Who rose again: ye have seen what ye have seen."

'So spake the King: I knew not all he meant.'"


The closing lines declare, as far as the poet could declare them,
these subjective experiences of his which, in a manner rarely
parallelled, coloured and formed his thought on the highest things.
He introduces them even into this poem on a topic which, because of
its sacred associations, he for long did not venture to touch.

In Pelleas and Ettarre--which deals with the sorrows of one of the
young knights who fill up the gaps left at the Round Table by the
mischances of the Quest--it would be difficult to trace a Celtic
original. For Malory, not Celtic legend, supplied Tennyson with the
germinal idea of a poem which, in the romance, has no bearing on the
final catastrophe. Pelleas, a King of the Isles, loves the beautiful
Ettarre, "a great lady," and for her wins at a tourney the prize of
the golden circlet. But she hates and despises him, and Sir Gawain
is a spectator when, as in the poem, the felon knights of Ettarre
bind and insult their conqueror, Pelleas. Gawain promises to win the
love of Ettarre for Pelleas, and, as in the poem, borrows his arms
and horse, and pretends to have slain him. But in place of turning
Ettarre's heart towards Pelleas, Gawain becomes her lover, and
Pelleas, detecting them asleep, lays his naked sword on their necks.
He then rides home to die; but Nimue (Vivien), the Lady of the Lake,
restores him to health and sanity. His fever gone, he scorns
Ettarre, who, by Nimue's enchantment, now loves him as much as she
had hated him. Pelleas weds Nimue, and Ettarre dies of a broken
heart. Tennyson, of course, could not make Nimue (his Vivien) do