University of Virginia Library

Round Grisedale's mountain-girdled mere
The latest moon of all the year
Lights in its wane an ancient host,
Each warrior an armour'd ghost,
Arm'd with the arms our country bore
E'er its first foeman touch'd its shore:
Of bronze their sword, of flint their spear,
Their leathern shield a hide of deer,
A British host, the last that held
The land, that all was theirs of eld.

Ten hundred years scarce pass'd away
After that first great Easter-day
E'er not a Keltic lord was known
Through all the coasts of Albion,
Save in the stormy hills of Wales,
And Cornwall's mines, and Cumbria's dales,
And Mona's citadel;
And Saxon was in league with Scot
From this his last and best lov'd lot
The Briton to expel.
Then all at once the loyal men
Of Cymri leapt from rock and glen
To join their king Dunmail;
From saddle-back'd Blencathra's height,
Where, hidden from the sun's good light,
The tarn they call Bowscale
Reflects the stars at middle day,
While in its depths unfathom'd play
That strange immortal twain,
The only fish in this wide earth
That liv'd at our Redeemer's birth:
They know not death or pain,
But live until he comes again,
For they, they only, did remain
Of that world famous seven
Wherewith the ‘Lord of Life’ did feed
Those thousands four—this precious meed
To them alone is given.
At once did Cumbria's noblest pour
From all the peaks of huge Skiddaw,
From Skiddaw's cub, since called Latrigg,
From Windermere and Newby Brig.
High in the west from grim Sca'fell,
And wild Wastwater's lonely dell,
The dalesmen hurried down to bring
Arms, few but faithful to their king.
High in the east along that road,
The highest ever built, they strode:
And not a few from Langdale Pikes,
And Furness Fells and Furness Dykes,
Which now the sea doth hold,
But flocks and beeves and giant trees,
And corn that shimmered in the breeze,
Held in the days of old.
Ten thousand—good men all, and true—
Came where his royal standard flew,
To fight for hearth and home;
A home they'd held a thousand years
'Gainst Dane and Saxon, and the spears
E'en of Imperial Rome.