O that was where the Saxons broke , On the day that Harold died ! See you the windy levels spread About the gates of Rye ? O that was where the Northmen fled , When Alfred 's ships came by ! See you our pastures wide and lone , Where the red oxen browse ? O there was a City thronged and known , Ere London boasted a house ! And see you , after rain , the trace Of mound and ditch and wall ? O that was a Legion 's camping-place , When Cæsar sailed from Gaul ! And see you marks that show and fade , Like shadows on the Downs ? O they are the lines the Flint Men made , To guard their wondrous towns ! Trackway and Camp and City lost , Salt Marsh where now is corn ; Old Wars , old Peace , old Arts that cease , And so was England born ! She is not any common Earth , Water or Wood or Air , But Merlin 's Isle of Gramarye , Where you and I will fare . The children were at the Theatre , acting to Three Cows as much as they could remember of Midsummer Night 's Dream . Their father had made them a small play out of the big Shakespeare one , and they had rehearsed it with him and with their mother till they could say it by heart . They began when Nick Bottom the weaver comes out of the bushes with a donkey 's head on his shoulders , and finds Titania , Queen of the Fairies , asleep . Then they skipped to the part where Bottom asks three little fairies to scratch his head and bring him honey , and they ended where he falls asleep in Titania 's arms . Dan was Puck and Nick Bottom , as well as all three Fairies . He wore a pointy-eared cloth cap for Puck , and a paper donkey 's head out of a Christmas cracker -- but it tore if you were not careful -- for Bottom . Una was Titania , with a wreath of columbines and a foxglove wand . The Theatre lay in a meadow called the Long Slip . A little mill-stream , carrying water to a mill two or three fields away , bent round one corner of it , and in the middle of the bend lay a large old Fairy Ring of darkened grass , which was the stage .
The millstream banks , overgrown with willow , hazel , and guelder-rose , made convenient places to wait in till your turn came ; and a grown-up who had seen it said that XXXXX himself could not have imagined a more suitable setting for his play .
Alfred Downs England Flint Northmen Saxons Shakespeare Slip Titania Una