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Tennyson, Alfred Lord - Morte d'Arthur - Then saw they how there hove a dusky barge
Identifier
000223
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
from Morte d'Arthur
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 shivered 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
…. and the barge with oar and sail
Moved from the brink, like some full breasted swan
That, fluting a wild carol ere her death
Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood
With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere
Revolving many memories, till the hull
Look'd one black dot against the verge of dawn
And on the mere the wailing died away