E:

[Footnote 60: By Samuel Rogers (1763-1855).]

EXPRESSION: Which of these poems do you like best? Give reasons for
your preference. What sentiment is emphasized by all of them? What
other pleasant ideas of life are expressed? What mental pictures
are called up by reading the fourth poem? the fifth? What traits of
character are alluded to in the first poem? the second? Now read
each poem aloud, giving to each line and each stanza the thought
which was in the author's mind when he wrote it.

HOW KING ARTHUR GOT HIS NAME[61]

One day at sunset, Snowbird, the young son of a king, came over the brow
of a hill that stepped forward from a dark company of mountains and
leaned over the shoreless sea which fills the West and drowns the North.
All day he had been wandering alone, his mind heavy with wonder over
many things. He had heard strange tales of late, tales about his heroic
father and the royal clan, and how they were not like other men, but
half divine. He had heard, too, of his own destiny,--that he also was to
be a great king. What was Destiny, he wondered....

Then, as he wondered, he turned over and over in his mind all the names
he could think of that he might choose for his own; for the time was
come for him to put away the name of his childhood and to take on that
by which he should be known among men.

He came over the brow of the hill, and out of the way of the mountain
wind, and, being tired, lay down among the heather and stared across the
gray wilderness of the sea. The sun set, and the invisible throwers of
the nets trailed darkness across the waves and up the wild shores and
over the faces of the cliffs. Stars climbed out of shadowy abysses, and
the great chariots of the constellations rode from the West to the East
and from the North to the South.

His eyes closed, ... but when he opened them again, he saw a great and
kingly figure standing beside him. So great in stature, so splendid in
kingly beauty, was the mysterious one who had so silently joined him,
that he thought this must be one of the gods.

"Do you know me, my son?" said the kingly stranger.

The boy looked at him in awe and wonder, but unrecognizingly.

"Do you not know me, my son?" he heard again ... "for I am your father,
Pendragon. But my home is yonder, and that is why I have come to you as
a vision in a dream ..." and, as he spoke, he pointed to the
constellation of the _Arth_, or