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

Robert Stephen Hawker 1804–75

To Alfred Tennyson

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

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:—

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

Shall live, and die no more!