"Arms on which the standing muscle sloped,
As slopes a wild brook o'er a little stone,
Running too vehemently to break upon it,"


is suggested perhaps by Theocritus--"The muscles on his brawny arms
stood out like rounded rocks that the winter torrent has rolled and
worn smooth, in the great swirling stream" (Idyll xxii.)

The second part of the poem follows the original less closely. Thus
Limours, in the tale, is not an old suitor of Enid; Edyrn does not
appear to the rescue; certain cruel games, veiled in a magic mist,
occur in the tale, and are omitted by the poet; "Gwyffert petit, so
called by the Franks, whom the Cymry call the Little King," in the
tale, is not a character in the Idyll, and, generally, the gross
Celtic exaggerations of Geraint's feats are toned down by Tennyson.
In other respects, as when Geraint eats the mowers' dinner, the tale
supplies the materials. But it does not dwell tenderly on the
reconciliation. The tale is more or less in the vein of "patient
Grizel," and he who told it is more concerned with the fighting than
with amoris redintegratio, and the sufferings of Enid. The Idyll is
enriched with many beautiful pictures from nature, such as this:-


"But at the flash and motion of the man
They vanish'd panic-stricken, like a shoal
Of darting fish, that on a summer morn
Adown the crystal dykes at Camelot
Come slipping o'er their shadows on the sand,
But if a man who stands upon the brink