Note 29 — Chapter IX · OF CAMELFORD AND THE LAST BATTLE
Reading edition
It is interesting to compare Tennyson’s lines with Longfellow’s in The Spanish Student, the similarity of phrasing being so marked. Victorian, the student, observes that it is in vain he throws unto oblivion’s sea the sword [of love] that pierces him—
“For like Excalibur, With gemmed and flashing hilt it will not sink. There rises from below a hand that grasps it, And waves it in the air: and wailing voices Are heard along the shore.”