To Alfred Tennyson by Robert Stephen Hawker

They told me in their shadowy phrase,
Caught from a tale gone by,
That Arthur, King of Cornish praise,
Died not, and would not die.

Dreams had they, that in fairy bowers
Their living warrior lies,
Or wears a garland of the flowers
That grow in Paradise.

I read the rune with deeper ken,
And thus the myth I trace:—
A bard should rise, mid future men,
The mightiest of his race.

He would great Arthur’s deeds rehearse
On gray Dundagel’s shore;
And so the King in laurell’d verse
Shall live, and die no more!