hearts!' Sudden aloud he cried,
'Plant here the royal Standard, friends, and hence
Let sound the royal trumpet.'
Stern response
Reached him ere long: not Mercia's realm alone;
Cambria that heard the challenge joined the war:
Cambria, upon whose heart the ancestral woe,
For ever with the years, like letters graved
On growing pines, grew larger and more large;--
To Penda forth she stretched a hand blood-red;
Christian with Pagan joined, an unblest bond,
A league accursed. The indomitable hate
Compelled that league. Still from his cave the Seer
Admonished, 'Set the foe against the foe;
Slay last the conqueror!' and from rock and hill
The Bard cried, 'Vengeance!' In the bardic clan
That hatred of their country's ancient bane
Lived like a faith. One night it chanced a tarn,
Secreted high 'mid cold and moonless hills,
Bursting its bank down burst. That valley's Bard
Clomb to the church-roof from his buried house:
Thence rang his song,--'twas 'Vengeance!--Vengeance' still!
That torrent reached the roof: he clomb the tower:
The torrent mounted: on the bleak hill-side
All night the dalesmen, wailing o'er their drowned,
Amid the roar of winds and downward rocks,
Still heard that war-song, 'Vengeance! Blood for blood!'
At last the tower fell flat, and winter morn
Shone on the waters only.
Three short weeks
Dinned with alarums passed; in Mercia still
Lay Penda, sickness-struck, when, face to face,
The Cambrian host and Oswald's little band
Exulting met at sunset near a height
Then 'Heaven-Field' named, but later 'Oswald's Field,'
Backed by that Wall the Roman built of old
His fence from sea to sea. There Oswald stood:
There raised with hands outstretched a mighty Cross,
Strong-based, and deep in earth: his comrades twelve
Around it heaped the soil, while priests white-stoled
Chanted 'Vexilla Regis.' Work and rite
Complete, the King knelt down and made his prayer:
'True God Eternal, look upon this Cross,
The sole now standing on Northumbria's breast,
And help Thine own, though few, who trust in Thee!'

That night before his tent the wanderer sate
Listening the circling sentinel, or bay
Of wakeful hound remote, or downward course
Of streams from moorland hills. Before his view