Sage beneath a spreading oak
Sat the Druid, hoary chief;
Every burning word he spoke
Full of rage, and full of grief:
"Princess! if our aged eyes

Weep upon thy matchless wrongs, 'Tis because resentment ties

All the terrors of our tongues.

"Rome shall perish, I write that word In the blood that she has spilt; Perish hopeless and abhorr'd,

Deep in ruin as in guilt.

"Rome, for empire far renown'd,

Tramples on a thousand states; Soon her pride shall kiss the ground, Hark! the Gaul is at her gates.

"Other Romans shall arise,

Heedless of a soldier's name;

Sounds, not arms, shall win the prize;

Harmony the path to fame.

"Then the progeny that springs From the forests of our land, Arm'd with thunder, clad with wings, Shall a wider world command.

"Regions Cæsar never knew

Thy posterity shall sway; Where his eagles never flew, None invincible as they."

Such the bard's prophetic words,
Pregnant with celestial fire,
Bending as he swept the chords
Of his sweet but awful lyre.

She, with all a monarch's pride,
Felt them in her bosom glow,
Rush'd to battle, fought and died;
Dying, hurl'd them at the foe.

66

'Ruffians, pitiless as proud,

Heaven awards the vengeance due;

Empire is on us bestowed,

Shame and ruin wait for you!"

THE PASSING OF ARTHUR

LORD TENNYSON

THE Roman troops were withdrawn from Britain in 410. Forty years later the unhappy land was invaded by barbarians from oversea, — Jutes, Angles, and Saxons. The Britons were demoralized by centuries of subjection, and could make but feeble resistance. Led by Ambrosius Aurelian, a Briton who had learned generalship from the Romans, they rallied to the defence of the south country. He, or, as some authorities hold, his nephew, Uther Pendragon, is the King Arthur about whose valor and brave deeds so many marvellous stories have been told. Twelve great battles were fought and won in the long struggle against the Saxons. The crowning victory of Mount Badon (520) checked the progress of the invasion. A peace was agreed upon that might have lasted for many years but for the treachery of Modred, King Arthur's nephew, who rebelled against his rule and called in the assistance of the pagan foe. The last great battle against the traitor and his allies was fought at Camlan in Cornwall. There Arthur was fatally wounded, and the British resistance was broken.

Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere: "Far other is this battle in the west

Whereto we move, than when we strove in youth,
And thrust the heathen from the Roman wall,
And shook him thro' the north. Ill doom is mine
To war against my people and my knights.
The king who fights his people fights himself.
And they my knights, who loved me once, the stroke
That strikes them dead is as my death to me.
Yet let us hence, and find or feel a way
Thro' this blind haze, which ever since I saw
One lying in the dust at Almesbury,

Hath folded in the passes of the world."

Then rose the King and moved his host by night, And ever push'd Sir Modred, league by league, Back to the sunset bound of Lyonesse

A land of old upheaven from the abyss
By fire, to sink into the abyss again;
Where fragments of forgotten peoples dwelt,
And the long mountains ended in a coast
Of ever-shifting sand, and far away
The phantom circle of a moaning sea.
There the pursuer could pursue no more,

And he that fled no further fly the King;

And there, that day when the great light of heaven Burn'd at his lowest in the rolling year,

On the waste sand by the waste sea they closed.

Nor ever yet had Arthur fought a fight

Like this last, dim, weird battle of the west.

A deathwhite mist slept over sand and sea :
Whereof the chill to him who breathed it, drew
Down with his blood, till all his heart was cold
With formless fear; and ev'n on Arthur fell
Confusion, since he saw not whom he fought,
For friend and foe were shadows in the mist,
And friend slew friend not knowing whom he slew:
And some had visions out of golden youth,
And some beheld the faces of old ghosts
Look in upon the battle; and in the mist

Was many a noble deed, many a base,

And chance and craft and strength in single fights,
And ever and anon with host to host

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
Looked up for heaven, and only saw the mist;
And shouts of heathen and the traitor knights,
Oaths, insult, filth, and monstrous blasphemies,
Sweat, writhings, anguish, laboring of the lungs
In that close mist, and cryings for the light,
Moans of the dying, and voices of the dead.

Last, as by some one death-bed after wail
Of suffering, silence follows, or thro' death
Or deathlike swoon, thus over all that shore,
Save for some whisper of the seething seas,
A dead hush fell; but when the dolorous day
Grew drearier toward twilight falling, came

A bitter wind, clear from the North, and blew
The mist aside, and with that wind the tide
Rose, and the pale king glanced across the field
Of battle: but no man was moving there;
Nor any cry of Christian heard thereon,
Nor yet of heathen; only the wan wave
Brake in among dead faces, to and fro
Swaying the helpless hands, and up and down.
Tumbling the hollow helmets of the fallen,
And shiver'd brands that once had fought with Rome,
And rolling far along the gloomy shores

The voice of days of old and days to be.

Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere, And whiter than the mist that all day long Had held the field of battle was the King:

"Hearest thou this great voice that shakes the world, And wastes the narrow realm whereon we move, And beats upon the faces of the dead, My dead, as tho' they had not died for me? O Bedivere, for on my heart hath fall'n Confusion, till I know not what I am, Nor whence I am, nor whether I be king. Behold, I seem but king among the dead."

Then spake the bold Sir Bedivere: "My King, King everywhere! and so the dead have kings,

There also will I worship thee as king.

Yet still thy life is whole, and still I live

Who love thee: but who hates thee, he that brought