Made Lud's town with rejoicing fires bright
And Britons strut with courage.

Clo. Come, there's no more tribute to be paid: our kingdom is stronger than it was at that time; and, as I said, there is no more such Cæsars: other of them may have crooked noses; but to owe1 such straight arms, none.

Cym. Son, let your mother end.

Clo. We have yet many among us can gripe as hard as Cassibelan: I do not say I am one; but I have a hand. Why tribute? Why should we pay tribute? If Cæsar can hide the sun from us with a blanket, or put the moon in his pocket, we will pay him tribute for light; else, sir, no more tribute, pray you now.

Cym. You must know

Till the injurious Romans did extort

This tribute from us, we were free: Cæsar's ambition,

Which swell'd so much that it did almost stretch

The sides o' the world, — against all color here
Did put the yoke upon 's; which to shake off
Becomes a warlike people, whom we reckon
Ourselves to be.

Clo.

Cym.

We do.

Say then to Cæsar,

Our ancestor was that Mulmutius which

Ordain'd our laws,

whose use the sword of Cæsar

Hath too much mangled; whose repair and franchise

Shall, by the power we hold, be our good deed,

Though Rome be therefore angry: Mulmutius made our laws,

Who was the first of Britain which did put
His brows within a golden crown, and call'd
Himself a king.

Luc.

I am sorry, Cymbeline,

That I am to pronounce Augustus Cæsar,—
Cæsar, that hath more kings his servants than
Thyself domestic officers, thine enemy:

-

Receive it from me then: War and confusion
In Cæsar's name pronounce I 'gainst thee: look
For fury not to be resisted.

BOADICEA

WILLIAM COWPER

THE Romans proved cruel masters. Under Suetonius (63 A.D.) they took possession of Mona, the sacred island of the Druids, destroyed their temples and massacred the priests. The sacrilege was resented by all the British tribes. The Iceni, led by their warrior queen Boudicca, who, with her daughters, had suffered gross cruelty at the hands of the Roman soldiers, rose in revolt. They were joined by the Trinovantes and other neighboring tribes. Camulodunum, the strong Roman colony in the east, was sacked and the inhabitants put to the sword. Before Suetonius could rally his troops, London and Verulamium were reduced to ashes. Finally an army of ten thousand Roman soldiers was brought against the Britons, and the natives were overwhelmed. The heroic queen took her own life.

When the British warrior queen,
Bleeding from the Roman rods,
Sought, with an indignant mien,
Counsel of her country's gods,

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, 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,

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.

"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.