Sir Gawain had been spoiling all the sport:

The Giants were demolished one and all. He pulled them up the wall. They climb and enter: Such was the winding up of this adventure.

-Canto II.

A PAUSE IN THE STORY

And now the thread of our romance unravels
Presenting new performances on the stage:
A Giant's education and his travels

Will occupy the next succeeding page.-
But I begin to tremble at the cavils

Of this fastidious, supercilious age.

Reviews and paragraphs in morning papers;

The prospect of them gives my Muse the vapors.
-Close of Canto II.

THE MONKS AND THE GIANTS.

IV.

Some ten miles off, an ancient abbey stood,
Amidst the mountains, near a noble stream;
A level eminence, enshrined with wood,
Sloped to the river's bank and southern beam;
Within were fifty friars fat and good,

Of goodly presence and of good esteem,
That passed an easy, exemplary life,

Remote from want and care, and worldly strife.

V.

Between the Monks and Giants there subsisted,
In the first Abbot's lifetime, much respect;
The Giants let them settle where they listed:
The Giants were a tolerating sect.
A poor lame Giant once the Monks assisted,
Old and abandoned, dying with neglect;
The Prior found him, cured his broken bone,
And very kindly cut him for the stone.

VI.

This seemed a glorious, golden opportunity
To civilize the whole gigantic race;

To draw them to pay tithes, and dwell in unity.
The Giants' valley was a fertile place,

And might have much enriched the whole community,
Had the old Giant lived a longer space.

But he relapsed, and though all means were tried. They could but just baptize him - when he died.

VIII.

They never found another case to cure,

But their demeanor calm and reverential, Their gesture and their vesture grave and pure, Their conduct sober, cautious and prudential, Engaged respect, sufficient to secure

Their properties and interests more essential: They kept a distant courteous intercourse, Salutes and gestures were their sole discourse.

XV.

In castles and in courts Ambition dwells,

But not in castles or in courts alone;

She breathes a wish throughout those sacred cells, For bells of larger size and louder tone.

Giants abominate the sound of bells,

And soon the fierce antipathy was shown, The tinkling and the jingling and the clangor, Roused their irrational, gigantic anger.

XVI.

Unhappy mortals! ever blind to fate!

Unhappy Monks! you see no danger nigh; Exulting in their sound and size and weight, From morn till noon the merry peal you ply; The belfry rocks, your bosoms are elate,

Your spirits with the ropes and pulleys fly;

Tired but transported, panting, pulling, hauling, Ramping and stamping, overjoyed and bawling.

XVII.

Meanwhile the solemn mountains that surrounded The silent valley where the convent lay,

With tintinnabular uproar were astounded,

When the first peal broke forth at break of day: Feeling their granite ears severely wounded,

They scarce knew what to think or what to say. And (though large mountains commonly conceal Their sentiments, dissembling what they feel).

XIX.

These giant mountains inwardly were moved,
But never made an outward change of place.
Not so the Mountain-Giants (as behoved

A more alert and locomotive race),
Hearing a clatter which they disapproved
They ran straightforward to besiege the place
With a discordant, universant yell,

Like house-dogs howling at a dinner-bell.

XX.

Historians are extremely to be pitied,
Obliged to persevere in the narration
Of wrongs and horrid outrages committed,
Oppression, sacrilege, assassination;
The following scenes I wished to have omitted,
But truth is an imperious obligation.
So "my heart sickens and I drop my pen,"
And am obliged to pick it up again. — Canto III.

THE CLOSE OF THE WAR.

XLVIII.

The Giant-troops invariably withdrew

(Like mobs in Naples, Portugal, and Spain),