Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1860 Excerpt: ...fell; "and on the moint Of Badon I myself beheld the King Charge at the head of all his Table Round, And all his legions crying Christ and him, And break them; and I saw him, after, stmd High on a heap of slain, from spur to plune Red as the rising sun with heathen blood And seeing me, with a great voice he cued 'They are broken, they are broken' for the King, However mild he seems at home, nor dies For triumph in our mimic wars, the jousta--For if his own knight cast him down, he laughs Saying, his knights are better men than he--Yet in this heathen war the fire of God Fills him: I never saw his like: there lives No greater leader." While he utter'd this, Low to her own heart said the lily maid "Save your great self, fair lord;" and when he fell From talk of war to traits of pleasantry--Being mirthful he but in a stately kind--She still took note that when the living smile Died from his lips, across him came a cloud Of melancholy severe, from which again, Whenever in her hovering to and fro The lily maid had striven to make him cheer, There brake a sudden-beaming tenderness Of manners and of nature: and she thought That all was nature, all, perchance, for her. And all night long his face before her lived, As when a painter, poring on a face, Divinely thro' all hindrance finds the man Behind it, and so paints him that his face, The shape and colour of a mind and life, Lives for his children, ever at its best And fullest; so the face before her lived, Dark-splendid, speaking in the silence, full Of noble things, and held her from her sleep. Till rathe she rose, half-cheated in the thought She needs must bid farewell to sweet Lavaine. First as in fear, step after step, she stole Down the long tower-stairs, hesitating: Anon, she heard Sir L...
