Whether high towering or accosting low,
But I the measure of her flight do search,
And all her prey, and all her diet know.
Such be our joys, which in these forests grow.”
————
CHAPTER XV
THE ROUND TABLE
The famous enchanter, Merlin, had exerted all his skill in fabricating the Round Table. Of the seats which surrounded it he had constructed thirteen, in memory of the thirteen Apostles. Twelve of these seats only could be occupied, and they only by knights of the highest fame; the thirteenth represented the seat of the traitor Judas. It remained always empty. It was called the perilous seat, ever since a rash and haughty Saracen knight had dared to place himself in it, when the earth opened and swallowed him up.
“In our great hall there stood a vacant chair,
Fashion’d by Merlin ere he past away,