Then Sir Bedivere, in wonder, returned to the King, who, when he saw him come, cried:-
"'Now see I by thine eyes that this is done.
Speak out: what is it thou hast heard, or seen?'"
So Sir Bedivere told the King how truly this time he had cast away the sword, and how an arm "clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful," had caught it and drawn it under the mere. Then at the King's bidding Sir Bedivere raised Arthur and bore him to the water's edge.
"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,