Queen, Roll'd incense, and there past along the hymns A voice as of the waters, while the two Sware at the shrine of Christ a deathless love: 470475480And Arthur said, 'Behold, thy doom? is mine. Let chance what will, I love thee to the death!' To whom the Queen replied with drooping eyes, 'King and my lord, I love thee to the death!' And holy Dubric spread his hands and spake, 'Reign ye, and live and love, and make the world Other, and may thy Queen be one with thee, And all this Order of thy Table Round Fulfil the boundless purpose of their King!' So Dubric said; but when they left the shrine Great Lords from Rome before the portal stood, In scornful stillness gazing as they past; Then while they paced a city all on fire With sun and cloth of gold, the trumpets blew, And Arthur's knighthood sang before the King:? destiny 'Blow trumpet, for the world is white with May, Blow trumpet, the long night hath roll'd away! Blow thro' the living world?'Let the King reign.' 'Shall Rome or Heathen rule in Arthur's realm? 485 Flash brand and lance, fall battleaxe upon helm, Fall battleaxe, and flash brand! Let the King reign. 'Strike for the King and five! his knights have heard. That God hath told the King a secret word. Fall battleaxe, and flash brand! Let the King reign. 490 'Blow trumpet! he will lift us from the dust. Blow trumpet! live the strength and die the lust! Clang battleaxe, and clash brand! Let the King reign. 495'Strike for the King and die! and if thou diest, The King is King, and ever wills the highest. Clang battleaxe, and clash brand! Let the King reign. 'Blow, for our Sun is mighty in his May! Blow, for our Sun is mightier day by day! Clang battleaxe, and clash brand! Let the King reign. 500'The King will follow Christ, and we the King In whom high God hath breathed a secret thing. Fall battleaxe, and flash brand! Let the King reign.' So sang the knighthood, moving to their hall. There at the banquet those great Lords from Rome, The slowly-fading mistress of the world,
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TH E PASSIN G O F ARTHU R / 120 1 505510 Strode in, and claim'd their tribute as of yore. But Arthur spake, 'Behold, for these have sworn To wage my wars, and worship me their King; The old order changeth, yielding place to new; And we that fight for our fair father Christ, Seeing that ye be grown too weak and old To drive the heathen from your Roman wall, No tribute will we pay:' so those great lords Drew back in wrath, and Arthur strove with Rome. 515And Arthur and his knighthood for a space Were all one will, and thro' that strength the King Drew in the petty princedoms under him, Fought, and in twelve great battles overcame The heathen hordes, and made a realm and reign'd. 1869 1869 The Passing of Arthur1 5That story which the bold Sir Redivere,2 First made and latest left of all the knights, Told, when the man was no more than a voice In the white winter of his age, to those With whom he dwelt, new faces, other minds. For on their march to westward, Bedivere, Who slowly paced among the slumbering host, Heard in his tent the moanings of the King: io1520'I found Him in the shining of the stars, I marked Him in the flowering of His fields, But in His ways with men I find Him not. I waged His wars, and now I pass and die. O me! for why is all around us here As if some lesser god had made the world, But had not force to shape it as he would, Till the High God behold it from beyond, And enter it, and make it beautiful? Or else as if the world were wholly fair, But that these eyes of men are dense and dim, And have not power to see it as it is: Perchance, because we see not to the close;? For I, being simple, thought to work His will,
1. On the composition of this final idyll and its his nephew, Modred, Arthur returns there to relation to Tennyson's Morte d'Arthur of 1842, see engage in his last battle. Upon landing at Dover, n. 1, p. 1127. The principal source is Malory's Gawain is slain. Morte Darthur 21.4?5. Preceding the action of this 2. A knight who has long been close to the king, idyll, Arthur has been in France with his nephew described in The Coming of Arthur, lines 173?74: Gawain, fighting against the forces of Lancelot. 'Bedivere. the first of all his knights / Knighted by Learning at that time of the gathering of an army Arthur at his crowning.' against him in England, under the leadership of
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1 138 / ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
And have but stricken with the sword in vain; And all whereon I leaned in wife and friend
25 Is traitor to my peace, and all my realm Reels back into the beast, and is no more. My God, thou hast forgotten me in my death:3 Nay?God my Christ?I pass but shall not die.'
Then, ere that last weird battle in the west,
30 There came on Arthur sleeping, Gawain killed In Lancelot's war, the ghost of Gawain blown Along a wandering wind, and past his ear Went shrilling. 'Hollow, hollow all delight! Hail, King! tomorrow thou shalt pass away.
35 Farewell! there is an isle of rest for thee. And I am blown along a wandering wind, And hollow, hollow, hollow all delight.' And fainter onward, like wild birds that change Their season in the night and wail their way
40 From cloud to cloud, down the long wind the dream Shrilled; but in going mingled with dim cries Far in the moonlit haze among the hills, As of some lonely city sacked by night, When all is lost, and wife and child with wail
45 Pass to new lords; and Arthur woke and called, 'Who spake? A dream. O light upon the wind, Thine, Gawain, was the voice?are these dim cries Thine? or doth all that haunts the waste and wild Mourn, knowing it will go along with me?'
50 This heard the bold Sir Bedivere and spake: 'O me, my King, let pass whatever will, Elves, and the harmless glamour of the field;4 But in their stead thy name and glory cling To all high places like a golden cloud
55 Forever: but as yet thou shalt not pass. Light was Gawain in life, and light in death Is Gawain, for the ghost is as the man; And care not thou for dreams from him, but rise? I hear the steps of Modred in the west,
60 And with him many of thy people, and knights Once thine, whom thou hast loved, but grosser grown Than heathen, spitting at their vows and thee. Right well in heart they know thee for the King. Arise, go forth and conquer as of old.'
65 Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere: 'Far other is this battle in the west Whereto we move, than when we strove in youth,
3. Cf. Jesus' cry in Matthew 27.46: 'My God, my which cluster round the King's name.' One legend God, why hast thou forsaken me?' told of the elves' bestowing gifts on Arthur as a 4. Tennyson said the reference is to 'the legends child.
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THE PASSING OF ARTHUR / 120 3
And brake the petty kings, and fought with Rome, Or thrust the heathen from the Roman wall,5 70 And shook him through the north. Ill doom0 is mine destiny To war against my people and my knights. The king who fights his people fights himself. And they my knights, who loved me once, the stroke That strikes them dead is as my death to me. 75 Yet let us hence, and find or feel a way Through this blind haze, which ever since I saw One lying in the dust at Almesbury,6 Hath folded in the passes of the world.' Then rose the King and moved his host by night, 80 And
