own fierce Northern kinsmen.
He rides to Astolat--"that is, Gylford"--where Arthur sees him. He borrows the blank shield of "Sir Torre," and the company of his brother Sir Lavaine. Elaine "cast such a love unto Sir Lancelot that she would never withdraw her love, wherefore she died." At her prayer, and for better disguise (as he had never worn a lady's favour), Lancelot carried her scarlet pearl-embroidered sleeve in his helmet, and left his shield in Elaine's keeping. The tourney passes as in the poem, Gawain recognising Lancelot, but puzzled by the favour he wears. The wounded Lancelot "thought to do what he might while he might endure." When he is offered the prize he is so sore hurt that he "takes no force of no honour." He rides into a wood, where Lavaine draws forth the spear. Lavaine brings Lancelot to the hermit, once a knight. "I have seen the day," says the hermit, "Iwould have loved him the worse, because he was against my lord, King Arthur, for some time. I was one of the fellowship of the Round Table, but I thank God now I am otherwise disposed." Gawain, seeking the wounded knight, comes to Astolat, where Elaine declares "he is the man in the world that I first loved, and truly he is the last that ever I shall love." Gawain, on seeing the shield, tells Elaine that the wounded knight is Lancelot, and she goes to seek him and Lavaine. Gawain does not pay court to Elaine, nor does Arthur rebuke him, as in the poem. When Guinevere heard that Lancelot bore another lady's favour, "she was nigh out of her mind for wrath," and expressed her anger to Sir Bors, for Gawain had spoken of the maid of Astolat. Bors tells this to Lancelot, who is tended by Elaine.
"'But I well see,' said Sir Bors, 'by her diligence about you that she loveth you entirely.' 'That me repenteth,' said Sir Lancelot.
Said Sir Bors, 'Sir, she is not the first that hath lost her pain upon you, and that is the more pity.'" When Lancelot recovers, and returns to Astolat, she declares her love with the frankness of ladies in mediaeval romance. "Have mercy upon me and suffer me not to die for thy love." Lancelot replies with the courtesy and the offers of service which became him. "Of all this," said the maiden, "I will none; for but if ye will wed me, or be my paramour at the least, wit you well, Sir Lancelot, my good days are done."This was a difficult pass for the poet, living in other days of other manners. His art appears in the turn which he gives to Elaine's declaration:-"But when Sir Lancelot's deadly hurt was whole, To Astolat returning rode the three.
There morn by morn, arraying her sweet self In that wherein she deem'd she look'd her best, She came before Sir Lancelot, for she thought 'If I be loved, these are my festal robes, If not, the victim's flowers before he fall.'
And Lancelot ever prest upon the maid That she should ask some goodly gift of him For her own self or hers; 'and do not shun To speak the wish most near to your true heart;Such service have ye done me, that I make My will of yours, and Prince and Lord am IIn mine own land, and what I will I can.'
Then like a ghost she lifted up her face, But like a ghost without the power to speak.
And Lancelot saw that she withheld her wish, And bode among them yet a little space Till he should learn it; and one morn it chanced He found her in among the garden yews, And said, 'Delay no longer, speak your wish, Seeing I go to-day': then out she brake:
'Going? and we shall never see you more.
And I must die for want of one bold word.'
'Speak: that I live to hear,' he said, 'is yours.'
Then suddenly and passionately she spoke:
'I have gone mad. I love you: let me die.'
'Ah, sister,' answer'd Lancelot, 'what is this?'
And innocently extending her white arms, 'Your love,' she said, 'your love--to be your wife.'
And Lancelot answer'd, 'Had I chosen to wed, I had been wedded earlier, sweet Elaine:
But now there never will be wife of mine.'
'No, no' she cried, 'I care not to be wife, But to be with you still, to see your face, To serve you, and to follow you thro' the world.'
And Lancelot answer'd, 'Nay, the world, the world, All ear and eye, with such a stupid heart To interpret ear and eye, and such a tongue To blare its own interpretation--nay, Full ill then should I quit your brother's love, And your good father's kindness.' And she said, 'Not to be with you, not to see your face -Alas for me then, my good days are done.'"So she dies, and is borne down Thames to London, the fairest corpse, "and she lay as though she had smiled." Her letter is read. "Ye might have showed her," said the Queen, "some courtesy and gentleness that might have preserved her life;" and so the two are reconciled.
Such, in brief, is the tender old tale of true love, with the shining courtesy of Lavaine and the father of the maid, who speak no word of anger against Lancelot. "For since first I saw my lord, Sir Lancelot," says Lavaine, "I could never depart from him, nor nought Iwill, if I may follow him: she doth as I do." To the ****** and moving story Tennyson adds, by way of ornament, the diamonds, the prize of the tourney, and the manner of their finding:-"For Arthur, long before they crown'd him King, Roving the trackless realms of Lyonnesse, Had found a glen, gray boulder and black tarn.
A horror lived about the tarn, and clave Like its own mists to all the mountain side: