Explore "Con Brio" by William Carlos Williams on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Miserly, is the best description of that poor fool / Who holds Lancelot to have been a morose fellow, / Dolefully brooding over the events which had naturally to follow / The high time of his deed with Guinevere.
He has a sick historical sight, if I judge rightly, / To believe any such thing as that ever occurred.
But, by the god of blood, what else is it that has deterred / Us all from an out and out defiance of fear / But this same perdamnable miserliness, / Which cries about our necks how we shall have less and less / Than we have now if we spend too wantonly?
Bah, this sort of slither is below contempt!
In the same vein we should have apple trees exempt / From bearing anything but pink blossoms all the year, / Fixed permanent lest their bellies wax unseemly, and the dear / Innocent days of them be wasted quite.
How can we have less? Have we not the deed?
Lancelot thought little, spent his gold and rode to fight / Mounted, if God was willing, on a good steed.