Idylls 1 : The Coming of Arthur

[Lia]

The inchoate (?) nature of "civilization", the unending wars, the "wasted land," the struggles between beast and men, the human "sucklings" growing up like wolves ... sound a lot like Ovid's early verses in Metamorphoses, with gods smiting and respawning men, with beastly men (Lycaon, for example) "earning" annihilations and floods, and men (amongst other beasts) breeding out of stones thrown into mud swamps.

Must we imagine such violent, grotesque origins?

[Lia]

Some argue this

Reddening the sun with smoke and earth with blood,
And on the spike that split the mother’s heart
Spitting the child, brake on him, till, amazed,
He knew not whither he should turn for aid.

is an allusion to Shakespeare’s King Henry V (http://shakespeare.mit.edu/henryv/hen...)

If not, why, in a moment look to see
The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters;
Your fathers taken by the silver beards,
And their most reverend heads dash'd to the walls,
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,
Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused
Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry
At Herod's bloody-hunting slaughtermen.
What say you? will you yield, and this avoid,