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

Out of the West, ascends Caratacus.
Men go before him, leaf-crowned to the gods.
The king the wilds of Ordovican nation,
Would fortify; and live there free from Romans!
Shall Kynan follow him, with strong caterfs;
With whom the warlike son of Moelmabon,
Marching with his; and joined to them is Kowain.

Which known, through spies, Ostorius turns aside;
To go unto West parts. Journey then legions
Forth, painfully, by waste hills; and find no paths,

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In coasts, where only salvage wights abode;
Which know not grain, nor any use of bread;
Whose most meat their ewes' milk; and whose wont is,
To wake, all nights, abroad, to ward their folds,
From wolves. Bear sharp stangs, hardened in the fire,
Those in their hands, for spears. Great shock-haired curs,
Run with them: and from wait, like eagles' craigs,
Those salvage wights wont shoot down shafts, on soldiers;
Which them Cyclopes call; that find oft milk,
Great store, in their round-heaped, (like caves,) stone cotes.

Last, when now legions, after travaillous march,
By squalid skrents of stony hills; (where lost
They their most carriage have and steeds; whose hooves,
Sock'd or unshod, so pathless and rough rocks,
Unapt to tread,) come to inhabited
More open ground; the duke Ostorius hears,
Caratacus hath, with ensigns and caterfs,
And bands of oak-leaf crowned, (breathed in whose breasts,
Is fury of battle-god,) before arrived;
And certain hold, now not far-off, besets:

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(Caer Caradoc named, in later age, the place;
Where, in one marriage bed, of the fresh mead,
Bordered with flowering rush and golden flags,
And willow herb and peerless waterlilies,
Flow Colonnuwy and Tifidiog streams.)
This, building stones, repairs Caratacus;
Part with felled trees, and heaped with hasty earth:
For will he here wait onset of the Romans!

Blue warlike Britons, chanting battle-songs,
Sit; and on whin-stones, whet broad glaives and spears.
Other new-tress long wicker shields, or stretch
O'er them new hammered hide; some fret, at fires,
And supple sinewed bows, and twist new strings;
Or fledge their quivers full of long war-shafts.
Then all their warlike breasts stain, with new woad.

Approached, at morrow's eve, Rome's glittering legions;
Now castra mete, from Caradoc, a large league:
And dying, in what hour they halt, the sun,
Seem the wide-kindled heavens as a vast pyre!

Past is long twilight of short Summer night;
When druids, in magic trance, behold their gods;
That sit, on rainbow thrones, the skies above.
Belin, they heard, amongst those blesséd ones,
Far-seeing god, read Clothru and Ethne bind,

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Strife-fiends, abhorring his ambrosial light.
Consenting, gods then send forth, the night wind,
Which Grey is hight, from under cold North stars;
That bitter rime, those hell-hags, sleeping, cast
Round; and wall-up, in glassy tower of frost:
Yet, they ere day, through subtle fraud, 'scaped forth!

Slumber caterfs; but cannot sleep their dukes:
Strong are the enemies' gods! wherefore their hearts,
Like rumbling water-mills, o'er rushing brooks,
Clap, in their breasts. Kindled great beacon fires,
From hill to hill, when rose the Land-cry forth,
Make known already, unto farthest Britons,
Great battle-hazard of Caratacus!
That all make supplication, to their gods.