Sanico, Jay Anthonie A. World Literature Santos, Joseph Gapayo, Dominic Doarte Avila, John Glenn the passing of arthur from

The Analysis


The Passing of Arthur is a poem that is narrative in type. Narrative poems are usually long and they depict a certain story. Alfred Tennyson’s The Idylls of the King is an entire collection of poems which centers on the Arthurian Legend.

The poem contains rich imagery and descriptive passages in portraying the scenes in the poem. Examples of such are descriptions of the final battle scene, the Excalibur as wells as the Three Queens and their wailings for the King. It is also rich in other figures of speech such onomatopoeia and metaphors.

The poem is written in an iambic pentameter; Iambic pentameter is the name given to a line of verse that consists of five iambs (an iamb being one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed, such as "before"). It has been a fundamental building block of poetry in English, used in many poems by many poets from the English Renaissance to the present day. The Passing of Arthur is iambic in blank verse, that is, they are written in continuous lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter. It also adopts a third-person omniscient point of view; this is evident in the manner Sir Bedivere’s account of the event unfolded in the narrative poem.

The central thought of the poem reverberates the words of St. Ignatius of Loyola, “Sic transit gloria mundi” which translate in English as “So passes the glory of the world.” This line captures the very essence of the narrative poem, that is, the temporariness of everything in this world. The battle of Camlann came to an end, the Knights of the Round Table died, the traitor Mordred perished, the Excalibur was thrown into the lake, King Arthur had to leave for Avalon, even Sir Bedivere knew that he would have to go and seek a life of his own – these designate that one cannot always have the all the things in the world for they soon fade and pass.

So passes the glory of the world. Indeed, this line opens to one another reflection aside from the tentativity of the material things and of the worldly affairs – the contemplation of God as the fulfillment, the completeness of all beings. This is what King Arthur bids to Sir Bedivere: to pray for him to God. One may leave this world but it is not without meaning when one knew in himself that one has not clung so much to what is passing, but rather, surrendered one’s life entirely to that which is eternal, to God.