I said you would be coming back at once,
And while I said it I heard pens in heaven
Scratching a doubtful evidence against me.”
And while I said it I heard pens in heaven
Scratching a doubtful evidence against me.”
Tristram, in indecision between anger
Deserving no indulgence and surprise
Requiring less, scowled and laughed emptily:
“Gawaine, if you were any one else alive
I might not always be at home to you,
Or to your bland particularities.
Why should a wedded exile hesitate
In his return to his own wife and garden?
I know the picture that your folly draws
Of woe that is awaiting me in Cornwall,
But we are going to Camelot, not to Cornwall.
King Mark, with all his wealth of hate for me,
Is not so rich and rotten and busy with it
As to be waiting everywhere at once
To see me coming. He waits most in Cornwall,
Preferring for mixed reasons of his own
Not frequently to shine far out of it.”
Deserving no indulgence and surprise
Requiring less, scowled and laughed emptily:
“Gawaine, if you were any one else alive
I might not always be at home to you,
Or to your bland particularities.
Why should a wedded exile hesitate
In his return to his own wife and garden?
I know the picture that your folly draws
Of woe that is awaiting me in Cornwall,
But we are going to Camelot, not to Cornwall.
King Mark, with all his wealth of hate for me,
Is not so rich and rotten and busy with it
As to be waiting everywhere at once
To see me coming. He waits most in Cornwall,
Preferring for mixed reasons of his own
Not frequently to shine far out of it.”
“He may not be so rotten as some whose names
Have fallen from my deciduous memory,”
Have fallen from my deciduous memory,”
[ 111 ]
