The Passing of Arthur: The End of an Era, for Good or Ill?
by Julia Zgurzynski
Victorian poet Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote a series of poems modeled after the stories of King Arthur called the Idylls of the King. In the penultimate poem, “The Passing of Arthur”, Tennyson portrays a more introspective Arthur as he prepares for his death. Arthur’s first and last reflections in the poem are similar in topic, the end of his reign, but differ in tone. First, Arthur laments in his tent, and is deeply disheartened with the corruption of the human race, and the collapse of his life’s work, the Knights of the Round Table.
“I found Him in the shining of the stars,
I mark’d 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.”
The Passing of Arthur, lines 9-13
Thus Arthur believes that God’s goodness is present in nature, but we can tell that God’s goodness is not present in his regard for men, since God is allowing Arthur to die. He notices the way “all my realm/ Reels back into the beast” and concludes that in the absence of his reign the world will descend into barbarism (line 25-26). He is so deeply convinced that his end of his reign is the end of all good things in the world that he begins to question God’s involvement in the world.
After Arthur has fought Modred and been mortally wounded, Sir Bedivere echoes Arthur’s earlier sentiment, saying, “For now I see the true old times are dead” (line 397). Then, Arthur seems to reassess.
“The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world”
The Passing of Arthur, line 407-410
Again, God is central to Arthur’s reflections, but this time he lends more credit to God. First, he surrenders his pride and allows God to fulfill His will in other ways besides the one in which Arthur reigns, and second, says that God is fully in control of the world. “For so the whole round earth is every way/Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.” (lines 22-23).
He is strikingly more optimistic about the future, and even more, he even shows a touch of pessimism about the past. He now says, that the end of an era is not the end of all good things. Rather, it is good that eras end. It is possible that Arthur does not believe the future is indeed so bright, but he says so in order to comfort Bedivere, or because it is easy to be optimistic about a world in which he no longer needs to live. However, it is more likely that the poet is portraying Arthur as honestly believing what he says, and through Arthur, he is expressing his own ideas about avoiding excessive nostalgia. Even though for Tennyson, the medieval legends are worthy material for his poetry, he is not advocating anachronism. Rather, he appreciates the goodness of each successive custom of the world, and points our minds to the unchanging ways of God.
