Has inter voces, media inter talia verba,
Ecce viro stridens alis allapsa sagitta est,
Incertum qua pulsa manu--AEn. xii. 318.
Thus, while he spake, unmindful of defence,
A winged arrow struck the pious prince;
But whether from a human hand it came,
Or hostile god, is left unknown by fame.
DRYDEN.
But of all the descriptive parts of this song, there are none more
beautiful than the four following stanzas, which have a great force
and spirit in them, and are filled with very natural circumstances.
The thought in the third stanza was never touched by any other poet,
and is such a one as would have shone in Homer or in Virgil:
So thus did both these nobles die,
Whose courage none could stain;
An English archer then perceived
The noble Earl was slain.
He had a bow bent in his hand,
Made of a trusty tree,
An arrow of a cloth-yard long
Unto the head drew he.
Against Sir Hugh Montgomery
So right his shaft he set,
The gray-goose wing that was thereon
In his heart-blood was wet.
This fight did last from break of day
Till setting of the sun;
For when they rung the ev'ning bell
The battle scarce was done.
One may observe, likewise, that in the catalogue of the slain, the
author has followed the example of the greatest ancient poets, not
only in giving a long list of the dead, but by diversifying it with
little characters of particular persons.
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