down
  Look’d up for heaven, and only saw the mist;
  And shouts of heathen and the traitor knights,
  Sweat, writhings, anguish, laboring of the lungs
  In that close mist, and cryings for the light,
  Moans of the dying, and voices of the dead.

[Footnote 3:  Can you tell from this on about what day Arthur fought this last battle?]

  Last, as by some one deathbed after wail
  Of suffering, silence follows, or thro’ death
  Or deathlike swoon, thus over all that shore,
  Save for some whisper of the seething seas,
  A dead hush fell; but when the dolorous day
  Grew drearier toward twilight falling, came
  A bitter wind, clear from the North, and blew
  The mist aside, and with that wind the tide
  Rose, and the pale King glanced across the field
  Of battle:  but no man was moving there;
  Nor any cry of Christian heard thereon,
  Nor yet of heathen; only the wan wave
  Brake in among dead faces, to and fro
  Swaying the helpless hands, and up and down
  Tumbling the hollow helmets of the fallen,
  And shiver’d brands that once had fought with Rome,
  And rolling far along the gloomy shores
  The voice of days of old and days to be.

  Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere,
  And whiter than the mist that all day long
  Had held the field of battle was the King: 

  “Hearest thou this great voice that shakes the world,
  And wastes the narrow realm whereon we move,
  And beats upon the faces of the dead,
  My dead, as tho’ they had not died for me?—­
  O Bedivere, for on my heart hath fall’n
  Confusion, till I know not what I am,
  Nor whence I am, nor whether I be King. 
  Behold, I seem but King among the dead.”

  Then spake the bold Sir Bedivere:  “My King,
  King everywhere! and so the dead have kings,
  There also will I worship thee as King. 
  Yet still thy life is whole, and still I live
  Who love thee; but who hates thee, he that brought
  The heathen back among us, yonder stands,
  Modred, unharm’d, the traitor of thine house.”

  Then spake the King:  “My house hath been my doom. 
  But call not thou this traitor of my house
  Who hath but dwelt beneath one roof with me. 
  My house are rather they who sware my vows,
  Yea, even while they break them, own’d me King. 
  And well for thee, saying in my dark hour,
  When all the purport of my throne hath failed,
  That quick or dead thou holdest me for King. 
  King am I, whatsoever be their cry;
  And one last act of kinghood shalt thou see
  Yet, ere I pass.”  And uttering this the King
  Made at the man:  then Modred smote his liege
  Hard on that helm which many a heathen sword
  Had beaten thin; while Arthur at one blow,
  Striking the last stroke with Excalibur,
  Slew him, and all but slain himself, he fell.