To Alfred Tennyson by Robert Stephen Hawker. Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. 1895. A Victorian Anthology, 1837-1895

Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.

To Alfred Tennyson

Robert Stephen Hawker (1804–75)


THEY told me in their shadowy phrase,
Caught from a tale gone by,
That Arthur, King of Cornish praise,
Died not, and would not die.

Dreams had they, that in fairy bowers	5
Their living warrior lies,
Or wears a garland of the flowers
That grow in Paradise.

I read the rune with deeper ken,
And thus the myth I trace:—	10
A bard should rise, mid future men,
The mightiest of his race.

He would great Arthur’s deeds rehearse
On gray Dundagel’s shore;
And so the King in laurell’d verse	15
Shall live, and die no more!