Our English archers bent their bows,
Their hearts were good and true;
At the first flight of arrows sent,
Full threescore Scots they slew.They closed full fast on ev’ry side,
No slackness there was found;
And many a gallant gentleman
Lay gasping on the ground.With that there came an arrow keen
Out of an English bow,
Which struck Earl Douglas to the heart,
A deep and deadly blow.
Æneas was wounded after the same manner by an unknown hand in the midst of a parley.
Has inter voces, media inter talia verba,
Ecce viro stridens alis allapsa sagitta est,
Incertum quâ pulsa manu—Æn. xii. 318.
Thus, while he spake, unmindful of defence,
A winged arrow struck the pious prince;
But whether from a human hand it came,
Or hostile god, is left unknown by fame.Dryden.
But of all the descriptive parts of this song, there are none more beautiful than the four following stanzas, which have a great force and spirit in them, and are filled with very natural circumstances. The thought in the third stanza was never touched by any other poet, and is such a one as would have shone in Homer or in Virgil:
So thus did both these nobles die,
Whose courage none could stain;
An English archer then perceived
The noble Earl was slain.He had a bow bent in his hand,
Made of a trusty tree,
An arrow of a cloth-yard long
Unto the head drew he.Against Sir Hugh Montgomery
So right his shaft he set,
The gray-goose wing that was thereon
In his heart-blood was wet.This fight did last from break of day
Till setting of the sun;
For when they rung the ev’ning bell
The battle scarce was done.
One may observe, likewise, that in the catalogue of the slain, the author has followed the example of the greatest ancient poets, not only in giving a long list of the dead, but by diversifying it with little characters of particular persons.
And with Earl Douglas there was slain
Sir Hugh Montgomery,
Sir Charles Carrel, that from the field
One foot would never fly.Sir Charles Murrel of Ratcliff too,
His sister’s son was he;
Sir David Lamb so well esteem’d,
Yet saved could not be.
The familiar sound in these names destroys the majesty of the description; for this reason I do not mention this part of the poem but to show the natural cast of thought which appears in it, as the two last verses look almost like a translation of Virgil.
—Cadit et Ripheus justissimus unus
Qui fuit in Teucris et servantissimus æqui.
Diis aliter visum.Æn. ii. 426.
Then Ripheus fell in the unequal fight,
Just of his word, observant of the right:
Heav’n thought not so.Dryden.
In the catalogue of the English who fell, Witherington’s behaviour is in the same manner particularised very artfully, as the reader is prepared for it by that account which is given of him in the beginning of the battle; though I am satisfied your little buffoon readers, who have seen that passage ridiculed in “Hudibras,” will not be able to take the beauty of it: for which reason I dare not so much as quote it.