The Dawn in Britain :: :: University of Virginia Library

Flock to Lug's dune, Gaul's Southern tribes, in arms;
Come, with much foot, in; companies, lo, of horse,
To join them to tall Sénones of the North,
Whose army already arrives. Yet certain days,
The princes mourn, by Rhone, their mother dead.
Polled his long yellow locks, duke Heremod;
And, Britons, three days, taste no cookéd food.

Come the sixth dawn, loud-sounding iron-throat war-horns,
The three kings' hosts remove, with a vast noise.
Wayfaring thence, they march, a month of days:

Till by lake Atax, nigh to blue sea waves,
Arrived; the Gauls and Heremod pitch: and loose
To pasture, forth, their lean wayfaren beasts.

Whilst thus they tarry, out of Aquitaine,
With gore-stained rusty garments rent, come men;
Which plain them of a crude Iberian nation,
Have burned their fields, and people slain with sword.
Like angry bees, the army of Sénones' Gauls
Loud murmurs: tumult then is in their camps.
A fury upon them breathe avenging gods;
So that Gauls, risen from meat, smite shields and shout.
Nor more them might refrain their dukes: they march,
By the moon's lamp; and Gauls, vast woody mount,
Blue Pyrene, see, at dawn, with snowy crest.
But sickness feigns king Belin, in Gauls' camps,
In the next days; and to dig many graves:
Sith, semblant makes of flight. The king's mind is,
From yond hill-forts, entice his enemies.

Sith Brennus, taking part of his light horse,
Departs, by covert night, with Heremod.
By day, they shroud them, in some thicket place.
They steal thus forth: their guides, the third night, lead,
By pools, by quaking moors and alders rough,

Where startle fowl before them, with shrill cries:
And sith, by whispeling canes, much sand and rocks;
Where mighty Pyrene stoops to blue sea waves,
His cragged knees, with much ado, they passed.

Now, this same night, as covenanted was,
Belin made semblant of a burning camp.
Iberians, greedy as hawks, descend in haste,
To ravin, from hill-strengths. But ambush laid
Dunwallon's son, in thicket-valley's paths,
Where the enemies running, headlong, with loud cries,
In glittering harness, swart-skinned multitude;
With sudden sleet of darts, Gauls on them rise.
Then long, in vain, the mountain nation fight;
Gainst Gauls as oaks, till few remain alive.

Their scouts above, which look down from hill paths,
Discern, that burn their fields, left without ward,
Beneath, in wide South March. There Brennus drives
Innumerable prey of great horn-beasts,
And bleating flocks. Ere noon, he measures camp,
By summer brook, two steepy meads divides.
With walls, those cattle then, of dry-heaped stones,
They close: and would they wait there the main army,
Which nighing now with Belin. Each king hath;
Through Britain war-hounds, taught to run by night,

And turn upon the sleuth, from host to host,
Tidings, in these days, of each other's speed:
Being tokens limned and bound on the hounds' necks
With images of war, in birchen rind,
Camps, battles, and who hurt known by their crests;
Preys, burning steads, with days shown of the moon:
And he who sends, by like sign, is made known.
In this wise, word is now received, from Brennus,
The next day early, should that king arrive.

But this night bold Asturians, Cantabers,
Ansigones, assail that wall of Brennus.
Led by voice of their own penned beasts, they creep,
Unshod, o'er rampire of now slumbering Gauls;
And javelins cast, and bitter sleet of shafts,
They shoot, in what part, lodged, sleep valorous Almains.
Those leapt up, from armed slumber, at the fires;
And rushing, now in gloom, with long iron swords,
And twybills, slay forth their first enemies.
Shines out the covert moon, when fierce Iberians,
Now yelling throngs, the cattle-camps invade!
Defends King Brennus, with his flower of Britons,
And Gauls; which bucklers joined above their head
Them shelter make, from hail of sharp sling stones.

Loud shout the dukes. Resounds the lofty night,

With smitten shields, and cries of mortal wights.
Brunt upon brunt, and new and new alarms:
Now Brennus; now, uneath, stout Heremod,
The poise of war sustain. Like sudden wind,
In that, come scour to them of Britain warhounds;
Whereby they know, that Belin's army approach.
Hark a far-sounding of iron-throated warhorns!
Amazed, the battle press of enemies,
Convert their warlike face. Gauls, whom leads Belin,
Have fired yond harvest fields. Before them, goes
Red flame, as billows wide, in wild night wind.
Of feeble corn stalks, is that fearful light;
Whereby yet-shimmering night of stars, is quenched.
Day springs: like to swift storm, comes the trimarch!
With levelled spears, they smite a confused press.
Then shrink, twixt double army of the Gauls,
Iberians. And when now the dawn unfolds,
Is seen that hostile nation of the hills,
Well-nigh consumed; strewn with their carcases,
Strange blackened field and trampled shields and arms!

Being thus the Aquitanian Gauls avenged;
In the next days, divide the island kings,
To them much cattle, and more, to store their farms,
Than ere had crude Iberians from them reaved.

Yet whilst Gauls rest in camps, to cure their wounds,
Marched forth duke Heremod, with light armed and horse;
Which harry and burn, even to far sea's wide coast.
Tiding of good success, Dunwallon's sons
Send to their uncle, royal Correus.
Then Gauls, Spain's plenteous conquered glebe possess;
With cattle and corn and captives of these wars.
Sith autumn come, they eat, to them unwont,
The clustered grapes, which gather in their thralls;
That stive, in mighty fats, and tread the must.

Was then, when those see drunken their new lords,
In their own fields, with new wine; they conspire,
Rise in one night, to kill all Gauls and Almains!
Of whom being some forewarned, of their wife-thralls,
(Which they, not few, have wedded since the war;)
Made angry Gauls sheep-slaughter of their servants:
And everywhere is fear, and watch in arms;
Till time when the sweet Spring renews the year.
Then first those spouses, travailling, unto Gauls,
Bring forth Iberian sons; and founded is,
In this far soil, new Nation of mixed blood.