pity to do you hurt, for I feel you are passing feeble.
Ah, said Sir Gawaine, gentle knight, ye say the word
that I should say. And therewith they took off their
helms and either kissed other, and there they swore
together either to love other as brethren --"

But I lost the thread there, and dozed off to slumber,
thinking about what a pity it was that men with such
superb strength -- strength enabling them to stand up
cased in cruelly burdensome iron and drenched with
perspiration, and hack and batter and bang each other
for six hours on a stretch -- should not have been
born at a time when they could put it to some useful
purpose. Take a jackass, for instance: a jackass has
that kind of strength, and puts it to a useful purpose,