Sir Launcelot's "mighty shield," hacked and worn by dint of knightly combat, is said to hare
Look'd like some crack'd and frozen moon that hangs
By night o'er Baltic headlands all alone.
The Greek Herald, observing the effect of his news on Clytemnestra, and awed by "that brooding eye whose light is language," thus describes her reception of his message of Agamemnon's advent:
Some great thought, I see,
Mounts up the royal chambers of her blood,
As a king mounts his palace; holds high pomp
In her Olympian bosom; gains her face,
Possesses all her noble glowing cheek
With sudden state; and gathers grandly up
Its slow majestic meanings in her eyes!
When Clytemnestra finds Ægisthus failing her, and utterly belying her hopes of him, and of her own future in and through him, she bitterly exclaims:
This was the Atlas of the world I built!
Alexander Smith is not to have Night and the Stars all to himself;—rather he seems to have provoked to emulation them that are his fellows. Here is one of Owen Meredith's many commercings with the imagery of the starry firmament on high:
And when, over all of these, the night
Among her mazy and milk-white signs,
And cluster'd orbs, and zig-zag lines,
Burst into blossoms of stars and light,
The sea was glassy; the glassy brine
Was paven with lights—blue, crystalline,
And emerald green; the dark world hung
Balanced under the moon, and swung
In a net of silver sparkles.
The pale-faced lady who awaited so wistfully "the Earl's Return," has this among other starry visions of the night:
Suddenly
At times a shooting star would spin
Shell-like out of heaven, and tumble in,
"Sometimes, at night, a music was roll'd—
A ripple of silver harp-strings cold."—The Earl's Return.
"Then wave over wave of the sweet silver wires
'Gan ripple, and the minstrel took heart to begin it."—Ibid.
"She turn'd and caught her lute, and pensively
Rippled a random music down the strings."—Elayne le Blanc.
"Spill" is another privileged phrase, employed sometimes with an almost grotesque effect. We have—
"The spider spills his silver thread
Between the bells of columbines."
And again:
"I hear the sandy, shrill cascade
Leap down upon the vale and spill
His heart out round the muffled mill," &c.
