spread_
_About the gates of Rye?_
_O that was where the Northmen fled,_
_When Alfred's ships came by._

_See you our pastures wide and lone,_
_Where the red oxen browse?_
_O there was a City thronged and known,_
_Ere London boasted a house._

_And see you, after rain, the trace_
_Of mound and ditch and wall?_
_O that was a Legion's camping-place,_
_When Caesar sailed from Gaul._

_And see you marks that show and fade,_
_Like shadows on the Downs?_
_O they are the lines the Flint Men made,_
_To guard their wondrous towns._

_Trackway and Camp and City lost,_
_Salt Marsh where now is corn;_
_Old Wars, old Peace, old Arts that cease,_
_And so was England born!_

_She is not any common Earth,_
_Water or wood or air,_
_But Merlin's Isle of Gramarye,_
_Where you and I will fare._

WELAND'S SWORD

WELAND'S SWORD(1)

The children were at the Theatre, acting to Three Cows as much as they
could remember of _Midsummer Night's Dream_. Their father had made them a
small play out of the big Shakespeare one, and they had rehearsed it with
him and with their mother till they could say it by heart. They began
where Nick Bottom the weaver comes out of the bushes with a donkey's head
on his shoulder, and finds Titania, Queen of the Fairies, asleep. Then
they skipped to the part where Bottom asks three little fairies to scratch
his head and bring him honey, and they ended where he falls asleep in
Titania's arms. Dan was Puck and Nick Bottom, as well as all three
Fairies. He wore a pointy-eared cloth cap for Puck, and a paper donkey's
head out of a Christmas cracker--but it tore if you were not careful--for
Bottom. Una was Titania, with a wreath of columbines and a foxglove wand.

The Theatre lay in a meadow called the Long Slip. A little mill-stream,
carrying water to a mill two or three fields away, bent round one corner
of it, and in the middle of the bend lay a large old fairy Ring of
darkened grass, which was their stage. The mill-stream banks, overgrown
with willow, hazel, and guelder rose made convenient places to wait in
till your turn came; and a grown-up who had seen it said that Shakespeare
himself could not have imagined a more suitable setting for his play. They
were not, of course, allowed to act on Midsummer Night itself, but they
went down after tea on Midsummer Eve, when the shadows were growing, and
they took their supp