Page:Poems, Alan Seeger, 1916.djvu/173



, to amaze the British host,

And wake more wonder in their wondering ranks,

The bridle of his winged courser loosed,

And clapped his spurs into the creature's flanks;

High in the air, even to the topmost banks

Of crudded cloud, uprose the flying horse,

And now above the Welsh, and now the Manx,

And now across the sea he shaped his course,

Till gleaming far below lay Erin's emerald shores.

There round Hibernia's fabled realm he coasted,

Where the old saint had left the holy cave,

Sought for the famous virtue that it boasted

To purge the sinful visitor and save.

Thence back returning over land and wave,

Ruggiero came where the blue currents flow, The shores of Lesser Brittany to lave,

And, looking down while sailing to and fro,

He saw Angelica chained to the rock below.

'Twas on the Island of Complaint—well named,

For there to that inhospitable shore,

A savage people, cruel and untamed,

Brought the rich prize of many a hateful war.

To feed a monster that bestead them sore, 123