That story which the bold Sir Bedivere,
   First made and latest left of all the knights,
   Told, when the man was no more than a voice
   In the white winter of his age, to those
   With whom he dwelt, new faces, other minds.

   For on their march to westward, Bedivere,
   Who slowly paced among the slumbering host,
   Heard in his tent the moanings of the King:

   'I found Him in the shining of the stars,
   I marked Him in the flowering of His fields,
   But in His ways with men I find Him not.
   I waged His wars, and now I pass and die.
   O me! for why is all around us here
   As if some lesser god had made the world,
   But had not force to shape it as he would,
   Till the High God behold it from beyond,
   And enter it, and make it beautiful?
   Or else as if the world were wholly fair,
   But that these eyes of men are dense and dim,
   And have not power to see it as it is:
   Perchance, because we see not to the close;—
   For I, being simple, thought to work His will,
   And have but stricken with the sword in vain;
   And all whereon I leaned in wife and friend
   Is traitor to my peace, and all my realm
   Reels back into the beast, and is no more.
   My God, thou hast forgotten me in my death;
   Nay—God my Christ—I pass but shall not die.'

   Then, ere that last weird battle in the west,
   There came on Arthur sleeping, Gawain killed
   In Lancelot's war, the ghost of Gawain blown
   Along a wandering wind, and past his ear
   Went shrilling, 'Hollow, hollow all delight!
   Hail, King! tomorrow thou shalt pass away.
   Farewell! there is an isle of rest for thee.
   And I am blown along a wandering wind,
   And hollow, hollow, hollow all delight.'
   And fainter onward, like wild birds that change
   Their season in the night and wail their way
   From cloud to cloud, down the long wind the dream
   Shrilled; but in going mingled with dim cries
   Far in the moonlit haze among the hills,
   As of some lonely city sacked by night,
   When all is lost, and wife and child with wail
   Pass to new lords; and Arthur woke and called,
   'Who spake? A dream. O light upon the wind,
   Thine, Gawain, was the voice—are these dim cries
   Thine? or doth all that haunts the waste and wild
   Mourn, knowing it will go along with me?'