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Myriads of topaz-lights, and jacinth work
Of subtlest jewellery. He gazed so long
That both his eyes were dazzled, as he stood,
10 This way and that dividing the swift mind,
In act to throw; but at the last it seem'd
Better to leave Excalibur conceal'd
There in the many-knotted water-flags,
That whistled stiff and dry about the marge.
So strode he back slow to the wounded king.
Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere:
"Hast thou perform'd my mission which I
gave?

Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights,
And bore him to a chapel nigh the field,
A broken chancel with a broken cross,
That stood on a dark strait of barren land.
On one side lay the ocean, and on one
Lay a great water, and the moon was full.
Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere:
"The sequel of to-day unsolders all
The goodliest fellowship of famous knights
Whereof this world holds record. Such a sleep
They sleep-the men I loved. I think that we
Shall never more, at any future time,
Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds,
Walking about the gardens and the halls
Of Camelot, as in the days that were.
I perish by this people which I made,-
Tho' Merlin sware that I should come again
To rule once more-but let what will be be,
I am so deeply smitten thro' the helm
That without help I cannot last till morn.
Thou therefore take my brand Excalibur,
Which was my pride; for thou rememberest

how

In those old days, one summer noon, an arm
Rose up from out the bosom of the lake,
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,
Holding the sword-and how I row'd across
And took it, and have worn it, like a king;5
And, wheresoever I am sung or told
In aftertime, this also shall be known.
But now delay not; take Excalibur,
And fling him far into the middle mere;

20

30

What is it thou hast seen, or what hast heard?"

70

And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere:
"I heard the ripple washing in the reeds,
And the wild water lapping on the crag."
To whom replied King Arthur, faint and
pale:

"Thou hast betray'd thy nature and thy name,
Not rendering true answer, as beseem'd
Thy fealty, nor like a noble knight;
For surer sign had follow'd, either hand,
Or voice, or else a motion of the mere.
This is a shameful thing for men to lie.
Yet now, I charge thee, quickly go again
As thou art liefs and dear, and do the thing 80
I bade thee, watch, and lightly bring me
word.''

Then went Sir Bedivere the second time
Across the ridge, and paced beside the mere,
Counting the dewy pebbles, fix'd in thought:

Watch what thou seest, and lightly bring me But when he saw the wonder of the hilt, word."

To him replied the bold Sir Bedivere:

41

"It is not meet, Sir King, to leave thee thus,
Aidless, alone, and smitten thro' the helm.
A little thing may harm a wounded man.
Yet I thy hest will all perform at full,
Watch what I see, and lightly bring thee
word."

So saying, from the ruin'd shrine he stept
And in the moon athwart the place of tombs,
Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men,
Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang
Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping
down

By zigzag paths and juts of pointed rock,
Came on the shining levels of the lake.

How curiously and strangely chased, he smote
His palms together, and he cried aloud:

"And if indeed I cast the brand away,
Surely a precious thing, one worthy note,
Should thus be lost forever from the earth, 90
Which might have pleased the eyes of many

men.

What good should follow this, if this were
done?

What harm, undone? deep harm to disobey,
Seeing obedience is the bond of rule.
Were it well to obey then, if a king demand
An act unprofitable, against himself?
The king is sick, and knows not what he does.
50 What record, or what relic of my lord

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So might some old man speak in the aftertime | Should blind my purpose, for I never saw,
To all the people, winning reverence;
Nor shall see, here or elsewhere, till I die,

But now much honour and much fame were Not tho' I live three lives of mortal men,
lost."
So great a miracle as yonder hilt.

So spake he, clouded with his own conceit." Then with both hands I flung him, wheeling And hid Excalibur the second time,

111

And so strode back slow to the wounded king. Then spoke King Arthur, breathing heavily: "What is it thou hast seen, or what hast heard?''

And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere: "I heard the water lapping on the crag, And the long ripple washing in the reeds.'' To whom replied King Arthur, much in wrath:

him;

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Make broad thy shoulders to receive my weight, 120 And bear me to the margin; yet I fear My wound hath taken cold, and I shall die."

"Ah, miserable and unkind, untrue,
Unknightly, traitor-hearted! Woe is me!
Authority forgets a dying king,
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;
Either from lust of gold, or like a girl
Valuing the giddy pleasure of the eyes.
Yet, for10 a man may fail in duty twice,
And the third time may prosper, get thee
hence;

But, if thou spare to fling Excalibur,

130

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170

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, 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, 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, “Quiek, quick!

I fear it is too late, and I shall die." 180 But the other swiftly strode from ridge to ridge,

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
And barren chasms, and all to left and right
The bare black cliff clang'd round him, as he
based

His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang
Sharp-smitten with the dint of arméd heels-
And on a sudden, lo! the level lake.
And the long glories of the winter moon.

191

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 That all the decks were dense with stately forms

Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream-by | Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
these
Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me?
Three queens with crowns of gold-and from I have lived my life, and that which I have

them rose

A ery that shiver'd to the tingling stars, And, as it were one voice, an agony

done

May He within himself make pure! but thou, 200 If thou shouldst never see my face again, Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer

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."

Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice

250

Rise like a fountain for me night and day. And to the barge they came. There those For what are men better than sheep or goats three queens That nourish a blind life within the brain, Put forth their hands, and took the king, and If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer wept, Both for themselves and those who call them

But she that rose the tallest of them all
And fairest, laid his head upon her lap,
And loosed his shatter'd casque, and chafed
his hands,

209

And call'd him by his name, complaining loud, And dropping bitter tears against his brow 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 curlsThat made his forehead like a rising sun High from the dais-throne-were parch'd with dust;

Or, clotted into points and hanging loose, Mix'd with the knightly growth that fringed his lips.

220

So like a shatter'd column lay the king;
Not like that Arthur who, with lance in rest,
From spur to plume a star of tournament,
Shot thro' the lists at Camelot, and charged
Before the eyes of ladies and of kings.

229

Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere:
"Ah! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go?
Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes?
For now I see the good old times are dead,
When every morning brought a noble chance,
And every chance brought out a noble knight.
Such times have not been 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,
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

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friend?

For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.1
But now farewell. I am going a long way
With these thou seest-if indeed 1 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, 260
Nor ever wind blows loudly, but it lies
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

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1 Cp. Paradise Lost, II, 1051 (p. 255).

The earthly paradise of mediæval romance, corresponding to the Grecian Isles of the Blest. The germ of this poem is found, not in the Odyssey, but in the story which Dante makes Ulysses tell of his adventures (Inferno, XXVI, 91 ff.). It was written shortly after the death of Tennyson's friend. Arthur Hallam (see In Memoriam), and voiced, said Tennyson, his "feelings about the need of going forward and braving the struggle of life more simply than anything in In Memoriam." (Memoir, I, 196). It is an admirable complement to The Lotos-Eaters. Of lines 62-64 Carlyle said: "These lines do not make me weep, but there is in me what would fill whole Lachrymatories as I read."

I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades2 10
Vext the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known,-cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all,-
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin
fades

For ever and for ever when I move.

20

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish 'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on
life

Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things: and vile it were

30

Moans round with many voices.* Come, my friends,

60

"T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,†
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are,

we are,

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. 70

LOCKSLEY HALL‡

Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet 't is early morn:

Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-horn.

curlews call,

For some three suns to store and hoard myself. "T is the place, and all around it, as of old, the
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus, To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil This labour, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees Subdue them to the useful and the good. Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere Of common duties, decent not to fail In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods, When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

40

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail; There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me,

50

That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads,-you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs;
the deep

2 Stars in the constellation Taurus, supposed to be harbingers of rain. Eneid, 1, 744.

Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall;

Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts,

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Here about the beach I wander 'd, nourishing a youth sublime

* Successive heavy monosyllables, long vowels, and full pauses, combine to make this a passage of remarkable weight and slowness. Compare note on preceding poem, 1. 259. This was intended to be a purely dramatic poem, giving expression to the conflicting and somewhat morbid feelings characteristic perhaps of introspective youth at any time, but with particular reference both to contemporary social conditions in England (it was published in 1842) and to the fresh spur given to im agination by the discoveries in science and mechanics. Some forty years later. Tennyson wrote a sequel, Locksley Hall Sixty Years After.

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