How we cite our quotes: (Line)
Quote #1
And still from time to time the heathen host
Swarm’d over-seas, and harried what was left.
And so there grew great tracts of wilderness,
Wherein the beast was ever more and more
But man was less and less, till Arthur came.
(“Coming of Arthur,” 7-11)
Before Arthur arrives, Britain is a barren wasteland. “Harried” by pagan invaders, the British must allow their land to be overtaken by wilderness. Arthur’s role is therefore to tame the wild. His defense of the territory allows it to be occupied and civilized again.
Quote #2
And ever and anon the wolf would steal
The children and devour, but now and then,
Her own brood lost or dead, lent her fierce teat
To human sucklings; and the children, housed
In her foul den, there at their meat would growl,
And mock their foster-mother on four feet,
Till, straighten’d, they grew up to wolf-like men,
Worse than the wolves.
(“Coming of Arthur,” 26-33)
These men, raised by wolves in the woods, are “worse than wolves” from the Idylls’ perspective. They are neither beast nor man, but some combination of the two. Which is even worse. Arthur’s goal is to convince men to tame their bestial urges so they become “fully” man. These wolf-like men represent everything he is fighting against.
Quote #3
‘The fire of Heaven is on the dusty ways.
The wayside blossoms open to the blaze.
The whole wood-world is one full peal of praise.
The fire of Heaven is not the flame of Hell.
‘The fire of Heaven is lord of all things good,
And starve not thou this fire within thy blood,
But follow Vivien thro’ the fiery flood!
The fire of Heaven is not the flame of Hell!’
(“Balin and Balan,” 442-449)
The character of Vivien is very connected with the natural world both in her characterization and in her spirituality, which is a sort of nature-worship that exalts the natural impulses—“the fire within thy blood”—within all creatures. The “fire of Heaven” to which she refers is the life-giving force that makes blossoms open and controls the rhythm of the seasons that appears throughout the Idylls.