“I will never love a coward!” quoth the Lady fair and bright.
“Then you'll never love at all, Ma'am,” answered her the doughty Knight.
“Sometimes we know not where or when
You'll surely find the best of men
His back against the wall!
His noble heart distraught with fear,
The cry of foemen in his ear,
Who fights with savage lunge and leer
Because he feels that death is near
And does not dare to fall!

“Sometimes we know not when or where
The coward lurks beneath the air
Of knightliest cavalier.
Whatever things he seems to dare
Spring not from courage, tried and rare,
But that some doubting lady fair
May not suspect his fear.

“The wight who never feared a space
Belongs not to the human race.
He never lost, he never won;
Great deeds of might he may have done,
But no achievement of the heart
Has ever fallen to his part;
And no one enters perfect bliss
Who has not tasted cowardice,
As I now taste it, standing here,
Too cowardly, too filled with fear,
To throw Love's gauntlet down and dare
Your Ladyship, so loved, so fair,
To pick it up and face with me
The Tourney of What Is To Be!”

Whereon the Lady, 'spite of what she'd said
Herself the gauntlet threw straight at his head,
And later on, I'm told, they twain were wed.

“The way it came about,” quoth she, “was this:
None but the Brave confess to Cowardice;
And I have always prayed my Lord might be
A Knight to others, but—afraid of me!”