“It never suits a royal ear
    Prowess of foreign lands to hear;
    And, leaving tales of Charlemagne
    For British Arthur’s earlier reign,
    I, preluding with praise, began
    The feats of that diviner man;
    Let loose my soul in fairy land,
    Gave wilder licence to my hand;
    And, learn’d in chivalrous renown,
    By song and story handed down,
    Painted my knights from those around,
    But placed them on poetic ground. 
    The ample brow, too smooth for guile;
    The careless, fearless, open smile;
    The shaded and yet arching eye,
    At once reflective, kind, and shy;
    The undesigning, dauntless look,—­
    Became to me a living book. 
    I read the character conceal’d,
      Flash’d on by chance, or never known
      Even to bosoms like its own;
      Shrinking before a step intrude;
      Touch, look, and whisper, all too rude;
    Unsunn’d and fairest when reveal’d! 
    The first in every noble deed,
    Most prompt to venture and to bleed! 
    Such hearts, so veil’d with angel wings,
    Such cherish’d, tender, sacred things,
    I since discover’d many a time,
    O Britain! in thy temper’d clime;
    In dew, in shade, in silence nurs’d,
    For truth and sentiment athirst.

      “As seas, with rough, surrounding wave,
    Islands of verdant freshness save
    From rash intruder’s waste and spoil;—­
      As mountains rear their heads on high,
      Present snow summits to the sky,
    And weary patient feet with toil,
    To screen some sweet, secluded vale,
    And warm the air its flowers inhale;—­
    Reserve warns off approaching eyes
    From where her choicer Eden lies.

    “Such are the English knights, I cried,
    Who all their better feelings hide;
    Who muffle up their hearts with care,
    To hide the virtues nestling there,
    Who neither praise nor blame can bear.

    “My hearers, though completely steel’d
    For all the terrors of the field;
    Mail’d for the arrow and the lance,
    Bore not unharm’d my smiling glance;
    At other times collected, brave,
    Recoiled when I that picture gave;
    As if their inmost heart, laid bare,
    Shrank from the bleak, ungenial air.

    “Proud of such prescience, on I went;—­
    The youthful monarch was content. 
    ’Edgar de Langton, take this ring—­
    No! hither the young Minstrel bring: 
    Ourself can better still dispense
    The honour and the recompence.’ 
    I came, and, trembling, bent my knee. 
      He wonder’d that my looks were meek,
      That blushes burnt upon my cheek! 
    ’We would our little songstress see! 
    Remove those tresses! raise thy head! 
    Say, where is former courage fled,
    ’That all must now thy face infold? 
    At distance they were backward roll’d. 
    Whence, then, this most unfounded fear? 
    Are we so strange, so hateful here?’