The old bear is not going to drop his dead donkey without a snap and a hug.

Come along, and tell people what it's all really like.

There will be a dozen Cockneys writing battle songs, I'll warrant, who never saw a man shot in their lives, not even a hare.
Come and give us the real genuine grit of it,--for if you can't, who can ?" "It is a grand thought! The true war poets, after all, have been warriors themselves.

Koerner and Alcaeus fought as well as sang, and sang because they fought.

Old Homer, too,--who can believe that he had not hewn his way through the very battles which he describes, and seen every wound, every shape of agony?
A noble thought, to go out with that army against the northern Anarch, singing in the van of battle, as Taillefer sang the song of Roland before William's knights, and to die like him, the proto-martyr of the Crusade, with the melody yet upon one's lips!" And his face blazed up with excitement.
"What a handsome fellow he is, after all, if there were but more of him ?" said Tom to himself.