Explore "Idylls of the King" by Alfred Tennyson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Elaine the fair, Elaine the loveable, / Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat, / High in her chamber up a tower to the east / Guarded the sacred shield of Lancelot; / Which first she placed where the morning's earliest ray / Might strike it, and awake her with the gleam; / Then fearing rust or soilure fashioned for it / A case of silk, and braided thereupon / All the devices blazoned on the shield / In their own tinct, and added, of her wit, / A border fantasy of branch and flower, / And yellow-throated nestling in the nest.
Nor rested thus content, but day by day, / Leaving her household and good father, climbed / That eastern tower, and entering barred her door, / Stript off the case, and read the naked shield, / Now guessed a hidden meaning in his arms, / Now made a pretty history to herself / Of every dint a sword had beaten in it, / And every scratch a lance had made upon it, / Conjecturing when and where: this cut is fresh; / That ten years back; this dealt him at Caerlyle; / That at Caerleon; this at Camelot: / And ah God's mercy, what a stroke was there! / And here a thrust that might have killed, but God / Broke the strong lance, and rolled his enemy down, / And saved him: so she lived in fantasy.