Study notes for BEGC-133 Block 4 Unit 3. Covers the full text of the poem followed by a section-by-section plot flow diagram and detailed line analysis: Lines 1–38 (setting after battle, all Knights dead, Arthur's command to throw Excalibur into the lake, remembering how the sword came from the Lady of the Lake, key quote on loss of Camelot's fellowship); Lines 39–65 (Bedivere's first attempt — dazzled by jewels of the hilt, hiding the sword in the water-flags, the lie about ripple and water); Lines 66–82 (Arthur detecting the lie, "Thou hast betray'd thy nature and thy name," charging Bedivere again); Lines 83–113 (second attempt — Bedivere's rationalisations that the King is sick, that the sword should be preserved for future generations, hiding it again, second lie); Lines 114–135 (Arthur's anger: "Ah, miserable and unkind, untrue, unknightly, traitor-hearted," the threat to slay him); Lines 136–150 (third attempt — Bedivere closes his eyes, flings Excalibur, the arm in white samite rising from the lake, catching and brandishing three times, drawing it under); Lines 151–206 (Arthur asks to be carried to the lake, the agonising rocky journey with harsh sound imagery, the dark funeral-scarf barge and three gold-crowned Queens, the cry like a wind in a waste land); Lines 207–241 (Arthur placed on barge, the tallest Queen weeps over him, he lies like a shatter'd column, Bedivere's lament "the true old times are dead"); Lines 242–275 ("The old order changeth, yielding place to new," prayer speech "more things are wrought by prayer," farewell to Avilion, barge sailing to black dot against dawn); detailed analysis sections on language and tone (archaic diction spake thou thee hast), imagery (Excalibur's diamond sparks topaz jacinth work, harsh cliff sounds, peaceful Avilion), the Bedivere test as moral heart, allegorical significance for Victorian society; and all 3 unit-end questions with full answers. Free PDF download.
Tennyson's "Morte d'Arthur" is a 275-line narrative poem written in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter). It is drawn from Thomas Malory's medieval prose work Le Morte d'Arthur (1485) — specifically the final chapters dealing with Arthur's death. Tennyson uses archaic language ("spake," "thou," "hast") to give it the feel of ancient legend, while the emotions are deeply Victorian.
The poem opens in the aftermath of battle. King Arthur's entire Round Table has been destroyed. Sir Bedivere — the last surviving knight — carries the mortally wounded Arthur to a ruined chapel beside a lake. The scene is bleak: winter sea, moonlight, ancient tombs.
Arthur speaks to Bedivere. He mourns the loss of Camelot — there will never be another fellowship of such knights; the golden age is over. He says he is so deeply wounded he may not survive till morning. He commands Bedivere to take his sword Excalibur and throw it into the middle of the lake, then watch carefully and bring back a report of what he sees.
Bedivere obediently goes through a moonlit graveyard to the lake. He draws out Excalibur — and is immediately dazzled by its beauty. The hilt sparkles with diamonds, topazes and jacinth-work. He cannot bring himself to throw it in; it seems a terrible waste of something so precious. He hides the sword in the water-flags (reeds) and returns to Arthur with a lie: "I heard the ripple washing in the reeds."
Arthur immediately knows he is lying. Had the sword been thrown, a miraculous sign would have followed — a hand or voice or movement of the water. He charges Bedivere to go again.
Bedivere goes again and once more cannot throw the sword. He rationalises his disobedience: the sword is too precious to be lost forever; future generations should be able to see it; an old man could tell the story of how it was made for nine years by "the lonely maiden of the Lake." Furthermore, he argues, the sick King "knows not what he does." He hides the sword a second time and returns with another lie. Arthur, "much in wrath," calls him "miserable and unkind, untrue, unknightly, traitor-hearted" and threatens that if he fails a third time, Arthur will rise and slay him with his own hands.
Threatened and ashamed, Bedivere runs to the lake, closes his eyes to avoid being tempted by the jewels' beauty, and hurls the sword into the water. Excalibur flashes and whirls "like a streamer of the northern morn" — like the Northern Lights — before falling. And then: an arm clothed in white samite (silk) rises from the water, catches the sword, brandishes it three times, and draws it under. Bedivere returns to report this miracle.
Arthur asks Bedivere to carry him to the margin of the lake before he dies. Bedivere lifts Arthur gently — the King panting in pain, urging speed — and carries him along an agonising rocky path. Tennyson uses harsh sounds to convey the difficulty of the journey:
At the lake they see a dark barge — "dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern" — filled with stately forms in black robes and three Queens wearing gold crowns. A cry of lamentation rises from them "like a wind that shrills / All night in a waste land."
The three Queens take Arthur onto the barge. The tallest places his head in her lap, loosens his helmet, and weeps over him. He lies "like a shatter'd column" — noble and broken at once. Bedivere cries out in anguish:
From the barge, Arthur answers Bedivere with the most famous lines in the poem:
Arthur urges Bedivere to pray: "More things are wrought by prayer / Than this world dreams of." He describes where he is going — the island of Avilion, a paradise where no wind or rain or snow falls, where deep meadows and summer sea will heal his grievous wound. The barge moves away, the wailing of the Queens fades, until the hull is a single black dot against the dawn.
Tennyson uses archaic diction ("spake," "thou," "thee," "hast," "nigh," "samite") to place the poem firmly in the medieval world. This is deliberate: the ancient language gives the poem a sense of antiquity and reverence. At the same time, the emotions — grief, loyalty tested, the fear of loss — are entirely human and modern.
The tone shifts as the poem progresses. It begins in grief and exhaustion; passes through frustration and anger (Arthur rebuking Bedivere); moves through the painful, icy journey to the lake; and ends in calm acceptance. Arthur's last speech has a serene, valedictory tone — like a benediction.
The poem is rich in visual, auditory and tactile imagery. The moonlight on Excalibur's jewels ("diamond sparks, myriads of topaz-lights, and jacinth-work") makes the sword almost impossibly beautiful — which is exactly why Bedivere cannot let it go. The journey to the lake is all harsh sounds: clinging, clanging, scraping rock. The barge is dark and silent, the Queens like a dream, their cry like a wind across a waste land. Avilion, by contrast, is soft, warm and full of light: "deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard-lawns / And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea."
Bedivere's three-times-attempted obedience is the moral heart of the poem. His failure twice is entirely human: the sword is too beautiful, too historically precious, too laden with meaning to be simply thrown away. He tells himself the King is sick and does not know what he is doing. His rationalisation is one of the poem's most psychologically acute passages. But Arthur is right: disobedience — however well-intentioned — is a form of betrayal. Bedivere's eventual obedience, achieved by the desperate act of closing his eyes to the temptation, is his victory over himself. It is the poem's central moral lesson: true loyalty requires obedience even when it costs you something dear.
Tennyson, as Poet Laureate, used the poem to make a larger point about the Victorian age. King Arthur embodies the highest ideals of kingship and manhood — he is "ideal manhood closed in real man." His court of the Round Table is a democratic institution of honour and chivalry. The poem transposes this ideal onto Victoria's reign: as Arthur once inspired his knights to noble deeds, so the story of Arthur, retold by Tennyson, should inspire the Victorians to hold to their own highest ideals of honour, loyalty and faith.
Arthur's last words — "The old order changeth, yielding place to new" — are Tennyson's philosophical response to the Victorian Conflict: the passing of unquestioning religious faith, the arrival of science, the end of the old rural England. Change is inevitable; but "God fulfils Himself in many ways." The poem ends not with despair but with serene faith.
| Word/phrase | Simple meaning |
|---|---|
| Samite | A heavy, rich silk fabric from the medieval period — here worn by the mysterious arm rising from the lake. |
| Mere | A lake or pond — in the poem, the lake where Excalibur must be returned. |
| Chancel | The space around the altar of a church — a ruined chancel here suggests the collapse of the old order. |
| Hilt | The handle of a sword — the jewelled hilt of Excalibur is what tempts Bedivere. |
| Fealty | The duty of loyalty owed by a knight to his lord — Bedivere's fealty is what he violates when he lies. |
| Avilion / Avalon | The mystical island paradise where Arthur is taken to be healed — a place of eternal peace and summer. |
| Cuisse / Greave | Pieces of armour covering the thighs (cuisses) and lower legs (greaves). |
| Blank verse | Unrhymed verse in iambic pentameter — ten syllables per line with a natural rising stress pattern. |
| Nigh | Near (archaic). |
All three unit-end questions, answered in clear and simple language for your exam.
The Round Table is one of the most famous symbols of the Arthurian legend and plays a central role in Tennyson's poem. It is Arthur's great creation — a circular table at which he and his twelve chosen knights are seated.
The key significance lies in its shape. Because it is round, it has no head — no position that is higher or more honoured than any other. This means that Arthur, the king, sits as the "first among equals" — he is first, but no more than that. His knights are his equals in honour and status. This is a remarkable democratic ideal for a medieval monarchy: the king voluntarily shares his authority with those who serve him.
The Round Table is compared to the table of the Last Supper of Jesus Christ. One seat at that table was left empty to symbolise Judas, the apostle who betrayed Jesus. There is a direct parallel in Arthur's court: Lancelot, the greatest of his twelve knights, betrays Arthur just as Judas betrayed Jesus. The empty seat at the Round Table also symbolises the potential for betrayal that is always present in any fellowship.
The Table came to symbolise the entire code of chivalry — the medieval ideal of the knight as brave, loyal, courteous, and protective of the weak. The Knight of the Round Table was not just a fighter but a moral exemplar. His identity was both individual (his personal honour and deeds) and collective (he belonged to the fellowship).
In Tennyson's poem, Bedivere mourns the dissolution of the Round Table as the loss of an entire civilisation: "the whole Round Table is dissolved / Which was an image of the mighty world." The Round Table was not just a piece of furniture — it was a symbol of the highest ideal of human governance that Arthur had achieved, and which the betrayal of Guinevere and Lancelot, and then Mordred's treachery, had destroyed.
These lines — "The old order changeth, yielding place to new, / And God fulfils Himself in many ways, / Lest one good custom should corrupt the world" — are the emotional and philosophical heart of the poem. They are personally significant for Tennyson on three interconnected levels.
The death of Hallam. The poem is Tennyson's veiled elegy for his friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who died suddenly in 1833 at just twenty-two. King Arthur's death represents Hallam's death; Bedivere's desolation represents Tennyson's own grief. The "old order" that has changed is the world as it existed when Hallam was alive — a world of intellectual companionship, shared ambition, and deep friendship. The "new order" is the world without him. Arthur's words are the answer Tennyson found to his own grief: change is inevitable, and God is at work even in it. Accepting change is not defeat — it is the beginning of a new life.
The Victorian Conflict. Tennyson lived in an age when the old order of unquestioning religious faith was being challenged by Darwin's science, by industrialisation, and by growing doubt. The passing of the old certainties was as painful to his contemporaries as the passing of Camelot is to Bedivere. Arthur's words offer the Victorian answer: God still fulfils Himself in many ways, even through change and loss. The new order is not godless; it is simply different. Faith and prayer remain powerful: "More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of."
Tennyson's poetic career. Hallam's death occurred at the very beginning of Tennyson's writing life. The grief was so paralysing that he thought of abandoning his Arthurian project. Arthur's words — "but let what will be, be" — are, at a biographical level, Tennyson's own courage in choosing to continue writing despite everything. The poem marks his return from despair to creative life. Just as Arthur moves forward to Avilion, Tennyson moved forward to In Memoriam, to the laureateship, and to the completion of the Idylls of the King.
An allegory is a text in which the surface narrative carries a deeper symbolic meaning. Tennyson's "Morte d'Arthur" operates as an allegory on several levels — personal, national, and philosophical — and all of them are deeply connected to the Victorian age.
Arthur as the ideal Victorian king. Tennyson presents Arthur as "ideal manhood closed in real man" — someone who embodies all the highest values the Victorians admired: justice, loyalty, self-discipline, courage, and spiritual aspiration. Arthur is explicitly modelled on Queen Victoria's consort Prince Albert, and the poem was meant to honour the royal couple by elevating them to the level of Arthurian legend. By making Arthur the embodiment of the ideal, Tennyson was encouraging the Victorians to measure themselves against that ideal and aspire toward it.
The Round Table as democratic monarchy. Arthur's Round Table — where the king sits as "first among equals" — embodies the Victorian ideal of Constitutional Monarchy: a monarch who governs with the consent of and in partnership with his subjects. The Victorians valued this democratic ideal deeply, and the allegory made it vivid through a beloved ancient myth.
The death of Arthur as the passing of an ideal age. Victorians, looking around at the industrial revolution, the breakdown of class structures, and the growing doubt about religion, often felt they were living through the end of something. Arthur's death allegorises this feeling — the passing of a more heroic, more chivalric, more faithful world. But the allegory is not simply pessimistic: Arthur does not die permanently. He is taken to Avilion to be healed and will return. This suggests that ideals, though temporarily defeated, are immortal.
Loyalty and faith as Victorian values. The moral drama of Bedivere's loyalty is an allegory of the Victorian's duty to their monarch and nation. Bedivere must obey even when it costs him something precious — just as the Victorian must maintain loyalty and faith even when science and progress threaten to make them seem obsolete. Arthur's final message — "More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of" — is Tennyson's direct exhortation to his Victorian readers to hold on to spiritual values in an age of material progress.
End of Unit 3 · Continue with Unit 4: "Morte d'Arthur" — Themes and Symbols
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