"

Note the figure of speech (simile), beginning with the word
_like_.

2. The description of the last, dim, weird battle in the west,
beginning at the bottom of page 240 with the line "A death-white
mist slept over land and sea," is one of the most stirring things
in the poem, and deserves particularly close reading. The
pictures are crowded, the figures vivid, the phrases full of
force.

3. Tennyson has used his highest art in the composition, and makes
the sound of his lines imitate in no feeble way the noise of
battle. For instance:

"Shocks, and the splintering spear, the hard mail hewn,
Shield-breakings, and the clash of brands, the crash
Of battle-axes on shatter'd helms, and shrieks
After the Christ, of those who falling down
Look'd up for heaven, and only saw the mist."

4. The brilliancy of description corresponds well with the
glittering marvel of Excalibur:

"For all the haft twinkled with diamond sparks,
Myriads of topaz-lights, and jacinth-work
Of subtlest jewelry."

".....the wonder of the hilt,
How curiously and strangely chased,"

"The great brand
Made lightnings in the splendor of the moon,
And flashing round and round, and whirl'd in an arch,
Shot like a streamer of the northern morn,
Seen where the moving isles of winter shock
By night, with noises of the Northern Sea."

5. King Arthur, as he lay in the barge with his weary head upon the
lap of the fairest and tallest of the three queens, is described
as follows:

"a brow
Striped with dark blood: for all his face was white
And colorless, and like the wither'd moon
Smote by the fresh beam of the springing east;
And all his greaves and cuisses dash'd with drops
Of onset; and the light and lustrous curls--
That made his forehead like a rising sun
High from the dais-throne--were parch'd with dust,
Or, clotted into points and hanging loose,
Mix'd with the knightly growth that fringed his lips.
So like a shatter'd column lay the king;
Not like that Arthur, who, with lance in rest,
From spur to plume a star of tournament,
Shot thro' the lists at Camelot, and charged
Before