- end_line
- 4877
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:09.927Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 4849
- text
- and valleys the warriors of the land; and publishing the royal
proclamations, whereby the unbounded hospitality of the kings’
household was freely offered to all heroes whatsoever, who for the love
of arms, and the honor of broken heads, desired to cross battle-clubs,
hurl spears, or die game in the royal valley of Deddo.
Meantime, the whole island was in a state of uproarious commotion, and
strangers were daily arriving.
The spot set apart for the festival, was a spacious down, mantled with
white asters; which, waving in windrows, lay upon the land, like the
cream-surf surging the milk of young heifers. But that whiteness, here
and there, was spotted with strawberries; tracking the plain, as if
wounded creatures had been dragging themselves bleeding from some
deadly encounter. All round the down, waved scarlet thickets of sumach,
moaning in the wind, like the gory ghosts environing Pharsalia the
night after the battle; scaring away the peasants, who with
bushel-baskets came to the jewel-harvest of the rings of Pompey’s
knights.
Beneath the heaped turf of this down, lay thousands of glorious corpses
of anonymous heroes, who here had died glorious deaths.
Whence, in the florid language of Diranda, they called this field “The
Field of Glory.”
- title
- Chunk 2