Let Britain rest a prey for foreign powers;
Let sword and fire, still fed with mutual strife,
Turn all the kings to ghosts: let civil wars
And discord swell, till all the realm be torn!
Even in that soil whereof myself was Duke,
Where first my spouse Igerna brake her vow,
Where this ungracious offspring was begot:
In Cornwall—there let Mordred’s death declare,
Let Arthur’s fatal wound bewray, the wrong,
The murder vile, the rape of wife and weal,