eir
wall:
'Edith alone of my dear ones is left me, and dearest of all!
Edith has said she would seek me to-day when the battle is done;
Her love more precious alone than kingdoms and victory won;
O for the sweetness of home!
O for the kindness to come!'
Then around him again the wild war-dragons roar,
And he drinks the red wine-cup of battle once more.

--'Anyhow from their rampart to lure them, to shatter the bucklers and
wall,
Acting a flight,' in his craft thought William, and sign'd to recall
His left battle:--O countrymen! slow to be roused! roused, always, as
then,
Reckless of life or death, bent only to quit you like men!--
As bolts from the bow-string they go,
Whirl them and hurl them below,
Where the deep foss yawns for the foe in his course,
Piled up and brimming with horseman and horse.

As when October's sun, long caught in a curtain of gray,
With a flood of impatient crimson breaks out, at the dying of day,
And trees and green fields, the hills and the skies, are all steep'd in
the stain;--
So o'er the English one hope flamed forth, one moment,--in vain!
As hail when the corn-fields are deep,
Down the fierce arrow-points sweep:
Now the basnets of France o'er the palisade frown;
The shield-fort is shatter'd; the Dragon is down.

O then there was dashing and dinting of axe and of broad-sword and spear:
Blood crying out to blood: and Hatred that casteth out fear!
Loud where the fight is the loudest, the slaughter-breath hot in the air,
O what a cry was that!--the cry of a nation's despair!
--Hew down the best of the land!
Down them with mace and with brand!
The fell foreign arrow has crash'd to the brain;
England with Harold the Englishman slain!

Yet they fought on for their England! of ineffaceable fame
Worthy, and stood to the death, though the greedy sword, like a flame,
Bit and bit yet again in the solid ranks, and the dead
Heap where they die, and hills of foemen about them are spread:--
--Hew down the heart of the land,
There, to a man, where they stand!
Till night with her blackness uncrimsons the stain,
And the merciful shroud overshadows our slain.

Heroes unburied, unwept!--But a wan gray thing in the night
Like a marsh-wisp flits to and fro through the blood-lake, the steam of
the fight;
Turning the bodies, exploring the features with delicate touch;
Stumbling as one that finds nothing: but now!--as one finding too much:
Love through mid-midnight wi