ro' the crest, and cleanly shore
The golden boasting of its griffin fierce
With hollow clamor down astounded ears:
No further thence--but, shattered to the grass,
That brittle blade, crushed as if made of glass,
Into hot pieces like a broken ray
Burst sunward and in feverish fragments lay.
Then groaned the King unarmed; and so he knew
This no Excalibur; that tried and true
Most perfect tempered, runed and mystical.
Sobbed, "_Oh, hell-false! betray me?_"-- Then withal
Him seemed this foe, who fought with so much stress,
So long untiring, and with no distress
Of wounds or heat, through treachery bare his brand;
And then he knew it by its hilt that hand
Clutched to an avenging stroke. For Accolon
In madness urged the belted battle on
His King defenseless; who, the hilted cross
Of that false weapon grasped, beneath the boss
Of his deep-dented shield crouched; and around
Crawled the unequal conflict o'er the ground,
Sharded with shattered spears and off-hewn bits
Of shivered steel and gold that burnt in fits.
So hunted, yet defiant, cowering
Beneath his bossy shield's defense, the King
Persisted stoutly. And, devising still
How to secure his sword and by what skill,
Him so it fortuned when most desperate:
In that hot chase they came where shattered late
Lay tossed the truncheon of a bursten lance,
Which deftly seized, to Accolon's advance
He wielded valorous. Against the fist
Smote where the gauntlet husked the nervous wrist,
Which strained the weapon to a wrathful blow;
Palsied, the tightened sinews of his foe
Loosened from effort, and, the falchion seized,
Easy was yielded. Then the wroth King squeezed,
--Hurling the moon-disk of his shield afar,--
Him in both knotted arms of wiry war,
Rocked sidewise twice or thrice,--as one hath seen
Some stern storm take an ash tree, roaring green,
Nodding its sappy bulk of trunk and boughs
To dizziness, from tough, coiled roots carouse
Its long height thundering;--so King Arthur shook
Sir Accolon and headlong flung; then took,
Tearing away, that scabbard from his side,
Tossed thro' the breathless lists, that far and wide
Gulped in the battle voiceless. Then right wroth
Secured Excalibur, and grasped of both
Wild hands swung glittering and brought bitter down
On rising Accolon; steel, bone and brawn
Hewed thro' that blow; unsettled every sense:
Bathed in a world of bloo