The son to spoil the t’ one or hazard both. No fear nor fellness fail’d on either side: The wager lay on both their lives and bloods. At length, when Mordred spied his force to faint, And felt himself oppress’d with Arthur’s strength, (O hapless lad, a match unmeet for him) He loathes to live in that afflicted state, And, valiant with a forced virtue, longs To die the death: in which perplexed mind, With grenning teeth and crabbed looks he cries, I cannot win, yet will I not be won. What! should we shun our fates, or play with Mars, Or thus defraud the wars of both our bloods? Whereto do we reserve ourselves, or why Be we not sought ere this amongst the dead? So many thousands murther’d in our cause, Must we survive, and neither win nor lose? The fates, that will not smile on either side May frown on both. So saying, forth he flings, And desperate runs on point of Arthur’s sword! (A sword, alas, prepar’d for no such use), Whereon engor’d he glides till, near approach’d, With dying hand he hews his father’s head: So through his own annoy he ’nnoys his liege, And gains by death access to daunt his sire. There Mordred fell, but like a prince he fell; And as a branch of great Pendragon’s graft His life breathes out: his eyes forsake the sun, And fatal clouds infer a lasting ’clipse. There Arthur staggering scant sustain’d himself; There Cador found a deep and deadly wound; There ceas’d the wars, and there was Britain lost! There lay the chosen youths of Mars, there lay The peerless knights, Bellona’s bravest train, There lay the mirrors rare of martial praise, There lay the hope and branch of Brute suppress’d: There fortune laid the prime of Britain’s pride, There laid her pomp, all topsy-turvy turn’d. [_Exit._ THE THIRD SCENE. GILDAS, CONAN.