Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
"Nevertheless you, O Sir Gauwaine, lie,
Whatever may have happened through these years,
God knows I speak truth, saying that you lie."
- After that long, hypothetical "what-if" scenario in which the speaker asked the "knights and lords" to imagine having to choose between heaven and hell with no information to go on, she interrupts herself.
- Even though she was afraid, for some reason, of dying after Launcelot left, she insists that Gauwaine is lying, and God knows it.
- Does that name ring any bells? Gauwaine (or Gawain) was also one of King Arthur's famous knights. Maybe you've even read the old story Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.