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

Hark women's mourning, in this river-camp!
Now night; and Briton maidens war-bereaved;
(Whom formed had, as the lily flowers, high gods:)
For Morag dead, is their loud wailing voice;
Then, for all battle-slain. Had those even caught,
To-day, themselves up stones, and hurled on Romans!
Bear some ones purple stains of battle-wounds.
Other, in fury, advancing them; by the hairs,
Were haled, and slain, of swart wolf-suckled Romans.

Spread Gorran a bull's hide, for his warlord;
Whereon, now laid him, Caradoc sleeps anon;
For weary is he, with battle; and strong men
Him ward around, with hundred glittering spears.
Unquiet sleeps he, in this moonlight, and dreams.

Him thought he saw, flow, in wide firmament,
Then bloody stream, from altars of his gods,
Of Britons' wounds! He saw, thereat, rife spirits,
From faery hills, (that open lie, to-night!
And therein, dwell, men say, the newly dead;)

And gods descend, drawn of immortal steeds.
Him thought he saw, pale, come from sunless gate,
Of shadows, drive with them, his sire Cunobelin.

Gods held, to Cantion's sea, their course, forthright;
Whom all Red Taran's stormy cart forerides.
War-faring seemed they, in whose divine hands,
Were spears and glaives. And they were like to gods,
Whose imagery of sheen ivory and burned gold,
And marble stone, in temples of great Rome,
And clay, in Gaul's mainland, had Caradoc seen.
Yet, as he gazed, was left the sire Cunobelin,
On a white reeling cliff, looks o'er salt main,
Smitten by hollow, endless, surges round,
Wild daughters of the deep, in triple ranks.

And, to Cunobelin, came a spirit, upheld
The sire, that languished; who sits battle-armed,
And gave a long bright glaive, into his hand;
And cried; The event is hid, O glory of Britain!

Then waked, with sore constraint, Caratacus.
He sweats and shook himself, from sleep, uneath.
So rose, with mind to visit round the watch:
For he beholds yet shine, in heaven's wide steep,
Those plough-beves bright, which draw the wain of Samoth;
Still watching o'er his Isle, with jealous eye.

And, lo, new omen, without thunder sound;
A lightning flame, shot thwart the Summer night!
And, in the same, swift runners out of Kent,
To the warlord, arrive, from Dumnoveros,
With message; Claudius, now, from Gaul's mainland,
Embarked and paved the deep is with his fleet.