castles built by the Normans; and the

"--bright hall where Odin's Gothic throne
With the broad blaze of brandished falchions shone."

But the most purely romantic of Thomas Warton's poems are "The Crusade"
and "The Grave of King Arthur." The former is the song which

"The lion heart Plantagenet
Sang, looking through his prison-bars,"

when the minstrel Blondel came wandering in search of his captive king.
The latter describes how Henry II., on his way to Ireland, was feasted at
Cilgarran Castle, where the Welsh bards sang to him of the death of
Arthur and his burial in Glastonbury Abbey. The following passage
anticipates Scott:

"Illumining the vaulted roof,
A thousand torches flamed aloof;
From many cups, with golden gleam,
Sparkled the red metheglin's stream:
To grace the gorgeous festival,
Along the lofty-windowed hall
The storied tapestry was hung;
With minstrelsy the rafters rung
Of harps that with reflected light
From the proud gallery glittered bright:
While gifted bards, a rival throng,
From distant Mona, nurse of song,
From Teivi fringed with umbrage brown,
From Elvy's vale and Cader's crown,
From many a shaggy precipice
That shades Ierne's hoarse abyss,
And many a sunless solitude
Of Radnor's inmost mountains rude,
To crown the banquet's solemn close
Themes of British glory chose."

Here is much of Scott's skill in the poetic manipulation of place-names,
_e.g._,

"Day set on Norham's castled steep,
And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep,
And Cheviot's mountains lone"--

names which leave a far-resounding romantic rumble behind them. Another
passage in Warton's poem brings us a long way on toward Tennyson's "Wild
Tintagel by the Cornish sea" and his "island valley of Avilion."

"O'er Cornwall's cliffs the tempest roared:
High the screaming sea-mew soared:
In Tintaggel's topmost tower
Darkness fell the sleety shower:
Round the rough castle shrilly sung
The whirling blast, and wildly flung
On each tall rampart's thundering side
The surges of the tumbling tide,
When Arthur ranged his red-cross ranks
On conscious Camlan's crimsoned banks:
By Mordred's faithless guile decreed
Beneath a Saxon spear to bleed.
Yet in vain a Paynim foe
Armed with fate the mightly blow;
For when he fell, an elfin queen,
All in secret and