"Most noble lord, sir Lancelot of the Lake,
I, sometime call'd the maid of Astolat,
Come, for you left me taking no farewell,
Hither, to take my last farewell of you.
I loved you, and my love had no return,
And therefore my true love has been my death.
And therefore to our lady Guinevere,
And to all other ladies, I make moan.
Pray for my soul, and yield me burial.
Pray for my soul thou too, sir Lancelot,
As thou art a knight peerless."
A chapel nigh the field,
A broken chancel with a broken cross,
That stood on a dark strait of barren land.
On one side lay the ocean, and on one
Lay a great water, and the moon was full.
The great brand
Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon,
And flashing round and round, and whirled in an arch,
Shot like streamer of the northern morn,
Seen where the moving isles of winter shock
By night, with noises of the northern sea.
So flash'd and fell the brand Excalibur:
But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,
And caught him by the hilt, and brandish'd him
Three times, and drew him under in the meer.
They saw then how there hove a dusky barge
Dark as a funeral scarf from stern 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 stars,
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,"
And to the barge they came. There those three queens
Put forth their hands, and took the king and wept.
But she that rose the tallest of them all
And fairest, laid his head in her lap,
And loosed the shatter'd casque, and chafed his hands
And call'd him by his name, complaining loud....