For, waked at dead of night, I heard a sound As of a silver horn from o'er the hills Blown, and I thought, 'It is not Arthur's use To hunt by moonlight'; and the slender sound As from a distance beyond distance grew Coming upon me--O never harp nor horn, Nor aught we blow with breath, or touch with hand, Was like that music as it came; and then Stream'd thro' my cell a cold and silver beam, And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail, Rose-red with beatings in it, as if alive, Till all the white walls of my cell were dyed With rosy colours leaping on the wall;And then the music faded, and the Grail Past, and the beam decay'd, and from the walls The rosy quiverings died into the night.
So now the Holy Thing is here again Among us, brother, fast thou too and pray, And tell thy brother knights to fast and pray, That so perchance the vision may be seen By thee and those, and all the world be heal'd."Galahad, son of Lancelot and the first Elaine (who became Lancelot's mistress by art magic), then vows himself to the Quest, and, after the vision in hall at Camelot, the knights, except Arthur, follow his example, to Arthur's grief. "Ye follow wandering fires!" Probably, or perhaps, the poet indicates dislike of hasty spiritual enthusiasms, of "seeking for a sign," and of the mysticism which betokens want of faith. The Middle Ages, more than many readers know, were ages of doubt. Men desired the witness of the senses to the truth of what the Church taught, they wished to see that naked child of the romance "smite himself into" the wafer of the Sacrament.
The author of the Imitatio Christi discourages such vain and too curious inquiries as helped to rend the Church, and divided Christendom into hostile camps. The Quest of the actual Grail was a knightly form of theological research into the unsearchable;undertaken, often in a secular spirit of adventure, by sinful men.
The poet's heart is rather with human things:-"'O brother,' ask'd Ambrosius,--'for in sooth These ancient books--and they would win thee--teem, Only I find not there this Holy Grail, With miracles and marvels like to these, Not all unlike; which oftentime I read, Who read but on my breviary with ease, Till my head swims; and then go forth and pass Down to the little thorpe that lies so close, And almost plaster'd like a martin's nest To these old walls--and mingle with our folk;And knowing every honest face of theirs As well as ever shepherd knew his sheep, And every homely secret in their hearts, Delight myself with gossip and old wives, And ills and aches, and teethings, lyings-in, And mirthful sayings, children of the place, That have no meaning half a league away:
Or lulling random squabbles when they rise, Chafferings and chatterings at the market-cross, Rejoice, small man, in this small world of mine, Yea, even in their hens and in their eggs."'
This appears to be Tennyson's original reading of the Quest of the Grail. His own mysticism, which did not strive, or cry, or seek after marvels, though marvels might come unsought, is expressed in Arthur's words:-"'"And spake I not too truly, O my knights?
Was I too dark a prophet when I said To those who went upon the Holy Quest, That most of them would follow wandering fires, Lost in the quagmire?--lost to me and gone, And left me gazing at a barren board, And a lean Order--scarce return'd a tithe -And out of those to whom the vision came My greatest hardly will believe he saw;Another hath beheld it afar off, And leaving human wrongs to right themselves, Cares but to pass into the silent life.
And one hath had the vision face to face, And now his chair desires him here in vain, However they may crown him otherwhere.
'"And some among you held, that if the King Had seen the sight he would have sworn the vow:
Not easily, seeing that the King must guard That which he rules, and is but as the hind To whom a space of land is given to plow Who may not wander from the allotted field Before his work be done; but, being done, Let visions of the night or of the day Come, as they will; and many a time they come, Until this earth he walks on seems not earth, This light that strikes his eyeball is not light, This air that smites his forehead is not air But vision--yea, his very hand and foot -In moments when he feels he cannot die, And knows himself no vision to himself, Nor the high God a vision, nor that One Who rose again: ye have seen what ye have seen."'So spake the King: I knew not all he meant.'"The closing lines declare, as far as the poet could declare them, these subjective experiences of his which, in a manner rarely parallelled, coloured and formed his thought on the highest things.
He introduces them even into this poem on a topic which, because of its sacred associations, he for long did not venture to touch.
In Pelleas and Ettarre--which deals with the sorrows of one of the young knights who fill up the gaps left at the Round Table by the mischances of the Quest--it would be difficult to trace a Celtic original. For Malory, not Celtic legend, supplied Tennyson with the germinal idea of a poem which, in the romance, has no bearing on the final catastrophe. Pelleas, a King of the Isles, loves the beautiful Ettarre, "a great lady," and for her wins at a tourney the prize of the golden circlet. But she hates and despises him, and Sir Gawain is a spectator when, as in the poem, the felon knights of Ettarre bind and insult their conqueror, Pelleas. Gawain promises to win the love of Ettarre for Pelleas, and, as in the poem, borrows his arms and horse, and pretends to have slain him. But in place of turning Ettarre's heart towards Pelleas, Gawain becomes her lover, and Pelleas, detecting them asleep, lays his naked sword on their necks.