One dignity delays for all－1
One mitred Afternoon－
None can avoid this purple－
None evade this Crown!
Coach, it insures, and footmen－5
Chamber, and state, and throng－
Bells, also, in the village
As we ride grand along!
What dignified Attendants!9
What service when we pause!
How loyally at parting
Their hundred hats they raise!
Her pomp surpassing ermine 13
When simple You, and I,
Present our meek escutcheon
And claim the rank to die!
One mitred Afternoon－
None can avoid this purple－
None evade this Crown!
Coach, it insures, and footmen－5
Chamber, and state, and throng－
Bells, also, in the village
As we ride grand along!
What dignified Attendants!9
What service when we pause!
How loyally at parting
Their hundred hats they raise!
Her pomp surpassing ermine 13
When simple You, and I,
Present our meek escutcheon
And claim the rank to die!
(F.77/J.98)
[1–8] A king to be crowned.
[12] hundred hats:: a hundred knights, on the list of the Round Table.
[13] Her:: the Round Table.
[14] You, and I:: you knights and I, King Arthur.
[15] meek escutcheon:: a humble sign.
[16] rank to die:: a round table without rank.
The number of knights necessary to complete the Round Table is variously staged. . . . to this famous table "one hundred knights." . . . there is an hundred knights and fiftie, ─ The British Bibliographer (1810)
It may be proper to inform the reader before he comes to Part 2, ver. 110, 111, that the "Round Table" was not peculiar to the reign of King Arthur, but was common in all the ages of Chivalry. The proclaiming a great tournament (probably with some peculiar solemnities) was called "holding a Round Table." Dugdale tells us that the great baron Roger de Mortimer "having procured the honour of knighthood to be conferred on his three sons" by King Edward I, he, at his own costs, caused a tourneament to be held at Kenilworth; where he sumptuously entertained an hundred knights, and as many ladies, for three days; the like whereof was never before in England; ─ Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1823)