The Last Tournament

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Last Tournament, by Alfred Lord
Tennyson
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Title: The Last Tournament
Author: Alfred Lord Tennyson
Release Date: March, 2005 [EBook #7782]
[This file was first posted
on May 16, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: US-ASCII
0. START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE LAST

TOURNAMENT ***
Ted Garvin and the Distributed Proofreading Team
THE LAST TOURNAMENT
BY
ALFRED TENNYSON, D.C.L.,
POET-LAUREATE
AUTHOR'S EDITION
FROM ADVANCE SHEETS
This poem forms one of the "Idyls of the King." Its place
is between
"Pelleas" and "Guinevere."
BY ALFRED TENNYSON,
POET LAUREATE
Dagonet, the fool, whom Gawain in his moods
Had made
mock-knight of Arthur's Table Round,
At Camelot, high above the
yellowing woods,
Danced like a wither'd leaf before the Hall.
And
toward him from the Hall, with harp in hand,
And from the crown
thereof a carcanet
Of ruby swaying to and fro, the prize
Of Tristram
in the jousts of yesterday,
Came Tristram, saying, "Why skip ye so,
Sir Fool?"
For Arthur and Sir Lancelot riding once
Far down beneath a winding
wall of rock
Heard a child wail. A stump of oak half-dead,
From
roots like some black coil of carven snakes
Clutch'd at the crag, and
started thro' mid-air
Bearing an eagle's nest: and thro' the tree

Rush'd ever a rainy wind, and thro' the wind
Pierced ever a child's cry:
and crag and tree
Scaling, Sir Lancelot from the perilous nest,
This
ruby necklace thrice around her neck,
And all unscarr'd from beak or

talon, brought
A maiden babe; which Arthur pitying took,
Then
gave it to his Queen to rear: the Queen
But coldly acquiescing, in her
white arms
Received, and after loved it tenderly,
And named it
Nestling; so forgot herself
A moment, and her cares; till that young
life
Being smitten in mid-heaven with mortal cold
Past from her;
and in time the carcanet
Vext her with plaintive memories of the
child:
So she, delivering it to Arthur, said,
"Take thou the jewels of
this dead innocence,
And make them, an thou wilt, a tourney-prize."
To whom the King, "Peace to thine eagle-borne
Dead nestling, and
this honor after death,
Following thy will! but, O my Queen, I muse

Why ye not wear on arm, or neck, or zone,
Those diamonds that I
rescued from the tarn,
And Lancelot won, methought, for thee to
wear."
"Would rather ye had let them fall," she cried,
"Plunge and be
lost--ill-fated as they were,
A bitterness to me!--ye look amazed,

Not knowing they were lost as soon as given--
Slid from my hands,
when I was leaning out
Above the river--that unhappy child
Past in
her barge: but rosier luck will go
With these rich jewels, seeing that
they came
Not from the skeleton of a brother-slayer,
But the sweet
body of a maiden babe.
Perchance--who knows?--the purest of thy
knights
May win them for the purest of my maids."
She ended, and the cry of a great jousts
With trumpet-blowings ran
on all the ways
From Camelot in among the faded fields
To furthest
towers; and everywhere the knights
Arm'd for a day of glory before
the King.
But on the hither side of that loud morn
Into the hall stagger'd, his
visage ribb'd
From ear to ear with dogwhip-weals, his nose

Bridge-broken, one eye out, and one hand off,
And one with shatter'd
fingers dangling lame,
A churl, to whom indignantly the King,

"My
churl, for whom Christ died, what evil beast
Hath drawn his claws

athwart thy face? or fiend?
Man was it who marr'd Heaven's image in
thee thus?"
Then, sputtering thro' the hedge of splinter'd teeth,
Yet strangers to
the tongue, and with blunt stump
Pitch-blacken'd sawing the air, said
the maim'd churl,
"He took them and he drave them to his tower--

Some hold he was a table-knight of thine--
A hundred goodly
ones--the Red Knight, he--
"Lord, I was tending swine, and the Red Knight
Brake in upon me
and drave them to his tower;
And when I call'd upon thy name as one

That doest right by gentle and by churl,
Maim'd me and maul'd,
and would outright have slain,
Save that he sware me to a message,
saying--
'Tell thou the King and all his liars, that I
Have founded
my Round Table in the North,
And whatsoever his own knights have
sworn
My knights