Andrew Lang

... battles, sieges, fortunes,Of moving accidents by flood and field,Of hair-breadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach.

Or else the core his name envelopedWas from a solar myth developedWhich, hunted to its primal shoot,Takes refuge in a Sanskrit root,Thereby to instant death explainingThe little poetry remaining.Try it with Zeus, 't is just the same;The thing evades, we hug a name;Nay, scarcely that—perhaps a vaporBorn of some atmospheric caper.

A mist of memory broods and floats,The Border waters flow:The air is full of ballad notes,Borne out of long ago,

Unseen, Eurotas, southward steal,Unknown, Alpheus, westward glide,You never heard the ringing reel,The music of the water-side!

Though gods have walked your woods among,Though nymphs have fled your banks along,You speak not that familiar tongueTweed murmurs like my cradle song.

My cradle song—nor other hymnI'd choose, nor gentler requiem dearThan Tweed's, that through death's twilight dimMourned in the last Minstrel's ear.

The face that launch'd a thousand shipsAnd burnt the topless towers of Ilium