Trust Arthur; he was right. Pessimism is no sane mood.
All history conspires to justify his attitude. Himself inspires
optimism in us, and the three queens wait for him, and the black
funeral barge that bears him, not to his funeral, but to some fair city
where there seems one voice, and that a voice of welcome to this king;
and besides all this, his name lights our nights till now, as if he
were some sun, pre-empting night as well as day. Has not his optimism
been justified a hundred-fold? Do those who view the present only,
think to see all the landscape where deeds reap victories? Time is so
essential in the propagandism of good. Time is the foe of evil, but
sworn ally of good. God owns the future.

King Arthur considered life a chance for service. Life is no
abstraction, no theoretical science; rather concrete, experimental.
Magician Merlin's motto, too. We may think _or_ act, though this of
conduct. We may think or act, though this disjunctive is wrong, wholly
wrong. [Transcriber's note: Something seems to have gone wrong with
the typesetting of the previous three sentences. The first sentence
makes no sense, and the second two both start with the same seven
words.] There is no separation between act and thought in a wise
estimate. They are not enemies, but friends. We are to think _and_
act. We are, in a word, not to dream or do, but dream and do, the
dreaming being prelude to the doing. Who dreams not is metallic.
Dreams redeem deeds from being stereotyped, and make motions sinuous
and graceful as a bird's flight across the sky; and when they
impregnate conduct, deed becomes instinct with a melody thrilling and
sweet as a wood-thrush note. Arthur was no mystic. He did not dwell
apart from men; he was a part of men. "The Mystic" is an admirable
conception of the soul, living remote from society and action, seeing
our world as through a smoke. Mysticism has its truth and power. Many
of us bluster and do, and do not stand apart and dwell enough with the
unseen.

"Always there stood before him, night and day,
The imperishable presences serene,
One mighty countenance of perfect calm,"

And

"Angels have talked with him and showed him thrones."

So much in him is needed to a soul hungry to be fortified for danger,
duty, manliness. Despise not a mystic's brooding, but recall that
brooding is not terminal; that he who broods alone has left life
wearying around him as he found it,