He bowed his head.

slow dropped his spear;

The reins slipped through his hand;

And, stained with blood-his stately corse

Lay breathless on the strand.

"O bear me off, (Sir Elmer cried);
Before my painful sight

The combat swims-yet Hengist's vest
I claim as victor's right."

Brave Hengist's fall the Saxons saw,

And all in terror fled;

The bowmen to his castle gates

66

The brave Sir Elmer led.

O, wash my wounds, my sister dear;

O, pull this Saxon dart,

That, whizzing from young Hengist's arm,
Has almost pierced my heart.

“Yet in my hall his vest shall hang;

And Britons yet unborn, Shall with the trophies of to-day

Their solemn feasts adorn."

All trembling, Mey beheld the vest; "O, Merlin!" loud she cried;

"Thy words are true-my slaughtered love

Shall have a breathless bride!

"Oh! Elmer, Elmer, boast no more

That low my Hengist lies!

Oh! Hengist, cruel was thine arm!

My brother bleeds and dies!"

She spake,

the roses left her cheeks,

And life's warm spirit fled:

So, nipt by winter's withering blasts,

The snow-drop bows its head!

Yet parting life one struggle gave,—
She lifts her languid eyes;

Return, my Hengist! oh, return,
My slaughtered love!" she cries.

"Oh-still he lives-he smiles again, With all his grace he moves:

I come

-I come, where bow nor spear

Shall more disturb our loves!"

Was drawn from Elmer's side;

And thrice he called his sister Mey,

And thrice he groaned,

and died!

Where in the dale a moss-grown Cross O'ershades an aged thorn,

Sir Elmer's and young Hengist's corse
Were by the spearmen borne,

And there, all clad in robes of white,
With many a sigh and tear,
The village maids to Hengist's grave
Did Mey's fair body bear.

And there, at dawn and fall of day,

All from the neighbouring groves The turtles wail, in widowed notes, And sing their hapless loves.

THE GRAVE OF KING ARTHUR.

BY THOMAS WARTON.

THE fabled disappearance of King Arthur, has been before treated of; but the particular mention of his removal to a distant island, deserves a further elucidation. This happy spot was called the "Fortunate Island," and the " Island of Apples," and was governed by nine sisters, the chief of whom-Morgen, or Morgana-was eminently skilled in medicine, mathematics, and magic. Taliessin gravely relates King Arthur's voyage to this island, after the ordinary method of human sailing, -"our pilot being Barinthus, to whom were well known the seas, and the stars of heaven." Morgen pronounced that the King might recover, if left for a considerable time to her care and medicaments, which, accordingly, is said to have been done.

These were the Hesperides and "Happy Islands" of the ancients; the receptacle, as was supposed, of happy spirits.* Tasso has placed in them his luxurious bower of the dissolute Armida. To descend, however, to sober fact-they are now known as the Canaries.-ED.

STATELY the feast, and high the cheer,
Girt with many an armed peer,
And canopied with golden pall,
Amid Cilgarran's Castle-hall,

* "The Happy Isles," "The Fortunate," so styled
By the fond lyrists of the antique age.-TASSO.

Sublime, in formidable state

And warlike splendour, Henry * sate;
Prepared to stain the briny flood
Of Shannon's lakes, with rebel blood.

Illumining the vaulted roof,

A thousand torches flamed aloof:
From massy cups, with golden gleam,
Sparkled the Metheglin's stream: †
Το grace the gorgeous festival,
Along the lofty-windowed hall
The storied tapestry was hung;
With minstrelsy the rafters rung,
Of harps, that with reflected light
From the proud gallery glittered bright;
While gifted bards, a rival throng,
(From distant Mona, nurse of song!
From Teivi, fringed with umbrage brown;
From Elvy's vale, and Cader's crown;
From many a shaggy precipice,
That shades Ierne's hoarse abyss,
And many a sunless solitude

Of Radnor's inmost mountains rude),

To crown the banquet's solemn close,
Themes of British glory chose;

* Henry II.-A.D. 1171. On his expedition to suppress a rebellion raised by Roderick, King of Connaught, commonly called O'Conner Dun,-i. e., the Brown Monarch, he is said to have been informed by a Welsh harper, in a song, of the real site of King Arthur's burial-place; till then, generally unknown. After his return, on searching at Glastonbury Abbey, they actually found the royal remains. Cilgarran Castle, where the discovery is supposed to have been made, stands on a rock, above the river Teine, in Pembrokeshire, and was built about the beginning of the Eleventh century, by Roger de Montgomery, who led the van of the Norman army, at the battle of Hastings.-W.

+ Antiquaries mention, also, two other preparations of honey,—oxymel and hydromel; the composition of both of which may, in some measure, be gnessed at from their Greek derivations, οξυ, ύδωρ, and μελι.-ED.

And to the strings of various chime,
Attempered thus the fabling rhyme :

"O'er Cornwall's cliffs the tempest roared,
High the screaming seamew soared;
On Tintaggel's * topmost tower,
Darksome fell the sleety shower;
Round the rough castle shrilly sung
The whirling blast, and wildly flung
On each tall rampart's thundering side,
The surges of the trembling tide:

"When Arthur ranged his red-cross ranks,
On conscious Camlan's crimsoned banks:
By Mordred's faithless guile decreed
Beneath a Saxon spear to bleed!
Yet in vain a Panym foe,

Arm'd with fate the mighty blow;
For when he fell, an elfin queen,
All in secret, and unseen,
O'er the fainting hero threw
The mantle of ambrosial blue;
And bade her spirits bear him far,
In Merlin's agate-axled car,
To her green isle's enamell'd steep,
Far in the navel of the deep.
O'er his wounds she sprinkled dew,
From flowers that in Arabia grew ;
On a rich enchanted bed

She pillowed his majestic head;
O'er his brow with whispers bland,
Thrice she waved an opiate wand;

* Tintagel, 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.