Fall battle-axe and flash brand! Let the king reign!”
So Arthur leads on the Britons, with the image of the Virgin on his shield, and points his sword Excalibur towards the swarming foe. Twelve great battles he fights with the English, and for a time holds them at bay. Then some of his followers desert to the enemy, and he is sore beset. One by one his knights fall around him, and then he, too, is stricken to the ground. Sore wounded, Arthur calls the last of his knights, and bids him throw Excalibur into a lake. The sword is flung high into the air, and as it falls, lo, a hand comes out of the water and catches the magic brand by the hilt. Three times it is brandished, and then it vanishes for ever beneath the waves.
“Alas!” cries Arthur, “my end draws near. Carry me to the edge of the water.” The knight does so, and there, awaiting the dying king, is a black barge, his destined bier. On the deck are three queens, with black hoods and crowns of gold. “Now, put me in the barge,” says Arthur; and when this is done, the queens receive him with great mourning and wailing, and one of them cries, “Ah, my dear brother, why hast thou tarried so long?” Then Arthur bids the knight farewell, and the barge slowly moves across the water. Sad and lonely, the knight watches it disappear
“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.”
So fades Arthur from our view, a dim and mystical figure in life, a vision of undying splendour in death. Let the historians say what they will, men will still believe in him; they will still see the wearer of his mantle in every true knight, and still hold him a shining example to all who “bear without abuse the grand old name of gentleman.”
