“Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere: 
    ’Hast thou perform’d my mission which I gave? 
    What is it thou hast seen? or what hast heard?’
    And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere: 
    ’I heard the ripple washing in the reeds,
    And the wild water lapping on the crag.’”

But King Arthur well knew that Sir Bedivere had not obeyed him.  “This is a shameful thing for men to lie,” he said, and once more sent the knight to do his bidding.

Again Sir Bedivere went, but again he could not make up his mind to cast away the sword.  “The King is sick, and knows not what he does,” he said to himself.  So a second time he hid the sword and returned.

    “Then spake King Arthur, breathing heavily: 
    ‘What is it thou hast seen? or what hast heard?’

    And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere: 
    ’I heard the water lapping on the crag,
    And the long ripple washing in the reeds.’

    To whom replied King Arthur, much in wrath: 
    ’Ah, miserable and unkind, untrue,
    Unknightly, traitor-hearted!  Woe is me! 
    Authority forgets a dying king.’”

Then, sorrowful and abashed before the anger of the dying King, Sir Bedivere turned, and running quickly lest his courage should fail him, he reached the water’s edge and flung the sword far into the lake.

    “But ere he dip the surface, rose an arm
    Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,
    And caught him by the hilt, and brandish’d him
    Three times, and drew him under in the mere.”

Then Sir Bedivere, in wonder, returned to the King, who, when he saw him come, cried:-

    “’Now see I by thine eyes that this is done. 
    Speak out:  what is it thou hast heard, or seen?’”

So Sir Bedivere told the King how truly this time he had cast away the sword, and how an arm “clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,” had caught it and drawn it under the mere.  Then at the King’s bidding Sir Bedivere raised Arthur and bore him to the water’s edge.

    “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 shiver’d to the tingling start,
    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.

    Then, murmur’d Arthur, ‘Place me in the barge.’ 
    So to the barge they came.  There those three Queens
    Put forth their hands, and took the King, and wept.”

Then slowly from the shore the barge moved.  And Sir Bedivere, as he saw his master go, was filled with grief and loneliness, for he only of all the brave King’s knights was left.  And so he cried in mourning:-