"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 start, 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. 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." Then slowly from the shore the barge moved. And Sir Bedivere, as he saw his master go, was filled with grief and loneliness, for he only of all the brave King's knights was left. And so he cried in mourning:- "'Ah! my Lord Arthur, wither shall I go? Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes? For now I see the true old times are dead. . . . . . . And I, the last, go forth companionless, And the days darken round me, and the years, Among new men, strange faces, other minds." Mournfully from the barge Arthur answered and bade him pray, for "More things are wrought by prayer than the world dreams of," and so he said farewell, "and the barge with oar and sail Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan." Long stood Sir Bedivere thinking of all that had come and gone, watching the barge as it glided silently away, and listening to the wailing voices, "till the hull Look'd one black dot against the verge of dawn, And on the mere the wailing died away." Sir Bedivere turned then and climbed, "Ev'n to the highest he could climb, and saw, Straining his eyes beneath an arch of hand, Or thought he saw, the speck that bore 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." The poem moves along with mournful stately measures, yet it closes, like Layamon's farewell to Arthur, on a note of hope. Layamon recalls Merlin's words, "the which were sooth, that an Arthur should yet come the English to help." The hope of Tennyson is different, not that the old will return, but that the new will take its place, for "the old order changeth yielding place to new, and God fulfils himself in many ways." The old sorrows vanish "into light," and the new sun ever rises bringing in the new year. BOOKS TO READ Idylls of the King, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, (Macmillan). Chapter X THE ADVENTURES OF AN OLD ENGLISH BOOK