PRAISE TO THE HEROES !
ELEGIACS IN QUANTITY.
(Nove.—Syllables on which the accent falls have been treated as long, without regard to Greek or Latin authority, as, e.g., dragon, comet. This is inevitable. If the Latin quantity were to be considered," depths of a gloomy cavern" would be as good for the second half of a pentameter as "depths of a gloomy recess," whereas it is obviously intolerable. There are no elisions. On the other hand the rule of position has been strictly observed, and no diphthongs are shortened, as in Tennyson's " Barbarous experiment, barbarous hexameters."]
PRAISE to the heroes! Praise to the great-sonled children of Albin!
Since her story began, glory of age upon age ; Arthur, dimly beheld, thro' the time mist mightily looming, King whose dragon crest flames as a comet afar; Alfred, of Odin's sons best, wisest, Viking-hammer, Ruler, mighty in arms, lawgiver, author of arts ; Harold, Godwin's son, who, ne'er forgotten of England, Rests by the Channel's roar, guard of a country beloved. Praise to the seaman band that took with a dauntless welcome Blasts from an ice-bound Pole, storms of a tropical heaven Praise to the bowmen stout, from whose broad sinewy shoulders, Drawn to the head, leapt forth, thick as a shower of hail Drives in a wild north wind, the resistless ell-long arrows, Bearing, winged with doom, death to an enemy's heart !
Track ye the Sun's highway to the furthest border of Ocean, Go from secular ice down to the fiery Line,
Where is a land but bows to the Briton's fury of onset? Where is a sea but rolls stained by the blood of his heart?
A. J. C.
Previous page
