| |
| WELL pleased all listened to the tale, | |
| That drew, the Student said, its pith | |
| And marrow from the ancient myth | |
| Of some one with an iron flail; | |
| Or that portentous Man of Brass | 5 |
| Hephæstus made in days of yore, | |
| Who stalked about the Cretan shore, | |
| And saw the ships appear and pass, | |
| And threw stones at the Argonauts, | |
| Being filled with indiscriminate ire | 10 |
| That tangled and perplexed his thoughts; | |
| But, like a hospitable host, | |
| When strangers landed on the coast, | |
| Heated himself red-hot with fire, | |
| And hugged them in his arms, and pressed | 15 |
| Their bodies to his burning breast. | |
| |
| The Poet answered: “No, not thus | |
| The legend rose; it sprang at first | |
| Out of the hunger and the thirst | |
| In all men for the marvellous. | 20 |
| And thus it filled and satisfied | |
| The imagination of mankind, | |
| And this ideal to the mind | |
| Was truer than historic fact. | |
| Fancy enlarged and multiplied | 25 |
| The terrors of the awful name | |
| Of Charlemagne, till he became | |
| Armipotent in every act, | |
| And, clothed in mystery, appeared | |
| Not what men saw, but what they feared. | 30 |
| |
| “Besides, unless my memory fail, | |
| Your some one with an iron flail | |
| Is not an ancient myth at all, | |
| But comes much later on the scene | |
| As Talus in the Faerie Queene, | 35 |
| The iron groom of Artegall, | |
| Who threshed out falsehood and deceit, | |
| And truth upheld, and righted wrong, | |
| And was, as is the swallow, fleet, | |
| And as the lion is, was strong.” | 40 |
| |
| The Theologian said: “Perchance | |
| Your chronicler in writing this | |
| Had in his mind the Anabasis, | |
| Where Xenophon describes the advance | |
| Of Artaxerxes to the fight; | 45 |
| At first the low gray cloud of dust, | |
| And then a blackness o’er the fields | |
| As of a passing thunder-gust, | |
| Then flash of brazen armor bright, | |
| And ranks of men, and spears up-thrust, | 50 |
| Bowmen and troops with wicker shields, | |
| And cavalry equipped in white, | |
| And chariots ranged in front of these | |
| With scythes upon their axle-trees.” | |
| |
| To this the Student answered: “Well, | 55 |
| I also have a tale to tell | |
| Of Charlemagne; a tale that throws | |
| A softer light, more tinged with rose, | |
| Than your grim apparition cast | |
| Upon the darkness of the past. | 60 |
| Listen, and hear in English rhyme | |
| What the good Monk of Lauresheim | |
| Gives as the gossip of his time, | |
| In mediæval Latin prose.” | |
| |
