Idylls of the King

Tennyson spent much of his career reworking the Arthurian legend into this cycle of twelve poems, first published in 1859 and expanded over the following decades. He follows Arthur from his mysterious origins and the founding of the Round Table through the slow rot that brings Camelot down, tracing Guinevere’s love for Lancelot and the failure of a noble ideal to survive human weakness. Behind the medieval pageantry lies a very Victorian meditation on faith, honor, and moral decline. The blank verse is stately and richly musical, and the sequence stands as one of the great long poems of nineteenth-century England. Offered here free as a PDF and EPUB edition.