The knights are dust, And their good swords are rust, Their souls are with the saints, we trust. 16

Their escutcheons have long mouldered from the walls of their castles. Their castles themselves are but green mounds and shattered ruins⁠—the place that once knew them, knows them no more⁠—nay, many a race since theirs has died out and been forgotten in the very land which they occupied, with all the authority of feudal proprietors and feudal lords. What, then, would it avail the reader to know their names, or the evanescent symbols of their martial rank!