Rome’s gonfanon round him Rome’s majesty cast:
O’er his Bretons Fergant, o’er the hireling squadrons Montgomery lords,
Jerkin’d archers, and mail-clads, and horsemen with pennons and swords:—
   —England, in threefold array,
   Anchor, and hold them at bay,
Firm set in your own wooden walls! and the wave
Of high-crested Frenchmen will break on their grave.

So to the palisade on!  There, Harold and Leofwine and Gyrth
Stand like a triple Thor, true brethren in arms as in birth:
And above the fierce standards strain at their poles as they flare on the gale;

One, the old Dragon of Wessex, and one, a Warrior in mail.
   ‘God Almighty!’ they cry!
   ‘Haro!’ the Northmen reply:—
As when eagles are gather’d and loud o’er the prey,
Shout! for ’tis England the prize of the fray!

And as when two lightning-clouds tilt, between them an arrowy sleet
Hisses and darts; till the challenging thunders are heard, and they meet;
Across fly javelins and serpents of flame: green earth and blue sky
Blurr’d in the blind tornado:—so now the battle goes high.
   Shearing through helmet and limb
   Glaive-steel and battle-axe grim:
As the flash of the reaper in summer’s high wheat,
King Harold mows horseman and horse at his feet.

O vainly the whirlwind of France up the turf to the palisade swept:
Shoulder to shoulder the Englishmen stand, and the shield-wall is kept:—
As, in a summer to be, when England and she yet again
Strove for the sovranty, firm stood our squares, through the pitiless rain
   Death rain’d o’er them all day;
   —Happier, not braver than they
Who on Senlac e’en yet their still garrison keep,
Sleeping a long Marathonian sleep!

‘Madmen, why turn?’ cried the Duke,—for the horsemen recoil from the slope;
‘Behold me!  I live!’—and he lifted the ventayle; ‘before you is hope:
Death, not safety, behind!’—and he spurs to the centre once more,

Lion-like leaps on the standard and Harold: but Gyrth is before!
   ‘Down!  He is down!’ is the shout:
   ‘On with the axes!  Out, Out!’
—He rises again; the mace circles its stroke;
Then falls as the thunderbolt falls on the oak.

—Gyrth is crush’d, and Leofwine is crush’d; yet the shields hold their 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 will see:
   Edith the fair!  It is he!
Clasp him once more, the heroic, the dear!
Harold was England: and Harold lies here.

The hide of the tanyard; See the story of Arlette or Herleva, the tanner’s daughter, mother to William ‘the Bastard.’

At Stamford; At Stamford Bridge, over the Derwent, Harold defeated his brother Tostig and Harold Hardrada, Sep 25, 1066.

Your castle; Harold’s triple palisade upon the hill of battle is so described by the chronicler, Henry of Huntingdon.

Rome’s gonfanon; The consecrated banner, sent to William from Rome.

The fierce standards; These were planted on the spot chosen by the Conqueror for the high-altar of the Abbey of Battle.  The Warrior was Harold’s ‘personal ensign.’

In a summer to be; June 18, 1815.

The ventayle; Used here for the nasale or nose-piece shown in the Bayeux Tapestry.

DEATH IN THE FOREST

August 2: 1100

Where the greenwood is greenest
At gloaming of day,
Where the twelve-antler’d stag
Faces boldest at bay;
Where the solitude deepens,
Till almost you hear
The blood-beat of the heart
As the quarry slips near;
His comrades outridden
With scorn in the race,
The Red King is hallooing
His bounds to the chase.

What though the Wild Hunt
Like a whirlwind of hell
Yestereve ran the forest,
With baying and yell:—
In his cups the Red heathen
Mocks God to the face;
—‘In the devil’s name, shoot;
Tyrrell, ho!—to the chase!’

—Now with worms for his courtiers
He lies in the narrow
Cold couch of the chancel!
—But whence was the arrow?

The dread vision of Serlo
That call’d him to die,
The weird sacrilege terror
Of sleep, have gone by.
The blood of young Richard
Cries on him in vain,
In the heart of the Lindwood
By arbalest slain.
And he plunges alone
In the Serpent-glade gloom,
As one whom the Furies
Hound headlong to doom.

   His sin goes before him,
The lust and the pride;
And the curses of England
Breathe hot at his side.
And the desecrate walls
Of the Evil-wood shrine
Lo, he passes—unheeding
Dark vision and sign:—