and Lancelot, of the overmastering passion, would scarcely have babbled this reply:
Thy speech breaks
Against the interruption of my lips
Like the low laughter of a summer brook
Over perpetual pebbles.
But when the crisis of the play is reached, when the court is rife with rumors of the Queen’s disloyalty, and Lancelot and Guinevere, under imminent shadow of exposure, meet by chance in the throne room,—there is drawn a vital, moving picture, one whose art lies in revealing the swift transition from impulse to impulse through which one passes when making great decisions. First, the high light is thrown upon the stronger side of Guinevere, in such meditative passages as these, tinged with a melancholy beauty:
We have had a radiant dream; we have beheld
The trellises and temples of the South,
And wandered in the vineyards of the Sun:—
’Tis morning now; the vision fades away