Impel

Sleeps, with a broken sword - and Yseult sleeps

Beside him, where the Westering waters roll

Over drowned Lyonesse to the outer deeps.

Lancelot is fallen . . . The ardent helms that shone

So knightly and the splintered lances rust

In the anonymous mould of Avalon:

Gawain and Gareth and Galahad - all are dust.

Where do the vanes and towers of Camelot

And tall Tintagel crumble? Where do those tragic

Lovers and their bright eyed ladies rot?

We cannot tell, for lost is Merlin's magic.

And Guinevere - Call her not back again

Lest she betray the loveliness time lent

A name that blends the rapture and the pain

Linked in the lonely nightingale's lament.

Nor pry too deeply, lest you should discover

The bower of Astolat a smokey hut

Of mud and wattle - find the knightliest lover

A braggart, and his lilymaid a slut.

And all that coloured tale a tapestry

Woven by poets. As the spider's skeins

Are spun of its own substance, so have they

Embroidered empty legend - What remains?

This: That when Rome fell, like a writhen oak

That age had sapped and cankered at the root,

Resistant, from her topmost bough there broke

The miracle of one unwithering shoot.

Which was the spirit of Britain - that certain men

Uncouth, untutored, of our island brood

Loved freedom better than their lives; and when

The tempest crashed around them, rose and stood

And charged into the storm's black heart, with sword

Lifted, or lance in rest, and rode there, helmed

With a strange majesty that the heathen horde

Remembered when all were overwhelmed;

And made of them a legend, to their chief,

Arthur, Ambrosius - no man knows his name -

Granting a gallantry beyond belief,

And to his knights imperishable fame.

They were so few . . . We know not in what manner

Or where they fell - whether they went

Riding into the dark under Christ's banner

Or died beneath the blood-red dragon of Gwent.

But this we know; that when the Saxon rout

Swept over them, the sun no longer shone

On Britain, and the last lights flickered out;

And men in darkness muttered: Arthur is gone . . .

Sliabh na Caillí. Loughcrew passage tombs, 2015. The tombs and art within are estimated to date from around 3300 BC.

Anqing, 1860-61.

At a time that Americans remember for a Civil War that killed 620,000 people the Chinese were fighting one that killed 20,000,000-30,000,000.

Of the ten deadliest wars in history five were uprisings or clashes in China, and a sixth would be the war between China and Japan from 1937-1945.

From “An Army At Dawn” by Atkinson