At sunset are but dust in rich disguise,
The ascending earthquake dust of battle frames
God’s pictures in the skies.
_William Alexander._
[1] The heading of a remarkable chapter in the _De Imitatione
Christi_.
PROCTER
LXXXV
THE LESSON OF THE WAR
The feast is spread through England
For rich and poor to-day;
Greetings and laughter may be there,
But thoughts are far away;
Over the stormy ocean,
Over the dreary track,
Where some are gone, whom England
Will never welcome back.
Breathless she waits, and listens
For every eastern breeze
That bears upon its bloody wings
News from beyond the seas.
The leafless branches stirring
Make many a watcher start;
The distant tramp of steeds may send
A throb from heart to heart.
The rulers of the nation,
The poor ones at their gate,
With the same eager wonder
The same great news await.
The poor man’s stay and comfort,
The rich man’s joy and pride,
Upon the bleak Crimean shore
Are fighting side by side.
The bullet comes--and either
A desolate hearth may see;
And God alone to-night knows where
The vacant place may be!
The dread that stirs the peasant
Thrills nobles’ hearts with fear--
Yet above selfish sorrow
Both hold their country dear.
The rich man who reposes
In his ancestral shade,
The peasant at his ploughshare,
The worker at his trade,
Each one his all has perilled,
Each has the same great stake,
Each soul can but have patience,
Each heart can only break!
Hushed is all party clamour;
One thought in every heart,
One dread in every household,
Has bid such strife depart.
England has called her children;
Long silent--the word came
That lit the smouldering ashes
Through all the land to flame.
O you who toil and suffer,
You gladly heard the call;
But those you sometimes envy
Have they not given their all?
O you who rule the nation,
Take now the toil-worn hand--
Brothers you are in sorrow,
In duty to your land.
Learn but this noble lesson
Ere Peace returns again,
And the life-blood of Old England
Will not be shed in vain.
_Adelaide Anne Procter._
MASSEY
LXXXVI
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE’S LAST FIGHT
Our second Richard Lion-Heart
In days of great Queen Bess,
He did this deed, he played this part,
With true old nobleness,
And wrath heroic that was nursed
To bear the fiercest battle-burst,
When maddened foes should wreak their worst.
Signalled the English Admiral,
‘Weigh or cut anchors.’ For
A Spanish fleet bore down, in all
The majesty of war,
Athwart our tack for many a mile,
As there we lay off Florez Isle,
With crews half sick, all tired of toil.
Eleven of our twelve ships escaped;
Sir Richard stood alone!
Though they were three-and-fifty sail--
A hundred men to one--
The old Sea-Rover would not run,
So long as he had man or gun;
But he could die when all was done.
‘The Devil’s broken loose, my lads,
In shape of popish Spain:
And we must sink him in the sea,
Or hound him home again.
Now, you old sea-dogs, show your paws!
Have at them tooth and nail and claws!’
And then his long, bright blade he draws.
The deck was cleared, the boatswain blew;
The grim sea-lions stand;
The death-fires lit in every eye,
The burning match in hand.
With mail of glorious intent
All hearts were clad; and in they went,
A force that cut through where ’twas sent.
‘Push home, my hardy pikemen,
For we play a desperate part;
To-day, my gunners, let them feel
The pulse of England’s heart!
They shall remember long that we
Once lived; and think how shamefully
We shook them--One to fifty-three!’
With face of one who cheerily goes
To meet his doom that day,
Sir Richard sprang upon his foes;
The foremost gave him way;
His round shot smashed them through and through,
At every flash white splinters flew,
And madder grew his fighting few.
They clasp the little ship _Revenge_,
As in the arms of fire;
They run aboard her, six at once;
Hearts beat, hot guns leap higher;--
Through bloody gaps the boarders swarm,
But still our English stay the storm,
The bulwark in their breast is firm.
Ship after ship, like broken waves
That wash upon a rock,
Those mighty galleons fall back foiled,
And shattered from the shock.
With fire she answers all their blows;
Again--again in pieces strows
The girdle round her as they close.
Through all that night the great white storm
Of worlds in silence rolled;
Sirius with green-azure sparkle,
Mars in ruddy gold.
Heaven looked with stillness terrible
Down on a fight most fierce and fell--
A sea transfigured into hell!
Some know not they are wounded till
’Tis slippery where they stand;
Then each one tighter grips his steel,
As ’twere salvation’s hand.
Grim faces glow through lurid night
With sweat of spirit shining bright:
Only the dead on deck turn white.
At day-break the flame picture fades
In blackness and in blood;
There, after fifteen hours of fight,
The unconquered Sea-King stood
Defying all the power of Spain:
Fifteen armadas hurled in vain,
And fifteen hundred foemen slain!
About that little bark _Revenge_,
The baffled Spaniards ride
At distance. Two of their good ships
Were sunken at her side;
The rest lie round her in a ring,
As, round the dying forest-king
The dogs afraid of his death-spring.
Our pikes all broken, powder spent,
Sails, masts to shivers blown;
And with her dead and wounded crew
The ship was settling down.
Sir Richard’s wounds were hot and deep,
Then cried he, with a proud, pale lip,
‘Ho, Master Gunner, sink the ship!’
‘Make ready now, my mariners,
To go aloft with me,
That nothing to the Spaniard
May remain of victory.
They cannot take us, nor we yield;
So let us leave our battle-field,
Under the shelter of God’s shield.’
They had not heart to dare fulfil
The stern commander’s word:
With swelling hearts and welling eyes,
They carried him aboard
The Spaniards’ ship; and round him stand
The warriors of his wasted band:
Then said he, feeling death at hand,
‘Here die I, Richard Grenville,
With a joyful and quiet mind;
I reach a soldier’s end, I leave
A soldier’s fame behind.
Who for his Queen and country fought,
For Honour and Religion wrought,
And died as a true soldier ought.’
Earth never returned a worthier trust
For hand of Heaven to take,
Since Arthur’s sword, Excalibur,
Was cast into the lake,
And the King’s grievous wounds were dressed,
And healed, by weeping Queens, who blessed,
And bore him to a valley of rest.
Old heroes who could grandly do,
As they could greatly dare,
A vesture very glorious
Their shining spirits wear
Of noble deeds! God give us grace,
That we may see such face to face,
In our great day that comes apace!
_Gerald Massey._
BROWN
LXXXVII
LAND, HO!
I know ’tis but a loom of land,
Yet is it land, and so I will rejoice,
I know I cannot hear His voice
Upon the shore, nor see Him stand;
Yet is it land, ho! land.
The land! the land! the lovely land!
‘Far off’ dost say? _Far off_--ah, blessed home!
Farewell! farewell! thou salt sea-foam!
Ah, keel upon the silver sand--
Land, ho! land.
You cannot see the land, my land,
You cannot see, and yet the land is there--
My land, my land, through murky air--
I did not say ’twas close at hand--
But--land, ho! land.
Dost hear the bells of my sweet land,
Dost hear the kine, dost hear the merry birds?
No voice, ’tis true, no spoken words,
No tongue that thou may’st understand--
Yet is it land, ho! land.
It’s clad in purple mist, my land,
In regal robe it is apparelléd,
A crown is set upon its head,
And on its breast a golden band--
Land, ho! land.
Dost wonder that I long for land?
My land is not a land as others are--
Upon its crest there beams a star,
And lilies grow upon the strand--
Land, ho! land.
Give me the helm! there is the land!
Ha! lusty mariners, she takes the breeze!
And what my spirit sees it sees--
Leap, bark, as leaps the thunderbrand--
Land, ho! land.
_Thomas Edward Brown._
TREVALDWYN
LXXXVIII
THE _GEORGE_ OF LOOE
O, ’twas merry down to Looe when the news was carried through
That the _George_ would put to sea all with the morning tide;
And all her jolly crew hurrah’d till they were blue
When the captain said, ‘My lads, we’ll tan the Frenchman’s hide!’
For Captain Davy Dann was a famous fightin’ man,
Who lov’d the smell o’ powder and the thunder o’ the guns,
And off the coast of France often made the Frenchmen dance
To the music from his sloop of only ninety tons.
So at the break o’ day there were hundreds on the quay
To see the gallant ship a-warping out to sea;
And the Mayor, Daniel Chubb, was hoisted on a tub,
And he cried, ‘Good luck to Dann, with a three times three!’
For the news that came from Fowey was that ev’ry man and boy
And all the gallants there were expecting of a ship.
And the lively lads o’ Looe, they thought they’d watch her too,
Lest the Frenchman showed his heels and gave ’em all the slip.
So along by Talland Bay the good ship sailed away,
And the boats were out at Polperro to see what they could see;
And old Dann, he cried, ‘Ahoy! you’d better come to Fowey,
And help to blow the Mounseers to the bottom of the sea!’
Now, ’twas almost set o’ sun, and the day was almost done,
When we sighted of a frigate beating up against the wind;
And we put on all our sail till we came within her hail,
And old Dann politely asked, ‘Will you follow us behind?’
But the Frenchmen fore and aft only stood and grinned and laughed,
And never guessed the captain was in earnest, don’t you see?
For we’d only half her guns, and were only ninety tons,
And they thought they’d blow us easy to the bottom o’ the sea.
But our brave old Captain Dann--oh, he was a proper man!--
Sang out with voice like thunder unto ev’ry man aboard:
‘Now all you men of Looe just show what you can do,
And we’ll board her, and we’ll take her, by the help o’ the Lord!’
Then up her sides we swarm’d, and along her deck we storm’d,
And sword and pike were busy for the space of half an hour;
But before the day was done, tho’ they number’d two to one,
Her commander had to yield, and his flag to lower.
Then we turn’d our ship about, and while the stars came out
We tow’d our prize right cheerily past Fowey and Polperro;
And we blest old Captain Dann, for we hadn’t lost a man,
And our wounded all were doing well a-down below.
And when we came to Looe, all the town was there to view,
And the mayor in his chain and gown he cried out lustily,
‘Nine cheers for Captain Dann, and three for every man,
And the good ship _George_ that carried them to victory!’
_Benn Wilkes Jones Trevaldwyn._
ARNOLD
LXXXIX
THE FIRST DISTRIBUTION OF THE VICTORIA CROSS
(_June 26, 1857_)
To-day the people gather from the streets,
To-day the soldiers muster near and far;
Peace, with a glad look and a grateful, meets
Her rugged brother War.
To-day the Queen of all the English land,
She who sits high o’er Kaisers and o’er Kings,
Gives with her royal hand--th’ Imperial hand
Whose grasp the earth enrings--
Her Cross of Valour to the worthiest;
No golden toy with milky pearl besprent,
But simple bronze, and for a warrior’s breast
A fair, fit ornament.
And richer than red gold that dull bronze seems,
Since it was bought with lavish waste and worth
Whereto the wealth of earth’s gold-sanded streams
Were but a lack, and dearth.
Muscovite metal makes this English Cross,
Won in a rain of blood and wreath of flame;
The guns that thundered for their brave lives’ loss
Are worn hence, for their fame!
Ay, listen! all ye maidens laughing-eyed,
And all ye English mothers, be aware!
Those who shall pass before ye at noontide
Your friends and champions are.
The men of all the army and the fleet,
The very bravest of the very brave,
Linesman and Lord, these fought with equal feet,
Firm-planted on their grave.
The men who, setting light their blood and breath
So they might win a victor’s haught renown,
Held their steel straight against the face of Death,
And frowned his frowning down.
And some that grasped the bomb, all fury-fraught,
And hurled it far, to spend its spite away--
Between the rescue and the risk no thought--
Shall pass our Queen this day.
And some who climbed the deadly glacis-side,
For all that steel could stay, or savage shell;
And some whose blood upon the Colours dried
Tells if they bore them well.
Some, too, who, gentle-hearted even in strife,
Seeing their fellow or their friend go down,
Saved his, at peril of their own dear life,
Winning the Civil Crown.
Well done for them; and, fair Isle, well for thee!
While that thy bosom beareth sons like those;
‘This precious stone set in the silver sea’
Shall never fear her foes!
_Sir Edwin Arnold._
GARNETT
XC
ABROAD
Forests that beard the avalanche,
Levels, empurpled slopes of vine,
Wrecks, sadly gay with flower and branch,
I love you, but you are not mine!
The sweet domestic sanctity
Fades in the fiery sun, like dew;
My Love beheld and passed you by,
My fathers shed no blood for you.
Pause, rambling clouds, while fancy fain
Your white similitude doth trace
To England’s cliffs, so may your rain
Fall blissful on your native place!
_Richard Garnett._
GILBERT
XCI
THE ENGLISH GIRL
A wonderful joy our eyes to bless
In her magnificent comeliness,
Is an English girl of eleven stone two,
And five foot ten in her dancing shoe!
She follows the hounds, and on she pounds--
The ‘field’ tails off and the muffs diminish--
Over the hedges and brooks she bounds
Straight as a crow from find to finish.
At cricket, her kin will lose or win--
She and her maids, on grass and clover,
Eleven maids out--eleven maids in--
(And perhaps an occasional ‘maiden over’).
_Go search the world and search the sea,
Then come you home and sing with me
There’s no such gold and no such pearl
As a bright and beautiful English girl!_
With a ten-mile spin she stretches her limbs,
She golfs, she punts, she rows, she swims--
She plays, she sings, she dances, too,
From ten or eleven till all is blue!
At ball or drum, till small hours come
(Chaperon’s fan conceals her yawning),
She’ll waltz away like a teetotum,
And never go home till daylight’s dawning.
Lawn tennis may share her favours fair--
Her eyes a-dance and her cheeks a-glowing--
Down comes her hair, but what does she care?
It’s all her own, and it’s worth the showing!
Her soul is sweet as the ocean air,
For prudery knows no haven there;
To find mock-modesty, please apply
To the conscious blush and the downcast eye.
Rich in the things contentment brings,
In every pure enjoyment wealthy,
Blithe as a beautiful bird she sings,
For body and mind are hale and healthy.
Her eyes they thrill with a right good will--
Her heart is light as a floating feather--
As pure and bright as the mountain rill
That leaps and laughs in the Highland heather.
_Go search the world and search the sea,
Then come you home and sing with me
There’s no such gold and no such pearl
As a bright and beautiful English girl!_
_William Schwenk Gilbert._
WATTS-DUNTON
XCII
THE BREATH OF AVON
TO ENGLISH-SPEAKING PILGRIMS ON SHAKESPEARE’S BIRTHDAY
I
Whate’er of woe the Dark may hide in womb
For England, mother of kings of battle and song--
Rapine, or racial hate’s mysterious wrong,
Blizzard of Chance, or fiery dart of Doom--
Let breath of Avon, rich of meadow-bloom,
Bind her to that great daughter sever’d long--
To near and far-off children young and strong--
With fetters woven of Avon’s flower perfume.
Welcome, ye English-speaking pilgrims, ye
Whose hands around the world are join’d by him,
Who make his speech the language of the sea,
Till winds of ocean waft from rim to rim
The Breath of Avon: let this great day be
A Feast of Race no power shall ever dim.
II
From where the steeds of earth’s twin oceans toss
Their manes along Columbia’s chariot-way;
From where Australia’s long blue billows play;
From where the morn, quenching the Southern Cross,
Startling the frigate-bird and albatross
Asleep in air, breaks over Table Bay--
Come hither, pilgrims, where these rushes sway
‘Tween grassy banks of Avon soft as moss!
For, if ye found the breath of ocean sweet,
Sweeter is Avon’s earthy, flowery smell,
Distill’d from roots that feel the coming spell
Of May, who bids all flowers that lov’d him meet
In meadows that, remembering Shakespeare’s feet,
Hold still a dream of music where they fell.
_Theodore Watts-Dunton._
XCIII
ENGLAND STANDS ALONE
(‘ENGLAND STANDS ALONE--WITHOUT AN ALLY.’
--_A Continental Newspaper_)
‘She stands alone: ally nor friend has she,’
Saith Europe of our England--her who bore
Drake, Blake, and Nelson--Warrior-Queen who wore
Light’s conquering glaive that strikes the conquered free.
Alone!--From Canada comes o’er the sea,
And from that English coast with coral shore,
The old-world cry Europe hath heard of yore
From Dover cliffs: ‘Ready, aye ready we!’
‘Europe,’ saith England, ‘hath forgot my boys!--
Forgot how tall, in yonder golden zone
‘Neath Austral skies, my youngest born have grown
(Bearers of bayonets now and swords for toys)--
Forgot ’mid boltless thunder--harmless noise--
The sons with whom old England ‘stands alone!’
_Theodore Watts-Dunton._
SWINBURNE
XCIV
ENGLAND
England, queen of the waves, whose green inviolate girdle enrings
thee round,
Mother fair as the morning, where is now the place of thy
foemen found?
Still the sea that salutes us free proclaims them stricken, acclaims
thee crowned.
Times may change, and the skies grow strange with signs of treason,
and fraud, and fear:
Foes in union of strange communion may rise against thee from
far and near:
Sloth and greed on thy strength may feed as cankers waxing from
year to year.
Yet, though treason and fierce unreason should league and lie and
defame and smite,
We that know thee, how far below thee the hatred burns of the
sons of night,
We that love thee, behold above thee the witness written of
life in light.
Life that shines from thee shows forth signs that none may read not
but eyeless foes:
Hate, born blind, in his abject mind grows hopeful now but as
madness grows:
Love, born wise, with exultant eyes adores thy glory, beholds and
glows.
Truth is in thee, and none may win thee to lie, forsaking the
face of truth:
Freedom lives by the grace she gives thee, born again from thy
deathless youth:
Faith should fail, and the world turn pale, wert thou the prey of the
serpent’s tooth.
Greed and fraud, unabashed, unawed, may strive to sting thee at
heel in vain:
Craft and fear and mistrust may leer and mourn and murmur and
plead and plain:
Thou art thou: and thy sunbright brow is hers that blasted the
strength of Spain.
Mother, mother beloved, none other could claim in place of thee
England’s place:
Earth bears none that beholds the sun so pure of record, so clothed
with grace:
Dear our mother, nor son nor brother is thine, as strong or as
fair of face.
How shall thou be abased? or how shall fear take hold of thy
heart? of thine,
England, maiden immortal, laden with charge of life and with
hopes divine?
Earth shall wither, when eyes turned hither behold not light in her
darkness shine.
England, none that is born thy son, and lives, by grace of thy
glory, free,
Lives and yearns not at heart and burns with hope to serve as he
worships thee;
None may sing thee: the sea-wind’s wing beats down our songs as it
hails the sea.
_Algernon Charles Swinburne._
XCV
A JACOBITE’S EXILE
(1746)
The weary day rins down and dies,
The weary night wears through:
And never an hour is fair wi’ flower,
And never a flower wi’ dew.
I would the day were night for me,
I would the night were day:
For then would I stand in my ain fair land,
As now in dreams I may.
O lordly flow the Loire and Seine,
And loud the dark Durance:
But bonnier shine the braes of Tyne
Than a’ the fields of France;
And the waves of Till that speak sae still
Gleam goodlier where they glance.
O weel were they that fell fighting
On dark Drumossie’s day:
They keep their hame ayont the faem
And we die far away.
O sound they sleep, and saft, and deep,
But night and day wake we;
And ever between the sea-banks green
Sounds loud the sundering sea.
And ill we sleep, sae sair we weep,
But sweet and fast sleep they;
And the mool that haps them roun’ and laps them
Is e’en their country’s clay;
But the land we tread that are not dead
Is strange as night by day.
Strange as night in a strange man’s sight,
Though fair as dawn it be:
For what is here that a stranger’s cheer
Should yet wax blithe to see?
The hills stand steep, the dells lie deep,
The fields are green and gold:
The hill-streams sing, and the hill-sides ring,
As ours at home of old.
But hills and flowers are nane of ours,
And ours are over sea:
And the kind strange land whereon we stand,
It wotsna what were we
Or ever we came, wi’ scathe and shame,
To try what end might be.
Scathe, and shame, and a waefu’ name,
And a weary time and strange,
Have they that seeing a weird for dreeing
Can die, and cannot change.
Shame and scorn may we thole that mourn,
Though sair be they to dree:
But ill may we bide the thoughts we hide,
Mair keen than wind and sea.
Ill may we thole the night’s watches,
And ill the weary day:
And the dreams that keep the gates of sleep,
A waefu’ gift gie they;
For the sangs they sing us, the sights they bring us,
The morn blaws all away.
On Aikenshaw the sun blinks braw,
The burn rins blithe and fain:
There’s nought wi’ me I wadna gie
To look thereon again.
On Keilder-side the wind blaws wide:
There sounds nae hunting-horn
That rings sae sweet as the winds that beat
Round banks where Tyne is born.
The Wansbeck sings with all her springs,
The bents and braes give ear;
But the wood that rings wi’ the sang she sings
I may not see nor hear;
For far and far thae blithe burns are,
And strange is a’ thing near.
The light there lightens, the day there brightens,
The loud wind there lives free:
Nae light comes nigh me or wind blaws by me
That I wad hear or see.
But O gin I were there again,
Afar ayont the faem,
Cauld and dead in the sweet, saft bed
That haps my sires at hame!
We’ll see nae mair the sea-banks fair,
And the sweet grey gleaming sky,
And the lordly strand of Northumberland,
And the goodly towers thereby;
And none shall know but the winds that blow
The graves wherein we lie.
_Algernon Charles Swinburne._
XCVI
NEW YEAR’S DAY
New Year, be good to England. Bid her name
Shine sunlike as of old on all the sea:
Make strong her soul: set all her spirit free:
Bind fast her home-born foes with links of shame
More strong than iron and more keen than flame:
Seal up their lips for shame’s sake: so shall she
Who was the light that lightened freedom be,
For all false tongues, in all men’s eyes the same.
O last-born child of Time, earth’s eldest lord,
God undiscrowned of godhead, who for man
Begets all good and evil things that live,
Do thou, his new-begotten son, implored
Of hearts that hope and fear not, make thy span
Bright with such light as history bids thee give.
_Algernon Charles Swinburne._
XCVII
TO WILLIAM MORRIS
Truth, winged and enkindled with rapture
And sense of the radiance of yore,
Fulfilled you with power to recapture
What never might singer before--
The life, the delight, and the sorrow
Of troublous and chivalrous years
That knew not of night or of morrow,
Of hopes or of fears.
But wider the wing and the vision
That quicken the spirit have spread
Since memory beheld with derision
Man’s hope to be more than his dead.
From the mists and the snows and the thunders
Your spirit has brought for us forth
Light, music, and joy in the wonders
And charms of the North.
The wars and the woes and the glories
That quicken and lighten and rain
From the clouds of its chronicled stories,
The passion, the pride, and the pain,
Where echoes were mute and the token
Was lost of the spells that they spake,
Rise bright at your bidding, unbroken
Of ages that break.
For you, and for none of us other,
Time is not: the dead that must live
Hold commune with you as a brother
By grace of the life that you give.
The heart that was in them is in you,
Their soul in your spirit endures:
The strength of their song is the sinew
Of this that is yours.
Hence is it that life, everlasting
As light and as music, abides
In the sound of the surge of it, casting
Sound back to the surge of the tides,
Till sons of the sons of the Norsemen
Watch, hurtling to windward and lea,
Round England, unbacked of her horsemen,
The steeds of the sea.
_Algernon Charles Swinburne._
HARDY
XCVIII
THE GOING OF THE BATTERY
Rain came down drenchingly; but we unblenchingly
Trudged on beside them through mirk and through mire,
They stepping steadily--only too readily!--
Scarce as if stepping brought parting-time nigher.