This day avenge my people!' Windwaed field Heard, distant still, that multitudinous foe Trampling the darksome ways. With pallid face Morning beheld their standards, raven-black-- Penda had thus decreed, before him sending Northumbria's sentence. On a hill, thick-set Stood Oswy's army, small, yet strong in faith, A wedge-like phalanx, fenced by rocks and woods; A river in its front. His standards white Sustained the Mother-Maid and Babe Divine: From many a crag his altars rose, choir-girt, And crowned by incense wreath. An hour ere noon, That river passed, in thunder met the hosts; But Penda, straitened by that hilly tract, Could wield not half his force. Sequent as waves On rushed they: Oswy's phalanx like a cliff Successively down dashed them. Day went by: At last the clouds dispersed: the westering sun Glared on the spent eyes of those Mercian ranks Which in their blindness each the other smote, Or, trapped by hidden pitfalls, fell on stakes, And died blaspheming. Little help that day Gat they from Cambria. She on Heaven-Field height Had felt her death-wound, slow albeit to die. The apostate Ethelwald in panic fled: The East Anglians followed. Swollen by recent rains, And choked with dead, the river burst its bound, And raced along the devastated plain Till cry of drowning horse and shriek of man Rang far and farther o'er that sea of death, A battle-field but late. This way and that Briton or Mercian where he might escaped Through flood or forest. Penda scorned to fly: Thrice with extended arms he met and cursed The fugitives on rushing. As they passed He flung his crowned helm into the wave, And bit his brazen shield, above its rim Levelling a look that smote with chill like death Their hearts that saw it. Yet one moment more He sat like statue on some sculptured horse With upraised hand, close-clenched, denouncing Heaven: Then burst his mighty heart. As stone he fell Dead on the plain. Not less in after times Mercian to Mercian said, 'Without a wound King Penda died, although on battle-field, Therefore with Odin Penda shares not feast.' Thus pagan died old Penda as he lived: Yet Penda's sons were Christian, kindlier none; His daughters nuns; and lamb-like Mercia's House, Lion one while, made end. King Oswy raised His monasteries twelve: benigner life Around them spread: wild waste, and robber bands Vanished: the poor were housed, the hungry fed: And Oswy sent his little new-born babe Dewed with her mother's tear-drops, Eanfleda, Like some young lamb with fillet decked and flower, Yet dedicated not to death, but life, To Hilda sent on Whitby's sea-washed hill, Who made her Bride of Christ. The years went by,