“A Nation known only to the Britons by their continued
“and successful acts of Piracy.”
J. P. Andrews.
THE SAXONS.
A. D. 447.
But hark! what foreign drum on Thanet's isle
Proclaims assistance? 'tis the Saxon band,
By Hengist led, and Horsa;—see, they smile,
And greet their hosts, with false, insidious hand.
Not arms alone they bring, but specious art,
And beauty, too, must aid the plan they lay;
Rowena, form'd to bear a nobler heart,
Can stoop a falling monarch to betray.
Imprudent Vortigern! how much to blame!
What! yield a throne to Woman's asking eye!
Had I been there,—I should have done the same,
But then, the prince was wrong,—and so am I.
Where, spreading far and wide, old Sarum's plain
Presents a prospect, like the boundless main,
The ruins of a once tremendous pile,
Where white-rob'd Druids held their orgies vile,
Yet rise upon the sight;—and here, 'tis said,
Where still repose in heaps, the slaughter'd dead,
Three hundred nobles of our drooping state,
Betray'd by Hengist, met a savage fate.
Stone-Henge yet called,—perhaps, the words impart
The traitor's name, and texture of his heart.
To Vortigern
deposed, his son
in vain
Succeeding fought to stem the Saxon tide;
In Ailsford's desp'rate battle, Horsa slain,
Adds to their names who for ambition died.
Weak Vortigern, restored to pow'rless name,
Yields Hengist all the profit and the fame.
I haste to pass the heart-afflicting page
That tells, in fine, how Saxon wiles prevail'd;
I turn the retrospect from that dark age,
When every manly, patriot, effort fail'd:
When British worth was driven to give place
To fancied friendship, and a foreign race.
The Saxons once well settled, sent, by dozens,
For brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and cousins:
Call'd this the sweetest island under heaven,
And split one little kingdom into seven.
