Tennyson calls his poems the Idylls of the King.  Idyll means a short poem about some simple and beautiful subject. The king that Tennyson sings of is the great King Arthur.

Tennyson wrote many other poems besides the Idylls of the King. Of these we will speak later, just now it is only the Arthur story that we are following.

Tennyson takes his stories, some from The Mabinogion,  some from Malory, some from other books. He has told them in very beautiful English, and it is the English such as we speak to-day. He has smoothed away much that strikes us as rough and coarse in the old stories, and his poems are as different from the old stories as a polished diamond is different from the stone newly brought out of the mine. Yet we miss something of strength and vigor. The Arthur of the Idylls  is not the Arthur of The Mabinogion  nor of Malory. Indeed, Tennyson makes him "almost too good to be true": he is "Ideal manhood closed in real man, rather than that gray king" of old.

And now I will give you part of the last of the Arthur poems, The Passing of Arthur,  so that you may read it along with Layamon's account of the hero's death, and see for yourselves the difference between the two. The Passing of Arthur  is written in blank verse, that is verse which does not rhyme, and which depends like the old English verse on the accent. Yet they are not alike.

Then the King bids Sir Bedivere take his sword Excalibur,

Sir Bedivere takes the sword, and,

But when Sir Bedivere drew Excalibur and saw the jewels of the hilt shine in the wintry moonlight, he could not find it in his heart to cast anything so beautiful and precious from him. So, hiding it among the reeds by the water's edge, he returned to his master.

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, 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.

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

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 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:—

Mournfully from the barge Arthur answered and bade him pray, for "More things are wrought by prayer than the world dreams of," and so he said farewell,

Long stood Sir Bedivere thinking of all that had come and gone, watching the barge as it glided silently away, and listening to the wailing voices,

Sir Bedivere turned then and climbed,

The poem moves along with mournful stately measures, yet it closes, like Layamon's farewell to Arthur, on a note of hope. Layamon recalls Merlin's words, "the which were sooth, that an Arthur should yet come the English to help." The hope of Tennyson is different, not that the old will return, but that the new will take its place, for "the old order changeth yielding place to new, and God fulfils himself in many ways." The old sorrows vanish "into light," and the new sun ever rises bringing in the new year.