Of all the poems I was made to learn at school, few have remained with me as much as Tennyson’s Morte d’Arthur. I cannot help but be moved by the opening lines: “So all day long the noise of battle rolled, among the mountains by the winter sea”.
Lovers of legend will remember how the fatally wounded Arthur instructed his knight 
Sir Bedivere to take the famous sword Excalibur, throw it into the lake and come back and tell Arthur what he saw. The knight was bedazzled by the beauty of the sword and could not bring himself to do as instructed but pretended to the dying king that he had done so and had seen the waters ripple on the lake. The king knew he was lying and ordered him to go again. For a second time the knight could not do as instructed and again told the king that when he had thrown the sword into the water he had heard “the water lapping on the crag and the long ripple washing in the reeds.”
The king was furious and threatened to kill his knight unless he did as he was told and on the third occasion Sir Bedivere flung the sword with all his might out over the waters of the mere. As Excalibur fell towards the water, there “rose an arm, clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, that caught him by the hilt and brandished him three times, and drew him under in the mere.”
