Bark an answer, Britain's raven! bark and blacken innumerable,

Blacken round the Roman carrion, make the carcass a skeleton,

Kite and kestrel, wolf and wolfkin, from the wilderness, wallow in it,

Till the face of Bel be brighten'd, Taranis be propitiated.

Lo their colony half-defended! lo their colony, Cámulodúne!

There the horde of Roman robbers mock at a barbarous adversary.

There the hive of Roman liars worship a gluttonous emperor-idiot.

Such is Rome, and this her deity: hear it, Spirit of Cássivelaún !

'Hear it, Gods! the Gods have heard it, O Icenian, O Coritanian !

Doubt not ye the Gods have answer'd, Catieuchlanian, Trinobant.

These have told us all their anger in miraculous utterances,

Thunder, a flying fire in heaven, a murmur heard aërially,

Phantom sound of blows descending, moan of an enemy massacred,

Phantom wail of women and children, multitudinous agonies.

Bloodily flow'd the Tamesa rolling phantom bodies of horses and men;

Then a phantom colony smoulder'd on the refluent estuary;

Lastly yonder yester-even, suddenly giddily totter

ing

There was one who watch'd and told me down
their statue of Victory fell.
Lo their precious Roman bantling, lo the colony
Cámulodúne.

Shall we teach it a Roman lesson ? shall we care to be pitiful?

Shall we deal with it as an infant? shall we dandle it amorously?

'Hear Icenian, Catieuchlanian, hear Coritanian, Trinobant!

While I roved about the forest, long and bitterly meditating,

There I heard them in the darkness, at the mystical ceremony,

Loosely-robed in flying raiment, sang the terrible prophetesses.

"Fear not, isle of blowing woodland, isle of silvery parapets!

Tho' the Roman eagle shadow thee, tho' the gathering enemy narrow thee,

Thou shalt wax and he shall dwindle, thou shalt be the mighty one yet!

Thine the liberty, thine the glory, thine the deeds to be celebrated,

Thine the myriad-rolling ocean, light and shadow illimitable,

Thine the lands of lasting summer, many-blossoming Paradises,

Thine the North and thine the South and thine the battle-thunder of God."

So they chanted: how shall Britain light upon auguries happier?

So they chanted in the darkness, and there cometh a victory now.

'Hear Icenian, Catieuchlanian, hear Coritanian, Trinobant!

Me the wife of rich Prasutagus, me the lover of liberty,

Me they seized and me they tortured, me they lash'd and humiliated,

Me the sport of ribald Veterans, mine of ruffian

violators!

See they sit, they hide their faces, miserable in ignominy!

.

Wherefore in me burns an anger, not by blood to be satiated.

Lo the palaces and the temple, lo the colony CámuÍodúne !

There they ruled, and thence they wasted all the flourishing territory,

Thither at their will they haled the yellow-ringleted Britoness

Bloodily, bloodily fall the battle-axe, unexhausted, inexorable.

Shout Icenian, Catieuchlanian, shout Coritanian, Trinobant,

Till the victim hear within and yearn to hurry precipitously

Like the leaf in a roaring whirlwind, like the smoke in a hurricane whirl'd.

Lo the colony, there they rioted in the city of Cúnobelíne !

There they drank in cups of emerald, there at tables of ebony lay,

Rolling on their purple couches in their tender effeminacy.

There they dwelt and there they rioted; there

Burst the gates, and burn the palaces, break the works of the statuary,

Take the hoary Roman head and shatter it, hold it abominable,

Cut the Roman boy to pieces in his lust and voluptuousness,

Lash the maiden into swooning, me they lash'd and humiliated,

Chop the breasts from off the mother, dash the brains of the little one out,

Up my Britons, on my chariot, on my chargers, trample them under us.'

So the Queen Boadicea, standing loftily charioted, Brandishing in her hand a dart and rolling glances lioness-like,

Yell'd and shrieked between her daughters in her fierce volubility.

Till her people all around the royal chariot agitated, Madly dash'd the darts together, writhing barbarous lineäments,

Made the noise of frosty woodlands, when they shiver in January,

Roar'd as when the rolling breakers boom and blanch on the precipices,

Yell'd as when the winds of winter tear an oak on a promontory.

So the silent colony hearing her tumultuous adver

saries

Clash the darts and on the buckler beat with rapid unanimous hand,

Thought on all her evil tyrannies, all her pitiless avarice,

Till she felt the heart within her fall and flutter

tremulously,

Then her pulses at the clamoring of her enemy fainted away.

Out of evil evil flourishes, out of tyranny tyranny

buds.

Ran the land with Roman slaughter, multitudinous agonies.

Perish'd many a maid and matron, many a valorous legionary.

Fell the colony, city, and citadel, London, Verulam, Cámulodúne.

IN QUANTITY.

MILTON.

Alcaics.

O MIGHTY-MOUTH'D inventor of harmonies,
O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity,
God-gifted organ-voice of England,

Milton, a name to resound for ages;
Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel,
Starr'd from Jehovah's gorgeous armories,
Tower, as the deep-domed empyrean

Rings to the roar of an angel onset
Me rather all that bowery loneliness,
The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring,
And bloom profuse and cedar arches

Charm, as a wanderer out in ocean, Where some refulgent sunset of India Streams o'er a rich ambrosial ocean isle, And crimson-hued the stately palmwoods Whisper in odorous heights of even.

Hendecasyllabics.

O YOU chorus of indolent reviewers,
Irresponsible, indolent reviewers,
Look, I come to the test, a tiny poem
All composed in a metre of Catullus,
All in quantity, careful of my motion,
Like the skater on ice that hardly bears him,
Lest I fall unawares before the people,