Explore "Idylls of the King" by Alfred Tennyson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Queen Guinevere had fled the court, and sat / There in the holy house at Almesbury / Weeping, none with her save a little maid, / A novice: one low light betwixt them burned / Blurred by the creeping mist, for all abroad, / Beneath a moon unseen albeit at full, / The white mist, like a face-cloth to the face, / Clung to the dead earth, and the land was still.
For hither had she fled, her cause of flight / Sir Modred; he that like a subtle beast / Lay couchant with his eyes upon the throne, / Ready to spring, waiting a chance: for this / He chilled the popular praises of the King / With silent smiles of slow disparagement; / And tampered with the Lords of the White Horse, / Heathen, the brood by Hengist left; and sought / To make disruption in the Table Round / Of Arthur, and to splinter it into feuds / Serving his traitorous end; and all his aims / Were sharpened by strong hate for Lancelot.