What! shall the shield of Mark stand among these?'

hall,

A stately pile, whereof along the front, Some blazon'd, some but carven, and some blank,

There ran a treble range of stony shields,Rose, and high-arching overbrow'd the

hearth.

400

Then Lancelot standing near: 'Sir Seneschal, Sleuth-hound thou knowest, and gray, and all the hounds;

A horse thou knowest, a man thou dost not know.

Broad brows and fair, a fluent hair and fine,

High nose, a nostril large and fine, and hands

Large, fair, and fine!-Some young lad's mystery

But, or from sheepcot or king's hall, the boy

Is noble-natured. Treat him with all grace, Lest he should come to shame thy judging of him.'

All kind of service with a noble ease
That graced the lowliest act in doing it. 480
And when the thralls had talk among
themselves,

And one would praise the love that linkt
the King
And Lancelot

how the King had saved

his life In battle twice, and Lancelot once the King's

For Lancelot was first in the tournament,
But Arthur mightiest on the battle-field
Gareth was glad. Or if some other told
How once the wandering forester at dawn,
Far over the blue tarns and hazy seas,
On Caer-Eryri's highest found the King,
A naked babe, of whom the Prophet spake,
'He passes to the Isle Avilion,

489

He passes and is heal'd and cannot die ' Gareth was glad. But if their talk were foul,

Then would he whistle rapid as any lark, Or carol some old roundelay, and so loud That first they mock'd, but, after, reverenced him.

Or Gareth, telling some prodigious tale Of knights who sliced a red life-bubbling way

499

Thro' twenty folds of twisted dragon, held All in a gap-mouth'd circle his good mates Lying or sitting round him, idle hands, Charm'd; till Sir Kay, the seneschal, would

Merrily Gareth ask'd: 'Have I not earn'd my cake in baking of it? Let be my name until I make my name! My deeds will speak; it is but for a day.' So with a kindly hand on Gareth's arm Smiled the great King, and half-unwillingly

Loving his lusty youthhood yielded to him. Then, after summoning Lancelot privily: 'I have given him the first quest; he is not proven.

Look therefore, when he calls for this in hall,

Thou get to horse and follow him far

In her own castle, and so besieges her To break her will, and make her wed with him;

And but delays his purport till thou send
To do the battle with him thy chief man
Sir Lancelot, whom he trusts to overthrow,
Then wed, with glory; but she will not
wed

Save whom she loveth, or a holy life.
Now therefore have I come for Lancelot.'

609

Then Arthur mindful of Sir Gareth ask'd: 'Damsel, ye know this Order lives to crush All wrongers of the realm. But say, these four,

Who be they? What the fashion of the men ?'

'They be of foolish fashion, O Sir King, The fashion of that old knight-errantry Who ride abroad, and do but what they

will;

The damsel in her wrath, and on to this 660 Sir Gareth strode, and saw without the door King Arthur's gift, the worth of half a town,

A war-horse of the best, and near it stood The two that out of north had follow'd him.

This bare a maiden shield, a casque; that held

The horse, the spear; whereat Sir Gareth loosed

A cloak that dropt from collar-bone to heel,

A cloth of roughest web, and cast it down,
And from it, like a fuel-smother'd fire
That lookt half-dead, brake bright, and
flash'd as those

670

Dull-coated things, that making slide apart Their dusk wing-cases, all beneath there burns

A jewell'd harness, ere they pass and fly. So Gareth ere he parted flash'd in arms. Then as he donn'd the helm, and took the

shield

And mounted horse and graspt a spear, of grain Storm-strengthen'd on a windy site, and tipt