Bulfinch's Mythology: The Age of Chivalry

story has been elegantly versified by Warton. A popular traditional
belief was long entertained among the Britons that Arthur was not
dead, but had been carried off to be healed of his wounds in
Fairy-land, and that he would reappear to avenge his countrymen, and
reinstate them in the sovereignty of Britain. In Wharton's Ode a
bard relates to King Henry the traditional story of Arthur's death,
and closes with these lines:-

"Yet in vain a paynim foe
Armed with fate the mighty blow;
For when he fell, the Elfin queen,
All in secret and unseen,
O'er the fainting hero threw
Her mantle of ambrosial blue,
And bade her spirits bear him far,
In Merlin's agate-axled car,
To her green isle's enamelled steep,
Far in the navel of the deep.
O'er his wounds she sprinkled dew
From flowers that in Arabia grew.

There he reigns a mighty king,
Thence to Britain shall return,
If right prophetic rolls I learn,
Borne on victory's spreading plume,
His ancient sceptre to resume,
His knightly table to restore,
And brave the tournaments of yore."

After this narration another bard came forward, who recited a
different story:-

"When Arthur bowed his haughty crest,
No princess veiled in azure vest
Snatched him, by Merlin's powerful spell,
In groves of golden bliss to dwell;
But when he fell, with winged speed,
His champions, on a milk-white steed,
From the battle's hurricane
Bore him to Joseph's towered fane,*

In the fair vale of Avalon;
There, with chanted orison
And the long blaze of tapers clear,
The stoled fathers met the bier;
Through the dim aisles, in order dread
Of martial woe, the chief they led,
And deep entombed in holy ground,
Before the altar's solemn bound."

* Glastonbury Abbey, said to be founded by Joseph of Arimathea, in a
spot anciently called the island or valley of Avalonia.
Tennyson, in his Palace of Art, alludes to the legend of Arthur's
rescue by the Fairy queen, thus:-

"Or mythic Uther's deeply wounded son,
In some fair space of sloping greens,
Lay dozing in the vale of Avalon,
And watched by weeping queens."