Live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the King—
Else, wherefore born?

The lines read as a compact moral imperative: cultivate personal integrity (“Live pure”), commit to honesty (“speak true”), act justly and repair injustice (“right wrong”), and give loyal allegiance to a higher ideal (“follow the King”). The closing challenge—“Else, wherefore born?”—frames these duties as the very purpose of human life, implying that existence without ethical striving is empty or unjustified. In Tennyson’s idiom, “the King” often signals more than a literal monarch: it can stand for rightful authority, conscience, or a spiritual ideal that organizes one’s conduct. The effect is exhortatory and almost liturgical, compressing a whole code of chivalric/Christian virtue into a few beats.