risen from yonder knoll. With his spear, and saex, and his shield, he
stood before me; and his face, though pale as that of one long dead,
was stern as the face of a warrior in the van of armed men; he
stretched his hand, and he smote his saex on his shield, and the clang
sounded hollow; the gyves broke at the clash--I sprang to my feet, and
I stood side by side with the phantom, dauntless. Then, suddenly, the
mitre on the skull changed to a helm; and where the skull had grinned,
trunkless and harmless, stood a shape like War, made incarnate;--a
Thing above giants, with its crest to the stars and its form an
eclipse between the sun and the day. The earth changed to ocean, and
the ocean was blood, and the ocean seemed deep as the seas where the
whales sport in the North, but the surge rose not to the knee of that
measureless image. And the ravens came round it from all parts of the
heaven, and the vultures with the dead eyes and dull scream. And all
the bones, before scattered and shapeless, sprung to life and to form,
some monks and some warriors; and there was a hoot, and a hiss, and a
roar, and the storm of arms. And a broad pennon rose out of the sea
of blood, and from the clouds came a pale hand, and it wrote on the
pennon, 'Harold, the Accursed!' Then said the stern shape by my side,
'Harold, fearest thou the dead men's bones?' and its voice was as a
trumpet that gives strength to the craven, and I answering,
'Niddering, indeed, were Harold, to fear the bones of the dead!'"

"As I spoke, as if hell had burst loose, came a gibber of scorn, and
all vanished at once, save the ocean of blood. Slowly came from
the north, over the sea, a bird like a raven, save that it was blood-
red, like the ocean; and there came from the south, swimming towards
me, a lion. And I looked to the spectre; and the pride of war had
gone from its face, which was so sad that methought I forgot raven and
lion, and wept to see it. Then the spectre took me in its vast arms,