(TBASF) Lesson Topic 4: Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere

Lesson Topic 4: Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere

Now that we have learned about poetry terms and how to make connections with poetry, let's take a look at a specific poem. "Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere" is a fantasy poem written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere

A photograph of a man with light skin and dark hair, dressed in a suit of chainmail armor and bearing a long bush beard, embracing a light-skinned woman with long light hair. The figures are seated. She wears a long, flowing, light-colored gown. Their hands are clasped together. The photograph is called "The Parting of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere" and it was created in 1874 by Alfred, Lord Tennyson's friend Julia Margaret Cameron (British, born India, 1815 - 1879). Like souls that balance joy and pain,
With tears and smiles from heaven again
The maiden Spring upon the plain
Came in a sunlit fall of rain.
In crystal vapor everywhere
Blue isles of heaven laugh'd between,
And far, in forest-deeps unseen,
The topmost elm-tree gather'd green
From draughts of balmy air.

Sometimes the linnet piped his song;
Sometimes the throstle whistled strong;
Sometimes the sparhawk, wheel'd along,
Hush'd all the groves from fear of wrong;
By grassy capes with fuller sound
In curves the yellowing river ran,
And drooping chestnut-buds began
To spread into the perfect fan,
Above the teeming ground.

Then, in the boyhood of the year,
Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere
Rode thro' the coverts of the deer,
With blissful treble ringing clear.
She seem'd a part of joyous Spring;
A gown of grass-green silk she wore,
Buckled with golden clasps before;
A light-green tuft of plumes she bore
Closed in a golden ring.

Now on some twisted ivy-net,
Now by some tinkling rivulet,
In mosses mixt with violet
Her cream-white mule his pastern set;
And fleeter now she skimm'd the plains
Than she whose elfin prancer springs
By night to eery warblings,
When all the glimmering moorland rings
With jingling bridle-reins.

As she fled fast thro' sun and shade,
The happy winds upon her play'd,
Blowing the ringlet from the braid.
She look'd so lovely, as she sway'd
The rein with dainty finger-tips,
A man had given all other bliss,
And all his worldly worth for this,
To waste his whole heart in one kiss
Upon her perfect lips.

Rhyming words are words that sound the same at the ends, such as cat / hat, or jumping / bumping.

When a poem has rhyming words at the ends of its lines, these are called end rhymes.

Here is an example of end rhyme:

  • My cat is nice.
  • My cat likes mice.

A "rhyme scheme" is a way of describing the pattern of end rhymes in a poem. Each new sound at the end of a line is given a letter, starting with "A," then "B," and so on. If an end sound repeats the end sound of an earlier line, it gets the same letter as the earlier line.

Look at the Tennyson poem. Can you figure out the rhyme scheme? If we take the first stanza, we would label the rhyme scheme as follows:

 What is the rhyme scheme of this stanza? Like souls that balance joy and pain, (A) With tears and smiles from heaven again (A) The maiden Spring upon the plain (A) Came in a sunlit fall of rain. (A) In crystal vapor everywhere (B) Blue isles of heaven laugh'd between, (C) And far, in forest-deeps unseen, (C) The topmost elm-tree gather'd green (C) From draughts of balmy air. (B)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reread the poem, and look for specific poetic elements. Identify the following literary terms within the poem. 

  • Personification
  • Rhyme
  • Alliteration
  • Assonance
  • Imagery

 

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