135

140

145

150

Often an air comes idling by

With news of cities and of men.
I hear a multitudinous sigh,

And lapse into my soul again.
Shall her great noons and sunsets be
Blurred with thine infelicity ?
Now from these veins the strength of old,

The warmth and lust of life depart;
Full of mortality, behold

The cavern that was once my heart !
Me, with blind arm, in season due,
Let the aërial woodman hew.
For not though mightiest mortals fall,

The starry chariot hangs delayed.
His axle is uncooled, nor shall

The thunder of His wheels be stayed.
A changeless pace His coursers keep,
And halt not at the wells of sleep.
The South shall bless, the East shall blight,

The red rose of the Dawn shall blow;
The million-lilied stream of Night

Wide in ethereal meadows flow;
And Autumn mourn; and everything
Dance to the wild pipe of the Spring.
•Who prates to me of arms and kings,

Here in these courts of old repose ?
Thy babble is of transient things,

Broils, and the dust of foolish blows.
Thy sounding annals are at best
The witness of a world's unrest.
With oceans heedless round her feet,

And the indifferent heavens above,
Earth shall the ancient tale repeat

Of wars and tears, and death and love;
And, wise from all the foolish Past,
Shall peradventure hail at last

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160

165 170

The advent of that morn divine

When nations may as forests grow, Wherein the oak hates not the pine,

Nor beeches wish the cedars woe, But all, in their unlikeness, blend Confederate to one golden end

175

Beauty: the vision whereunto,

In joy, with pantings from afar, Through sound and odour, form and hue,

And mind and clay, and worm and starNow touching goal, now backward hurledToils the indomitable world.'

180

W. WATSON.

12. the ruined dream of Spain. See Froude's 'Destruction of the Armada in Ireland 1588,' ch.71 of the History.

16. Cranmer's scorched, uplifted hand. Cranmer recanted his Protestantism six times; but Mary had determined that he should die. At his martyrdom (1556) he thrust his right hand into the fire, as it had 'offended in writing, contrary to his heart'.

20. The sweet queen. Lady Jane Grey, proclaimed Queen by Northumberland, ruled for eleven days and was then sent to the Tower by Mary, where she was executed. “A portrait of piety, purity, and free noble innocence uncoloured’ (Froude).

24. Fotheringay. Where Mary Queen of Scots was executed in 1587.

33. Hesper. Sidney was the “evening star' of the great day of chivalry. The story of his death at Zutphen in 1586 is well known.

36. More. Sir Thomas More (1478–1535), Henry VIII's Chancellor, executed for refusing to take the oath of supremacy. He was the most distinguished of the leaders of the New Learning in England, and the bosom friend of Erasmus.

37. The roystering prince. Prince Hal, afterwards Henry V. 'Madcap Harry's' exploits, as told in Shakespeare's Henry IV, are probably mostly fictitious: at the age of sixteen he was holding a responsible position in the army at the battle of Shrewsbury (1403), and in 1410 presiding at the Council.

47. that dim fane. Westminster Abbey, which has a special side-chapel for Henry V.

49. the mother minster. Canterbury Cathedral. The Black Prince's 'dusky mail' still hangs over his tomb.

57. roughshod to a stained renown, &c. An allusion to Edward I's ruthless treatment of Scotland and Wales, and to his death at Burgh-on-Sands (“Solway strand') in a determined attempt to put down Bruce's rebellion. But his fame rests securely on the wise laws he made, and on the perfecting of the Parliamentary system and constitution during his reign.

64. Pomfret, or Pontefract Castle, in Yorkshire, where probably Richard II was murdered in 1399. 65. him. Henry II.

lightly leaping words. 'What a parcel of fools have I nourished in my house that none of them can be found to avenge me on one upstart clerk.'

67. Eleanor's undaunted son. Richard the Lion Heart, who failed to retake Ascalon, captured by Saladin in 1187, and who is buried in the abbey of Fontevrault.

72. Fontevraud. An abbey near Saumur.

83. the tanner's daughter's son. William the Conqueror was the son of Robert, Duke of Normandy, and Arletta, the daughter of a tanner of Falaise.

93. fair-haired despots. _The Vikings or Northmen. 103. by the Cataracts. This may refer to the end of the Civil War between Pompey and Caesar. Egypt came under the influence of Rome about 90 B.C.

106. Helvetian snow. A reference to Caesar's campaigns in Gaul.

112. O'er Tigris passed. The battle of Carrhae, 53 B.C., ended in the destruction of Crassus's army by the Parthians.

120. Julian. Julian 'the Apostate', Emperor of Rome, died A. D. 363 fighting the Persians.

BOADICEA (A. D. 61)

In A.D. 61 Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni (a tribe inhabiting what is now Norfolk and Suffolk), headed a rising of Britons against the Roman governor Suetonius Paulinus. She captured Colchester, St. Albans, and London, but she was eventually defeated, and to avoid captivity drank poison.

5

ro

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

Šat the Druid, hoary chief;
Ev'ry 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.

15

20

25

Then the progeny that springs

From the forests of our land,
Armd with thunder, clad with wings,

Shall a wider world command.

30

Regions Caesar 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.

35

40

Ruffians, pitiless as proud,

Heav'n awards the vengeance due ;
Empire is on us bestow'd,
Shame and ruin wait for you.

W. CowPER.

2. Roman rods. Boadicea had been publicly flogged by the Romans.

6. Druid. The Druids were the priests of the religion which the Britons practised. They were also the poets, prophets, and judges of the people.

20. the Gaul. Rather, the Goth. The Goths sacked Rome in A.D. 408.

21-2. Other Romans. The sequence of ideas shows that Cowper is thinking of a period subsequent to the discovery of America, when Italy, once_supreme in arms, was become famous only in the arts, and England, now mistress of the seas, was planting colonies in the New World. 44. Shame and ruin. The break-up of the Roman Empire.