All his language is highly polished, ornate, rich—sometimes Spenserian in luxuriant imagery and sweet music, sometimes even Homeric in massiveness and severe simplicity. Thus, in the “Morte d’Arthur,” he speaks of the knight walking to the lake as—
“Clothed with his breath, and looking as he walked,
Larger than human on the frozen hills.”
Many of his pithy lines have taken root in the memory of the English people, such as these—
“Tis better to have loved and lost,
Than never to have loved at all.”
“For words, like Nature, half reveal,
And half conceal, the soul within.”
“Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood.”