Shrill'd; but in going mingled with dim Far in the moonlit haze among the hills, Pass to new lords; and Arthur woke and 'Who spake? A dream. O, light upon the wind, Thine, Gawain, was the voice dim cries are these Thine? or doth all that haunts the waste and wild Yet let us hence, and find or feel a way saw One lying in the dust at Almesbury, Then rose the King and moved his host by night, And ever push'd Sir Modred, league by league, Back to the sunset bound of Lyonnesse A land of old upheaven from the abyss Mourn, knowing it will go along with me?' By fire, to sink into the abyss again; 80 Where fragments of forgotten peoples dwelt, After the Christ, of those who falling down Look'd up for heaven, and only saw the mist; And shouts of heathen and the traitor knights, Oaths, insult, filth, and monstrous blasphemies, Sweat, writhings, anguish, laboring of the lungs In that close mist, and cryings for the light, Moans of the dying, and voices of the dead. Last, as by some one death-bed after wail Of suffering, silence follows, or thro' death Or death-like swoon, thus over all that shore, 120 Brake in among dead faces, to and fro 130 Swaying the helpless hands, and up and down Tumbling the hollow helmets of the fallen, And shiver'd brands that once had fought with Rome, And rolling far along the gloomy shores Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere, And whiter than the mist that all day long Had held the field of battle was the King: 'Hearest thou this great voice that shakes the world, And wastes the narrow realm whereon we move, 140 And beats upon the faces of the dead, O Bedivere, for on my heart hath fallen Then spake the bold Sir Bedivere: 'My King! King everywhere! and so the dead have kings, There also will I worship thee as king. 151 The heathen back among us, yonder stands, Modred, unharm'd, the traitor of thine house.' My house are rather they who sware my VOWS, Yea, even while they brake them, own'd me king. And well for thee, saying in my dark hour, When all the purport of my throne hath fail'd, 160 That quick or dead thou holdest me for king. King am I, whatsoever be their cry; King Made at the man. Then Modred smote his liege Hard on that helm which many a heathen sword Had beaten thin; while Arthur at one blow, Striking the last stroke with Excalibur, Slew him, and, all but slain himself, he fell. 169 So all day long the noise of battle roll'd Among the mountains by the winter sea, Until King Arthur's Table, man by man, Had fallen in Lyonnesse about their lord, King Arthur; then, because his wound was deep, The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him, And bore him to a chapel nigh the field, 179 |