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Updated: August 2, 2024
"My Lord," said Sir Bedivere, "your command shall be obeyed"; and taking the sword, he departed. But as he went on his way, he looked on the sword, how wondrously it was formed and the hilt all studded with precious stones; and, as he looked, he called to mind the marvel by which it had come into the King's keeping.
"Comfort thyself," said the king, "for in me is no further help; for I will to the Isle of Avalon, to heal me of my grievous wound." And as soon as Sir Bedivere had lost sight of the barge, he wept and wailed; then he took the forest, and went all that night, and in the morning he was ware of a chapel and a hermitage.
Even in the impressive scene where Sir Bedivere throws the dying King Arthur's sword into the sea, the language tells the story simply and shows no straining after effect:
Then the King looked about him, and was ware, that of all his host and of all his good knights were left no more alive but two knights, that was Sir Lucan the butler, and his brother Sir Bedivere, and even they were full sore wounded. "Jesu, mercy," said the King, "where are all my noble knights become? Alas that ever I should see this doleful day. Now I am come to mine end.
"Lay me in the barge," said the King. And when Sir Bedivere had laid him there, King Arthur rested his head on the lap of the fairest queen. And they rowed from land. Sir Bedivere, left alone, watched the barge as it drifted out of sight, and then he went sorrowfully on his way, till he reached a hermitage. And he lived there as a hermit for the rest of his life.
When Sir Bedivere approached the shore of the mysterious lake, which lay not far from the spot where Arthur had been wounded, his heart misgave him at throwing away so beautiful and magical a sword. Therefore he hid the sword in the rushes and returned to the dying King, telling him that he had done as was commanded.
And when they were come, the king told them his vision, and what Sir Gawain had told him. Then the king sent Sir Lucan, the butler, and Sir Bedivere, with two bishops, and charged them in any wise to take a treaty for a month and a day with Sir Modred.
No one knows its date or origin, though it is known to be more than four hundred years old, but there appear upon it the names most familiar to those who have read the legends of King Arthur, whether in Tennyson's poems or elsewhere. There are Lancelot and Bedivere, Gawaine and Dagonet, Modred and Gareth, and the rest.
Once again Sir Bedivere returned to the lake and once again he came back to Arthur with a lying tale that he had obeyed the King's commands. Then Arthur in high anger commanded him to deceive a dying man no longer and Sir Bedivere at last went back and threw Excalibur into the lake.
When Tennyson wrote his "Morte d'Arthur," the germ from which all his Arthurian Idylls sprang, and in some respects the finest portion of them, he described how the knight Bedivere carried the wounded Arthur after his last battle "And bore him to a chapel nigh the field, A broken chancel with a broken cross, That stood on a dark strait of barren land.
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