ABSTRACT
Every great poem springs from some single generative moment that gives rise to all the rest. The generative moment of Idylls o f the King comes at the very end of the poem as we now read it, although the lines are among the first that Tennyson drafted in his elegy to the fallen Arthur. We all recall the scene-if not from Tennyson, then from Malory-as the three Queens receive the wounded king into the barge and Bedivere, bereft of his lord, cries aloud,
"Ah! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go? Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes? For now I see the true old times are d ead ,. . . Such times have been not since the light that led The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh. But now the whole Round Table is dissolved Which was an image of the mighty world, And I, the last, go forth companionless, And the days darken round me, and the years, Among new men, strange faces, other minds."
