But the other swiftly strode from ridge to ridge,
  Clothed, with his breath, and looking, as he walk’d,
  Larger than human on the frozen hills. 
  He heard the deep behind him, and a cry
  Before.  His own thought drove him like a goad. 
  Dry clash’d his harness in the icy caves
  And barren chasms, and all to left and right
  The bare black cliff clang’d round him, as he based
  His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang
  Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels—­
  And on a sudden, lo! the level lake,
  And the long glories of the winter moon.[7]

[Footnote 7:  This sentence is a striking example of Tennyson’s ability to make the sound of a passage help in conveying the sense.  The harsh e and short a sounds in the earlier part are intended to imitate the clash of armor and the ring of “armed heels” on the rock; while the smooth l and o sounds in the last two lines bring to us the quiet and peacefulness of the scene upon which Bedivere came forth.]

  Then saw they how there hove a dusky barge,
  Dark as a funeral scarf from stem 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.” 
  So 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 upon her lap,
  And loosed the shatter’d casque, and chafed his hands,
  And call’d him by his name, complaining loud,
  And dropping bitter tears against a brow
  Striped with dark blood:  for all his face was white
  And colorless, and like the wither’d moon
  Smote by the fresh beam of the springing east;
  And all his greaves and cuisses dash’d with drops
  Of onset; and the light and lustrous curls—­
  That made his forehead like a rising sun
  High from the dais-throne—­were parch’d with dust,
  Or, clotted into points and hanging loose,
  Mix’d with the knightly growth that fringed his lips. 
  So like a shatter’d column lay the King;
  Not like that Arthur who, with lance in rest,
  From spur to plume a star of tournament,
  Shot thro’ the lists at Camelot, and charged
  Before the eyes of ladies and of kings.

  Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere: 
  “Ah! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go? 
  Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes? 
  For now I see the true old times are dead,
  When every morning brought a noble chance,
  And every chance brought out a noble knight. 
  Such times have been not since the light that led
  The holy Elders[8] with the gift of myrrh.