Explore "Gawayne and the Green Knight: A Fairy Tale" by Charlton Miner Lewis on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
O Muse! -- But no: heaven knows I need a muse; / But which of all the nine, pray, should I choose? / Thalia, Clio, and Melpomene, / I love them all, but none, alas, loves me; / For if you want a muse to take your part / You must be solely hers with all your heart; / And I have mingled since my earliest youth / My smiles and tears, my fictions and my truth; / Nay, in this very tale, scarce yet half done, / I've courted all the nine, and so won none! / Not for me, therefore, the Parnassian lyre, / Or winged war-horse shod with heavenly fire; / Harsh numbers flow from throats whose thirst has been / A whole life long unslaked of Hippocrene; / But I will e'en go on as best I can / And let the story end as it began, -- / A plain, straightforward man's unvarnished word, / Part sad, part sweet, -- and part of it absurd.
A year passed by, as years are wont to do, / Winter and spring, summer and autumn too, / Till mid-December's flaw-blown flakes of snow / Warned Gawayne that the time was come to go / To the Green Chapel by the Murmuring Mere, / And take again the blow he gave last year.