See Lebanon's aspiring head And quench'd thy lamps that beam'd so bright; For thee, from Britain's distant coast, Lo, Richard leads his faithful host! Aloft in his heroic hand, Blazing, like the beacon's brand, On giant wheels harsh thunders grate. *Kaliburn is the sword of King Arthur; which, as the monkish historians say, came into the possession of Richard the First; and was given by that monarch, in the crusades, to Tancred, King of Sicily, as a royal present of inestimable value, about the year 1190. See Ode, The Grave of King Arthur.' W. Thy necromantic forms in vain With many a demon, pale of hue, Shall wave the badge of Constantine. Ye Barons, to the sun unfold Our Cross with crimson wove and gold!' T. WARTON. A NAVAL ODE. YE mariners of England! That guard our native seas: Whose flag has braved, a thousand years, The battle and the breeze! Your glorious standard launch again To match another foe! And sweep through the deep, While the stormy tempests blow; While the battle rages loud and long, And the stormy tempests blow. The spirits of your fathers Shall start from every wave! For the deck it was their field of fame, And Ocean was their grave: Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell Britannia needs no bulwark, Her march is on the mountain waves, With thunders from her native oak She quells the floods below As they roar on the shore, When the stormy tempests blow; The meteor flag of England Till danger's troubled night depart, And the star of peace return. When the storm has ceased to blow; CAMPBELL. THE GRAVE OF KING ARTHUR. King Henry the Second, having undertaken an expedition into Ireland, to suppress a rebellion raised by Roderick, King of Connaught, commonly called O'Connor Dun, or the brown Monarch of Ireland,' was entertained, in his passage through Wales, with the songs of the Welsh bards. The subject of their poetry was King Arthur, whose history had been so disguised by fabulous inventions that the place of his burial was in general scarcely known or remembered. But in one of these Welsh poems, sung before Henry, it was recited, that King Arthur, after the battle of Camilan, in Cornwall, was interred at Glastonbury Abbey, before the high altar, yet without any external mark or memorial. Afterwards Henry visited the abbey, and commanded the spot described by the bard to be opened: when, digging near twenty feet deep, they found the body, deposited under a large stone, inscribed with Arthur's name. This is the groundwork of the following Ode: but, for the better accommodation of the story to our present purpose, it is told with some slight variations from the Chronicle of Glastonbury. The castle of Cilgarran, where this discovery is supposed to have been made, now a romantic ruin, stands on a rock descending to the river Teivi, in Pembrokeshire; and was built by Roger Montgomery, who led the van of the Normans at Hastings. STATELY the feast, and high the cheer; And warlike splendour, Henry sat; A thousand torches flamed aloof: VOL. III. E W. To grace the gorgeous festival, Of Radnor's inmost mountains rude), When Arthur ranged his red-cross ranks * Tintaggel or Tintadgel Castle, where King Arthur is said to have been born, and to have chiefly resided. Some of its huge fragments still remain, on a rocky peninsular cape, of a prodigious declivity towards the sea, and almost inaccessible from the land side, on the northern coasts of Cornwall. W. |