Their dark impenetrable wood,
Each stepping where his comrade stood,
The instant that he fell.”
There is none of this noble simplicity in the somewhat dramatic ardor of Horatius, or in the pharisaical flavor, inevitable perhaps, but not the less depressing, of Naseby and Ivry, which read a little like old Kaiser William’s war dispatches turned into verse. Better a thousand times are the splendid swing, the captivating enthusiasm of Drayton’s “Agincourt,” which hardly a muck-worm could hear unstirred. Reading it, we are as keen for battle as were King Harry’s soldiers straining at the leash. The ardor for strife, the staying power of quiet courage, all are here; and here, too, a felicity of language that makes each noble name a trumpet blast of defiance, a fresh incentive to heroic deeds.
“With Spanish yew so strong,
Arrows a cloth-yard long,
That like to serpents stung,
Piercing the weather;
None from his fellow starts,
But playing manly parts,