Again "He seem'd as one That all in later, sadder age begins To war against ill uses of a life, "His arms are old, he trusts the harden'd skin." While Gareth "... Hew'd great pieces of his armour off him, As rock hardens about the fossil, so evil habits harden about the soul. Evening-Star symbolises the force of habit in old age. Sins repeated become habits, and the habits "hardened skin." Gareth's way is the only way to victory. The soul must assert itself," straining ev'n his uttermost," and cast them into the deep. There must be no compromise. If the soul is to be victor it must tear from itself encoiling evil, and that cry silence the passionate voices "Thou hast made us lords, and canst not put us down!'” They must be put down, or there will be no throne for the soul, only the chains of sense. Sir Gareth now wages his last war with Night, or Death, an awful monster, who had struck terror into the country round. "High on a nightblack horse, in nightblack arms, The monster, and then paused, and spake no word." The moment is intense. Lyonors wrings her hands. Lancelot shudders as Gareth dashes on the foe with splendid valour, and with one blow splits the skull of "Death." Issued the bright face of a blooming boy The soul, conquering in the crises of life, finds at last that dreaded death wears the face of a "blooming boy." Victorious over sense, it finds in death eternal youth. We see only the hideous mask of death, but it hides the face of a young angel. Thus the poem is a parable. The interpretation lies in the allegory of the hermit's cave, where Morning, Noon, Evening and Night, personify the evils that assail the soul. "And running down the soul, a shape that fled But, as we have seen, in the end the spiritual soul is victor, "So large mirth lived, and Gareth won the quest." In contrast to Gareth is Lynette, who throughout judges by the sense. She judges him by the outward and visible. She has no spiritual perception to see the noble and beautiful within him. She sees only the kitchen-knave where she might have seen a kingly knight. Lynette is cheery and charming when not scornful. She is sensitive to nature, ever breaking into song at the sight of birds and flowers. She is entirely sensuous and lives by the outward, and it is only at the last, when the soul sees, that she learns the spiritual worth of Gareth. 'Full merry am I to find my goodly knave Geraint and Enid. IN "Geraint and Enid we have the first indication of the pure air of the court being tainted, and of its effect upon so brave and pure a knight as Geraint. He had married the lovely Enid, daughter of Yniol, whose fortunes had been broken through the treachery of Edyrn, a discarded suitor and despised nephew. Enid is a great favourite with the Queen, who loves her. The suspicion that haunts Geraint throughout, and shapes itself into a horrible phantom, has its rise in the scandal of the guilty love of Lancelot for Guinevere. He prevails with the King to grant him leave of absence to defend his own princedom, and to purge its lawlessness. Once there he becomes so utterly absorbed in Enid as to neglect all else. "He compass'd her with sweet observances Forgetful of his princedom and its cares. It is the common talk that he is a prince "whose manhood was all gone." His strength is being sapped by self-indulgence. The temptation is to sacrifice the spiritual quality of love for its sensuous delights. The fact that the temptation comes through Enid-the ideal loveliness-all unconscious to herself, made it all the more subtle. The most seductive temptation may come through the tenderest object. The passion for the object loved may sweep aside duties sacred as the love itself. Absorption in any earthly object weakens the force of the soul in other directions. Love indulged to the point of self-indulgence saps manhood, and leaves the man a prey to wildest fancy and subtlest suspicion. Enid naturally saddens, and the phantom of fear is again raised in Geraint "that her nature had a taint.” Thus weakened in his moral fibre, first by suspicion and then by self-indulgence through sensuous devotion, Geraint is most susceptible to jealousy. He who lives by the senses is likely to become a prey to vultures of suspicion that tear out the heart. Geraint, with the sorrow of the tainted court brooding o'er him, begins to doubt the purity of Enid; and the doubt seems confirmed as she bends over him in his semi-sleep and pours out her sad heart in a soliloquy ending with the innocent words : "O me, I fear that I am no true wife.'' Her tears fall in a rain of grief; he feels the warm tears and believes that she is 666 "Weeping for some gay knight in Arthur's hall.'” IIe hears the fragments of her words and thinks she is not faithful to him. He is now maddened with jealousy, and becomes reckless in his treatment of Enid, which reveals in him the soul defeated by sense, and in her the soul victorious over sense. Geraint, believing only in what he can see and hear and feel, becomes the victim of the most painful self-deception. The senses usurp his being and make suspicion and tyranny regnant. Let the story reveal the characters, and note the "Sense at war with Soul." Confirmed in his suspicions, Geraint commands Enid "And thou, put on thy worst and meanest dress His fiery passion only blinds him to the goodness of Enid. "O purblind race of miserable men, How many among us at this very hour |