This week’s offering is selections from the final book of Tennyson’s ‘Idylls of the King’, a work immensely popular in Victorian times, but I would guess little read now. It is not hard to see why: the poem has its virtues, being characteristically mellifluous, but it is too stuffed with Victorian piety and has just too many words for a more secular age not known for the length of its attention span. The dying Arthur, for example, despite suffering from a fatal head wound manages to sermonise at a length that would put any operatic diva to shame. Yet here and there visual and aural effects combine to create a hauntingly elegiac music.

From ‘The Passing of Arthur’

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 fall’n 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,
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;
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:
Watch what thou seëst, and lightly bring me word.’

The bold Sir Bedivere duly takes the sword, but twice cannot bring himself to carry out the task, waste of a good sword and all that. The second time he comes back Arthur says he will give him one more chance and if he fails again ‘I will arise and slay thee with my hands’. At this point you feel Sir Bedivere might be excused for saying ‘Look, mate, if you’re feeling that chipper all of a sudden go and throw the damn sword in yourself’, but no, off he goes and this time duly throws the sword far into the lake, at which point out comes an arm, ‘clothed in white samite, mystic wonderful’ and clearly belonging to one who should be playing for the England ladies’ cricket team, and catches it by the hilt.

Sir Bedivere returns and reports, this time to Arthur’s satisfaction, and there is now a bit of a rush to get to the lake to catch a barge which will be coming to take the king away, but Sir Bedivere gives Arthur a piggyback and thanks to some nifty footwork by Sir B. over slippery ground – Tennyson here doing the kind of thing he does best, I think – they make it in time for Arthur to be taken aboard and welcomed by three queens.

    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, ‘Quick, quick!
I fear it is too late, and I shall die.’
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 armed heels–
And on a sudden, lo! the level lake,
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
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
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.

Arthur takes his place in the barge, leaving a forlorn Sir Bedivere to make a rather plaintive appeal, which gives Arthur the chance for a final bit of sermonising, while the three queens, one imagines, wait rather impatiently in the background: ‘Don’t want to rush you, Arthur, but we really ought to get that head wound seen to…’

    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 true old times are dead,
When every morning brought a noble chance,
And every chance brought out a noble knight.
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,
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,
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,
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,
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
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
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
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,
And on the mere the wailing died away.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson