[58] By Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639).
[59] By Alexander Pope (1688-1744).
[60] By Samuel Rogers (1763-1855).
Expression: Which of these poems do you like best? Give reasons for your preference. What sentiment is emphasized by all of them? What other pleasant ideas of life are expressed? What mental pictures are called up by reading the fourth poem? the fifth? What traits of character are alluded to in the first poem? the second? Now read each poem aloud, giving to each line and each stanza the thought which was in the author's mind when he wrote it.
HOW KING ARTHUR GOT HIS NAME[61]
One day at sunset, Snowbird, the young son of a king, came over the brow of a hill that stepped forward from a dark company of mountains and leaned over the shoreless sea which fills the West and drowns the North. All day he had been wandering alone, his mind heavy with wonder over many things. He had heard strange tales of late, tales about his heroic father and the royal clan, and how they were not like other men, but half divine. He had heard, too, of his own destiny,—that he also was to be a great king. What was Destiny, he wondered....
Then, as he wondered, he turned over and over in his mind all the names he could think of that he might choose for his own; for the time was come for him to put away the name of his childhood and to take on that by which he should be known among men.
He came over the brow of the hill, and out of the way of the mountain wind, and, being tired, lay down among the heather and stared across the gray wilderness of the sea. The sun set, and the invisible throwers of the nets trailed darkness across the waves and up the wild shores and over the faces of the cliffs. Stars climbed out of shadowy abysses, and the great chariots of the constellations rode from the West to the East and from the North to the South.