Had ventured—had the thing I spake of been
Mere gold—but this was all of that true steel
Whereof they forged the brand Excalibur,
And lightnings played about it in the storm, etc.
It may be questioned whether hap-hazard talk ever, in any age of human speech, took a form like that, though it is just like Tennyson in many a weary part of his poetry. The blank verse, for its part, is broken with all the old skill, and there are lines of beautiful license, like this:
Camelot, a city of shadowy palaces,
or strengthened with the extra quantity, like this:
Stay, felon knight, I avenge me for my friend!
or imitating the motion described, as these:
The hoof of his horse slept in the stream, the stream