“His brother’s trumpet sounding through the wood
Of his foe’s lances. She leaned eagerly,
And gave a slight spring sometimes, as she could
“At last hear something really; joyfully
Her cheek grew crimson, as the headlong speed
Of the roan charger drew all men to see.
The knight who came was Launcelot at good need.”
The poetry of the Idyls, glittering and charming as it may be, is cold
and pulseless by the side of King Arthur’s Tomb, a poem which rises to the utmost height of tragic pathos. The description of the remorse of Guenevere for merely ideas of disloyalty to her kingly husband which she had permitted herself to entertain, as well as of the satisfaction she made, is poetry in its noblest form, short of the drama. But we should never meet throughout all the poetry of Tennyson such blemishes as those we have already quoted, nor such as
“I tell myself a tale