My mailed captain leapt into my arms,
Contented there to die!
"And in those arms he died; I heard my name
Sigh'd forth with life: then I shook off all fear:
Oh what a little snake stole Cæsar's fame!
What else was left? look here."
The "Old Sword" we take to be Alfred Tennyson's from internal evidence of style.
In the "Vale of Bones" are the following lines:
"When on to battle proudly going,
Your plumage to the wild winds blowing,
Your tartans far behind ye flowing,
Your pennons raised, your clarions sounding,
Fiercely your steeds beneath ye bounding."
This, as Mr. Leicester Warren has pointed out, is very similar, both in rhythm and expression, to a passage in the "Ballad of Oriana," which appeared in the "Poems, chiefly Lyrical" in 1830.
"Winds were blowing, waters flowing,
We heard the steeds to battle going,
Aloud the hollow bugle blowing," &c.
