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79

“Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and kill'd.”
Shakespeare.

EDMUND.

Edmund his eighteenth year had not yet known,
When he succeeded to Athelstan's throne,
And, ecce iterum! the Monarch found
The Danes encroaching still on English ground;
Malcolm of Scotland having lent him aid,
With Westmoreland and Cumberland he paid;
And when kind peace was dawning o'er the land,
Or e'er six summers smiled upon his reign,
By Leolf, leader of a lawless band,
The youthful Sov'reign was untimely slain.
 

The King espied this outlaw presumptuously seated at a royal banquet and, being inflamed with wine, seized him by the hair, when the felon, instigated by despair, plunged his dagger in the body of the King: the intoxication of the nobles and attendants permitted the assassin's escape.