Other Poems to be Read: The Traveller; the rest of The Deserted Village; Retaliation.
References: Irving's Life of Goldsmith; Forster's Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith; Macaulay's Essay on Goldsmith; Thackeray's English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century; De Quincey's Eighteenth Century; Hazlitt's English Poets; Goldsmith (English Men of Letters), by William Black.
Thomas Gray.
THE BARD.
I. 1.
"Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!
Confusion on thy banners wait;
Tho' fanned by Conquest's crimson wing,[1]
They mock the air with idle state.[2]
Helm, nor hauberk's[3] twisted mail,
Nor e'en thy virtues, Tyrant, shall avail
To save thy secret soul from nightly fears,
From Cambria's[4] curse, from Cambria's tears!"
Such were the sounds that o'er the crested pride
Of the first Edward scattered wild dismay,
As down the steep of Snowdon's[5] shaggy side
He wound with toilsome march his long array.
Stout Gloster[6] stood aghast in speechless trance:
"To arms!" cried Mortimer,[7] and couched his quivering lance.