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—­ 190
  And on a sudden, lo! the level lake,
  And the long glories of the winter moon.

  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 195
  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 200
  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 205
  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, 210
  And dropping bitter tears against his brow
  Striped with dark blood:  for all his face was white
  And colourless, 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 215
  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. 220
  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. 225

  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, 230
  And every chance brought out a noble knight. 
  Such times have been not since the light that led
  The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh. 
  But now the whole ROUND TABLE is dissolved
  Which was an image of the mighty world; 235
  And I, the last, go forth companionless,
  And the days darken round me, and the years,
  Among new men, strange faces, other minds.’