Guenevere (excerpt)

For our Poem of the Week, we have another excerpt from Alfred Tennyson, as we had last week, and since some of you have asked, and I think it’s a good idea, I will be doing both Enoch Arden and this poem, Guenevere, in their entirety for some of our Friday features.

But let me describe the situation here, in this tremendous dramatic and narrative work. It’s from his Idylls of the King, which I admire immensely, because I think I see in it what some critics who scoff at high Victorian ideals overlook. First of all, it’s Tennyson’s capacity to weave together strands of narrative that reflect upon one another in an astonishingly intricate way, and yet to do so while telling individual stories that progress as part of a single story, with its own beginning, middle, and end. Today’s poem “Guenevere” comes almost at the end. Second, it’s what he has learned from Milton and Shakespeare — I have no clear idea where Charles Dickens learned it from; possibly from that giant of the British novel at its onset, Henry Fielding. I mean the use of motifs, like “themes” in a symphony, that gather meaning to themselves as they appear in various places and in various forms, and as the work progresses. And the motif we have here in our excerpt is that of someone who suddenly sees what he or she has somehow missed. Alas, sometimes what we suddenly “see” is false, as when a decent but weak human being becomes persuaded, by the treachery and the bad faith of others, that there is nothing at all to believe in. Here we have the reverse. Guenevere at last sees the light.

The Queen has betrayed her husband King Arthur, and in the worst way — in her adulterous love for his closest friend and bravest knight, Sir Lancelot. Arthur’s treacherous nephew, or supposed nephew, Modred, has played the betrayal for all it is worth, and now the whole kingdom is in civil war, and it appears that everything Arthur fought for will fall. Arthur, you may know, is a legendary Christian king, a Welshman, for the Christians in Britain had been driven into the mountains of Wales by Hengest and his hordes, when the Saxons swept into the land. Why, the very word for “English” in Welsh is “Saesneg,” and if you ever sing “Men of Harlech” in Welsh, you’re quite aware that the enemies are those same Saxons. And now all seems to be slouching backward into the beast.

“The Marriage of Guinevere and Arthur, John Henry Frederick Bacon. Public Domain .

So Guenevere flees to a convent, incognito, and is admitted, which certainly is a case of bending the rule, because, after all, nuns do abide by a written rule of life. Yet Guenevere asks only that she be left incognito and that she be permitted to join the nuns in their penances, though not in their joyful feasts, and to do the same work they do. We see then that she might be on the verge of vision, because she does know she has done wrong. What she does not know is how very wrong she has been, both in her sin’s effect on other people, and in her mistaking the king her husband. Her main companion at the convent is an innocent little novice whose chatter, quite free of all malice, makes her feel guilty, especially when the girl praises the king and criticizes the queen, who she does not know is sitting right beside her. And then Arthur himself shows up, to take his leave from his wife forever. He tells her what he had hoped from her, and how she has dashed his hopes; but he also tells her that he loves her still. His and not Lancelot’s is the most human heart.

The kingdom, of course, will fall. But not one truly good or brave deed is ever done in vain. God in his mercy will regard our sins in the most clement light, and will shield what we have done wrong from having its full effect, but, as Jesus says in the gospel, even a cool drink given to an apostle will earn its reward. Arthur’s goodness is a lifeline for Guenevere, and her repentance is genuine and fruitful. Our excerpt begins with Guenevere speaking, after Arthur has left her.

I think there was a hope,
Except he mocked me when he spake of hope;
His hope he called it; but he never mocks,
For mockery is the fume of little hearts.
And blessed be the King, who hath forgiven
My wickedness to him, and left me hope
That in mine own heart I can live down sin
And be his mate hereafter in the heavens
Before high God. Ah great and gentle lord,
Who wast, as is the conscience of a saint
Among his warring senses, to thy knights—
To whom my false voluptuous pride, that took
Full easily all impressions from below,
Would not look up, or half-despised the height
To which I would not or I could not climb—
I thought I could not breathe in that fine air
That pure severity of perfect light—
I yearned for warmth and colour which I found
In Lancelot—now I see thee what thou art,
Thou art the highest and most human too,
Not Lancelot, nor another. Is there none
Will tell the King I love him though so late?
Now—ere he goes to the great Battle? none:
Myself must tell him in that purer life,
But now it were too daring. Ah my God,
What might I not have made of thy fair world,
Had I but loved thy highest creature here?
It was my duty to have loved the highest:
It surely was my profit had I known:
It would have been my pleasure had I seen.
We needs must love the highest when we see it,
Not Lancelot, nor another.’

                                    Here her hand
Grasped, made her vail her eyes: she looked and saw
The novice, weeping, suppliant, and said to her,
‘Yea, little maid, for am I not forgiven?’
Then glancing up beheld the holy nuns
All round her, weeping; and her heart was loosed
Within her, and she wept with these and said,

    ‘Ye know me then, that wicked one, who broke
The vast design and purpose of the King.
O shut me round with narrowing nunnery-walls,
Meek maidens, from the voices crying “shame.”
I must not scorn myself: he loves me still.
Let no one dream but that he loves me still.
So let me, if you do not shudder at me,
Nor shun to call me sister, dwell with you;
Wear black and white, and be a nun like you,
Fast with your fasts, not feasting with your feasts;
Grieve with your griefs, not grieving at your joys,
But not rejoicing; mingle with your rites;
Pray and be prayed for; lie before your shrines;
Do each low office of your holy house;
Walk your dim cloister, and distribute dole
To poor sick people, richer in His eyes
Who ransomed us, and haler too than I;
And treat their loathsome hurts and heal mine own;
And so wear out in almsdeed and in prayer
The sombre close of that voluptuous day,
Which wrought the ruin of my lord the King.’

    She said: they took her to themselves; and she
Still hoping, fearing ‘is it yet too late?’
Dwelt with them, till in time their Abbess died.
Then she, for her good deeds and her pure life,
And for the power of ministration in her,
And likewise for the high rank she had borne,
Was chosen Abbess, there, an Abbess, lived
For three brief years, and there, an Abbess, past
To where beyond these voices there is peace.