Beneath the strangely beautiful surface meaning of these lines there lies the deep allegoric meaning that often what seems visionary is in truth a spiritual and eternal reality. It brings to mind the wonderful lines of Browning (in “Abt Vogler”):
The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,
The passion that left the earth to lose itself in the sky,
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;
Enough that he heard it once, we shall hear it by and by.
The other point concerns the end of the poem. The last section is the Passing of Arthur; the old fragment “Morte d’Arthur” enlarged. One notable addition occurs at the very end.
In the earlier version of the fragment, after Arthur had passed away on the dark lake, with him the last hope also disappears.
We are only told:
Long stood Sir Bedivere,
Revolving many memories, till the hull
Look’d one black dot against the verge of dawn,
And on the mere the wailing died away.
In the fragment the end was tragic: the noble attempt failed; the hero and inspirer passed away, his aim defeated, his comrades slain or scattered, his life and efforts vain.
But in the final shape comes a new and very significant end:
Then from the dawn it seem’d there came, but faint,
As from beyond the limit of the world,
Like the last echo born of a great cry,
Sounds, as if some fair city were one voice,
Around a king returning from his wars.
Thereat once more he[92] moved about, and clomb
Ev’n to the highest he could climb—and saw,
Or thought he saw, the speck that bare the King
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.
We feel, as we are meant to feel, that though the death of a noble soul, after unequal war with ill, is deeply sad—fitly pictured with sorrowful sounds and darkness of night—yet the great spirit cannot wholly die: the night breaks into a new day; and the day will be brighter for those who are left, because of the efforts and memories of the leader who is no more.