Clang battle-axe and clash brand. Let the king reign.
In "Gareth and Lynette" the newly established kingdom is seen doing its work among men. Arthur, enthroned in his great hall, dispenses impartial justice. The knights
Ride abroad redressing human wrongs.
The allegory shows us, in Gareth's contests with the knights "that have no law nor King," the contest of the soul with the temptations that at different periods of life successively attack it:
The war of Time against the soul of man.
Then follow the "Idylls," which trace the entrance and growth of an element of sin and discord, which, spreading, pulls down into ruin that "fellowship of noble knights," "which are an image of the mighty world." The purity of the ideal kingdom is fouled, almost at its source, by the guilty love of Lancelot and the Queen. Among some the contagion spreads; while others, in an extremity of protest, start in quest of the Holy Grail, leaving the duty at hand for mystical visions. Man cannot bring down heaven to earth; he cannot sanctify the mass of men by his own rapturous anticipations; he cannot safely neglect the preliminary stages of progress appointed for the race; he "may not wander from the allotted field before his work be done."
So by impurity and by impatience the rift in the kingdom widens, and in "The Last Tournament," in the stillness before the impending doom, we hear the shrill voice of Dagonet railing at the King, who thinks himself as God, that he can make
Honey from hornet-combs
And men from beasts.
In "Guinevere," unequaled elsewhere in the "Idylls" in pure poetry, the blow falls; at length, in the concluding poem, Arthur passes to the isle of Avilion, and once more
The old order changeth, yielding place to new.