When the writing materials were brought Gawaine sat weakly up and wrote this, "Unto Sir Launcelot, flower of all noble knights that I have heard or saw by my days; I, Sir Gawaine, nephew of King Arthur, send you greeting and let you know that I have been smitten upon the wound that you gave me before the city of Benwick and that I have come to my death day. I wish all the world to know that I, Sir Gawaine, knight of the Round Table, came by my death by my own seeking and not through your fault. So I beseech you, Sir Launcelot, return again to England and sometime see my tomb and say a prayer or two for my soul. Alas, Sir Launcelot, I beseech you by all the love that ever was between us, lose no time but cross the sea in all haste that you may rescue the noble king that made you knight, for he is in peril from that false traitor, my half-brother, Sir Mordred.
"This letter was written but two hours and a half before my death with my own hand and sealed with my heart's blood."
Then King Arthur wept, and sadness fell upon all who stood about. At the hour of noon, after Sir Gawaine had received the sacrament and had begged King Arthur to send for Launcelot, he yielded up the spirit.
After the burial of Sir Gawaine, King Arthur, old before his time, with all his sorrows fresh upon him, made ready to go against Sir Mordred, who had gathered a great army in the west.
THE PASSING OF ARTHUR[*]
[Footnote *: Note.—The Passing of Arthur gives us the story of King
Arthur from the time of Sir Gawaine's death.]
By ALFRED TENNYSON
That story which the bold Sir Bedivere,
First made and latest left of all the knights,
Told, when the man was no more than a voice
In the white winter of his age, to those
With whom he dwelt, new faces, other minds.
For on their march to westward, Bedivere,
Who slowly paced among the slumbering host,
Heard in his tent the moanings of the King:
"I found Him in the shining of the stars,
I mark'd Him in the flowering of His fields,
But in His ways with men I find Him not.
I waged His wars, and now I pass and die.
O me! for why is all around us here
As if some lesser god had made the world,
But had not force to shape it as he would,
Till the High God behold it from beyond,
And enter it, and make it beautiful?
Or else as if the world were wholly fair,
But that these eyes of men are dense and dim,
And have not power to see it as it is:
Perchance, because we see not to the close;—
For I, being simple, thought to work His will,
And have but stricken with the sword in vain;
And all whereon I lean'd in wife and friend
Is traitor to my peace, and all my realm
Reels back into the beast, and is no more.
My God, thou hast forgotten me in my death:
Nay—God my Christ—I pass but shall not die."