‘I heard the water lapping on the crag,
285 And the long ripple washing in the reeds.’
To whom replied King Arthur, much in wrath:
‘Ah, miserable and unkind, untrue,
Unknightly, traitor-hearted! Woe is me!
Authority forgets a dying king,
290 Laid widow’d of the power in his eye
That bow’d the will. I see thee what thou art,
For thou, the latest-left of all my knights,
In whom should meet the offices of all,
Thou wouldst betray me for the precious hilt;
295 Either from lust of gold, or like a girl
Valuing the giddy pleasure of the eyes.
Yet, for a man may fail in duty twice,
And the third time may prosper, get thee hence:
But, if thou spare to fling Excalibur,
300 I will arise and slay thee with my hands.
Then quickly rose Sir Bedivere, and ran,
And, leaping down the ridges lightly, plunged
Among the bulrush beds, and clutch’d the sword,
And strongly wheel’d and threw it. The great brand
305 Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon,
And flashing round and round, and whirl’d in an arch,
Shot like a streamer of the northern morn,
Seen where the moving isles of winter shock
By night, with noises of the Northern Sea.
310 So flash’d and fell the brand Excalibur:
But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,
And caught him by the hilt, and brandish’d him
Three times, and drew him under in the mere.
315 And lightly went the other to the King.
Then spoke King Arthur, drawing thicker breath
‘Now see I by thine eyes that this is done.
Speak out: what is it thou hast heard, or seen?’
And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere:
320 ‘Sir King, I closed mine eyelids, lest the gems
Should blind my purpose, for I never saw,
Nor shall see, here or elsewhere, till I die,
Not tho’ I live three lives of mortal men,
So great a miracle as yonder hilt.
325 Then with both hands I flung him, wheeling him;
But when I look’d again, behold an arm,
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,
That caught him by the hilt, and brandish’d him
Three times, and drew him under in the mere.’
330 And answer made King Arthur, breathing hard:
‘My end draws nigh; ’tis time that I were gone.
Make broad thy shoulders to receive my weight,
And bear me to the margin; yet I fear
My wound hath taken cold, and I shall die.’
335 So saying, from the pavement he half rose,
Slowly, with pain, reclining on his arm,
And looking wistfully with wide blue eyes
As in a picture. Him Sir Bedivere
Remorsefully regarded thro’ his tears,
340 And would have spoken, but he found not words;
Then took with care, and kneeling on one knee,
O’er both his shoulders drew the languid hands,
And rising bore him thro’ the place of tombs.
But, as he walk’d, King Arthur panted hard,
345 Like one that feels a nightmare on his bed
When all the house is mute. So sigh’d the King,
Muttering and murmuring at his ear, ‘Quick, quick!
I fear it is too late, and I shall die.’
But the other swiftly strode from ridge to ridge,
350 Clothed with his breath, and looking, as he walk’d,
Larger than human on the frozen hills.
He heard the deep behind him, and a cry
Before. His own thought drove him like a goad.
Dry clash’d his harness in the icy caves
355 And barren chasms, and all to left and right
The bare black cliff ciang’d round him, as he based
His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang
Sharp-smitten with the dint of armèd heels –
And on a sudden, lo! the level lake,
360 And the long glories of the winter moon.
Then saw they how there hove a dusky barge,
Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern,
Beneath them; and descending they were ware
365 That all the decks were dense with stately forms,
Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream — by these
Three Queens with crowns of gold: and from them rose
A cry that shiver’d to the tingling stars,
And, as it were one voice, an agony
370 Of lamentation, like a wind that shrills
All night in a waste land, where no one comes,
Or hath come, since the making of the world.
Then murmur’d Arthur, ‘Place me in the barge.’
So to the barge they came. There those three Queens
Put forth their hands, and took the King, and wept.
375 But she, that rose the tallest of them all
And fairest, laid his head upon her lap,
And loosed the shatter’d casque, and chafed his hands,
And call’d him by his name, complaining loud,
And dropping bitter tears against a brow
380 Striped with dark blood: for all his face was white
And colourless, and like the wither’d moon
Smote by the fresh beam of the springing east;
And all his greaves and cuisses dash’d with drops
Of onset; and the light and lustrous curls —
385 That made his forehead like a rising sun
High from the daïs-throne — were parch’d with dust;
Or, clotted into points and hanging loose,
Mix’d with the knightly growth that fringed his lips.
So like a shatter’d column lay the King;
390 Not like that Arthur who, with lance in rest,
From spur to plume a star of tournament,
Shot thro’s the lists at Camelot, and charged
Before the eyes of ladies and of kings.
Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere:
395 ‘Ah! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go?
Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes?
For now I see the true old times are dead,
When every morning brought a noble chance,
And every chance brought out a noble knight.
400 Such times have been not since the light that led
The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh.
But now the whole Round Table is dissolved
Which was an image of the mighty world,
And I, the last, go forth companionless,
405 And the days darken round me, and the years,
Among new men, strange faces, other minds.’
And slowly answer’d Arthur from the barge:
‘The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways,
410 Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me?
I have lived my life, and that which I have done
May He within himself make pure! but thou,
If thou shouldst never see my face again,
415 Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
430 If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.
But now farewell. I am going a long way
435 With these thou seëst – if indeed I go
(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt) –
To the island-valley of Avilion;
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
430 Deep-meadow’d, happy, fair with orchard lawns
And bowery hollows crown’d with summer sea,
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.’
So said he, and the barge with oar and sail
Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan
435 That, fluting a wild carol ere her death,
Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood
With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere
Revolving many memories, till the hull
Look’d one black dot against the verge of dawn.
440 And on the mere the wailing died away.
But when that moan had past for evermore,
The stillness of the dead world’s winter dawn
Amazed him, and he groan’d, ‘The King is gone.’
And therewithal came on him the weird rhyme,
445 ‘From the great deep to the great deep he goes.’
Whereat he slowly turn’d and slowly clomb
The last hard footstep of that iron crag;
Thence mark’d the black hull moving yet, and cried,
‘He passes to be King among the dead,
450 And after healing of his grievous wound
He comes again; but – if he come no more –
O me, be yon dark Queens in yon black boat,
Who shriek’d and wail’d, the three whereat we gazed
On that high day, when, clothed with living light,
455 They stood before his throne in silence, friends
Of Arthur, who should help him at his need?’
Then from the dawn it seem’d there came, but faint
As from beyond the limit of the world,
Like the last echo born of a great cry,
460 Sounds, as if some fair city were one voice
Around a king returning from his wars.
Thereat once more he moved about, and clomb
Ev’n to the highest he could climb, and saw,
Straining his eyes beneath an arch of hand,
465 Or thought he saw, the speck that bare the King,
Down that long water opening on the deep
Somewhere far off, pass on and on, and go
From less to less and vanish into light.
And the new sun rose bringing the new year
To the Queen
O loyal to the royal in thyself,
And loyal to thy land, as this to thee —
Bear witness, that rememberable day,
When, pale as yet, and fever-worn, the Prince
5 Who scarce had pluck’d his flickering life again
From halfway down the shadow of the grave,
Past with thee thro’ thy people and their love,
And London roll’d one tide of joy thro’ all
Her trebled millions, and loud leagues of man
10 And welcome! witness, too, the silent cry,
The prayer of many a race and creed, and clime —
Thunderless lightnings striking under sea
From sunset and sunrise of all thy realm,
And that true North, whereof we lately heard
15 A strain to shame us ‘keep you to yourselves;
So loyal is too costly! friends – your love
Is but a burthen: loose the bond, and go.’
Is this the tone of empire? here the faith
That made us rulers? this, indeed, her voice
20 And meaning, whom the roar of Hougoumont
Left mightiest of all peoples under heaven?
What shock has fool’d her since, that she should speak
So feebly? wealthier — wealthier – hour by hour!
The voice of Britain, or a sinking land,
25 Some third-rate isle half-lost among her seas?
There rang her voice, when the full city peal’d
Thee and thy Prince! The loyal to their crown
Are loyal to their own far sons, who love
Our ocean-empire with her boundless homes
30 For ever-broadening England, and her throne
In our vast Orient, and one isle, one isle,
That knows not her own greatness? if she knows
And dreads it we are fall’n. — But thou, my Queen,
Not for itself, but thro’ thy living love
35 For one to whom I made it o’er his grave
Sacred, accept this old imperfect tale,
New-old, and shadowing Sense at war with Soul,
Ideal manhood closed in real man,
Rather than that gray king, whose name, a ghost,
40 Streams like a cloud, man-shaped, from mountain peak,
And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still; or him
Of Geoffrey’s book, or him of Malleor’s, one
Touch’d by the adulterous finger of a time
That hover’d between war and wantonness,
45 And crownings and dethronements: take withal
Thy poet’s blessing, and his trust that Heaven
Will blow the tempest in the distance back
From thine and ours: for some are scared, who mark,
Or wisely or unwisely, signs of storm,
50 Waverings of every vane with every wind,
And wordy trucklings to the transient hour,
And fierce or careless looseners of the faith,
And Softness breeding scorn of simple life,
Or Cowardice, the child of lust for gold,
55 Or Labour, with a groan and not a voice,
Or Art with poisonous honey stol’n from France,
And that which knows, but careful for itself,
And that which knows not, ruling that which knows
To its own harm: the goal of this great world
60 Lies beyond sight: yet — if our slowly-grown
And crown’d Republic’s crowning common-sense,
That saved her many times, not fail – their fears
Are morning shadows huger than the shapes
That cast them, not those gloomier which forego
65 The darkness of that battle in the West,
Where all of high and holy dies away.
Notes
For this annotation I have selected the best edited Malory that Tennyson possessed, Thomas Wright’s edition of 1858. In the notes the following abbreviations have been used:
T.
=
Tennyson
H.T.
=
Hallam Tennyson
CA
=
The Coming of Arthur
GL
=
Gareth and Lynette
MG
=
The Marriage of Geraint
GE
=
Geraint and Enid
BB
=
Balin and Balan
MV
=
Merlin and Vivien
LE
=
Lancelot and Elaine
HG
=
The Holy Grail
PE
=
Pelleas and Ettarre
LT
=
The Last Tournament
G
=
Guinevere
PA
=
The Passing of Arthur
Dedication
Published 1862. ‘To the Prince Consort’ (T.), who had died on 14 December 1861. It was written by about Christmas 1861.
1. These to His Memory – since he held them dear. Prince Albert had asked Tennyson to inscribe a copy of the Idylls,
17 May 1860.
4. I dedicate, I consecrate with tears: cf. Catullus, Fragmenta 2: ‘tibi dedico consecroque’.
5. Idylls: ‘Regarding the Greek derivation, I spelt my Idylls with two l’s mainly to divide them from the ordinary pastoral idyls usually spelt with one l. These idylls group themselves round one central figure’ (T.). Tennyson pronounced the word with an I as in ‘idle’.
6. my king’s ideal knight: ‘The first reading (”my own ideal knight”) was altered because Leslie Stephen and others called King Arthur a portrait of the Prince Consort’ (H.T.).
7–10. These lines, despite being set within quotation marks, are in fact a selective paraphrase of G 465–72. Several also occur separately in the Idylls.
12. Commingled: mixed intimately with. the gloom of imminent war. ‘Owing to the Trent affair (1861), when two Southern Commissioners accredited to Great Britain and France by the Confederate States were taken off a British steamship, the Trent, by the captain of the Federal man-of-war San Jacinto. The Queen and the Prince Consort were said to have averted war by their modification of a dispatch’ (T.).
36–7. Far-sighted summoner of War and Waste/To fruitful strifes and rivalries of peace: ‘The Prince Consort’s work in the planning of the International Exhibitions of 1851 and 1862’ (H.T.).
40. thy land: ‘Saxe-Coburg Gotha’ (T.).
49. o’ershadow: OED 2, to protect.
The Coming of Arthur
Published in December 1869 (dated 1870) as the first poem of The Holy Grail and Other Poems. Composed early in 1869. Significant additions, some ninety lines in all, were made by 1873. Some form of the poem was envisaged from the outset (see ‘Guinevere’, which was published in 1859,11. 274–305, for a foreshadowing). The plot and characterization are almost entirely original.
To introduce his series Tennyson comments:
‘How much of history we have in the story of Arthur is doubtful. Let not my readers press too hardly on details whether for history or for allegory. Some think that King Arthur may be taken to typify conscience. He is anyhow meant to be a man who spent himself in the cause of honour, duty and self-sacrifice, who felt and aspired with his nobler knights, though with a stronger and a clearer conscience than any of them, “reverencing his conscience as his king”. “In short, God had not made since Adam was, die man more perfect than Arthur,” as an older writer says. “Major praeteritis majorque futuris Regibus.” The vision of Arthur as I have drawn him came upon me when, little more than a boy, I first lighted upon Malory.
Idylls of the King Page 33