’Twas a pleasant Sunday morning while the spring was in its
glory,
English spring of gentle glory; smoking by his cottage door,
Florid-faced, the man-o’-war’s-man told his white-head boy the
story,
Noble story of Aboukir told a hundred times before.
“Here, the _Theseus_--here, the _Vanguard_;” as he spoke each name
sonorous,--
_Minotaur_, _Defence_, _Majestic_, stanch old comrades of the brine,
That against the ships of Brueys made their broadsides roar in
chorus,--
Ranging daisies on his doorstone, deft he mapped the battle-line.
Mapped the curve of tall three-deckers, deft as might a man
left-handed,
Who had given an arm to England later on at Trafalgar.
While he poured the praise of Nelson to the child with eyes
expanded,
Bright athwart his honest forehead blushed the scarlet cutlass-scar.
For he served aboard the _Vanguard_, saw the Admiral blind and
bleeding
Borne below by silent sailors, borne to die as then they deemed.
Every stout heart sick but stubborn, fought the sea-dogs on
unheeding,
Guns were cleared and manned and cleared, the battle thundered,
flashed, and screamed.
Till a cry swelled loud and louder,--towered on fire the _Orient_
stately,
Brueys’ flag-ship, she that carried guns a hundred and a score;
Then came groping up the hatchway he they counted dead but lately,
Came the little one-armed Admiral to guide the fight once more.
“‘Lower the boats!’ was Nelson’s order,”--But the listening boy
beside him,
Who had followed all his motions with an eager wide blue eye,
Nursed upon the name of Nelson till he half had deified him,
Here, with childhood’s crude consistence, broke the tale to
question “Why?”
For by children facts go streaming in a throng that never pauses,
Noted not, till, of a sudden, thought, a sunbeam, gilds the motes.
All at once the known words quicken, and the child would deal with
causes.
Since to kill the French was righteous, why bade Nelson lower the
boats?
Quick the man put by the question. “But the _Orient_, none could
save her;
We could see the ships, the ensigns, clear as day-light by the
flare;
And a many leaped and left her; but, God rest ’em! some were braver;
Some held by her, firing steady till she blew to God knows where.”
At the shock, he said, the _Vanguard_ shook through all her timbers
oaken;
It was like the shock of Doomsday,--not a tar but shuddered hard.
All was hushed for one strange moment; then that awful calm was
broken
By the heavy plash that answered the descent of mast and yard.
So, her cannon still defying, and her colours flaming, flying,
In her pit her wounded helpless, on her deck her Admiral dead,
Soared the _Orient_ into darkness with her living and her dying:
“Yet our lads made shift to rescue three-score souls,” the seaman
said.
Long the boy with knit brows wondered o’er that friending of the
foeman;
Long the man with shut lips pondered; powerless he to tell the cause
Why the brother in his bosom that desired the death of no man,
In the crash of battle wakened, snapped the bonds of hate like
straws.
While he mused, his toddling maiden drew the daisies to a posy;
Mild the bells of Sunday morning rang across the churchyard sod;
And helped on by tender hands, with sturdy feet all bare and rosy,
Climbed his babe to mother’s breast, as climbs the slow world up to
God.