Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim:
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.
Scott: "The Lay of the Last Minstrel."
MORNING ON THE LIEVRE
Far above us where a jay
Screams his matins to the day,
Capped with gold and amethyst,
Like a vapour from the forge
Of a giant somewhere hid,
Out of hearing of the clang
Of his hammer, skirts of mist
Slowly up the woody gorge
Lift and hang.
Softly as a cloud we go,
Sky above and sky below,
Down the river; and the dip
Of the paddles scarcely breaks,
With the little silvery drip
Of the water as it shakes
From the blades, the crystal deep
Of the silence of the morn,
Of the forest yet asleep;
And the river reaches borne
In a mirror, purple gray,
Sheer away
To the misty line of light,
Where the forest and the stream
In the shadow meet and plight,
Like a dream.
From amid a stretch of reeds,
Where the lazy river sucks
All the water as it bleeds
From a little curling creek,
And the muskrats peer and sneak
In around the sunken wrecks
Of a tree that swept the skies
Long ago,
On a sudden seven ducks
With a splashy rustle rise,
Stretching out their seven necks,
One before, and two behind,
And the others all arow,
And as steady as the wind
With a swivelling whistle go,
Through the purple shadow led,
Till we only hear their whir
In behind a rocky spur,
Just ahead.
Archibald Lampman
I call, therefore, a complete and generous education, that which fits a
man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all the offices,
both private and public, of peace and war.
Milton: "On Education."
EVENING
From upland slopes I see the cows file by,
Lowing, great-chested, down the homeward trail,
By dusking fields and meadows shining pale
With moon-tipped dandelions. Flickering high,
A peevish night-hawk in the western sky
Beats up into the lucent solitudes,
Or drops with griding wing. The stilly woods
Grow dark and deep and gloom mysteriously.
Cool night winds creep, and whisper in mine ear,
The homely cricket gossips at my feet,
From far-off pools and wastes of reeds I hear,
Clear and soft-piped, the chanting frogs break sweet
In full Pandean chorus. One by one
Shine out the stars, and the great night comes on.
Archibald Lampman
For manners are not idle, but the fruit
Of loyal nature and of noble mind.
Tennyson
AN ELIZABETHAN SEAMAN
Some two miles above the port of Dartmouth, once among the most
important harbours in England, on a projecting angle of land which runs
out into the river at the head of one of its most beautiful reaches,
there has stood for some centuries the Manor House of Greenaway. The
water runs deep all the way to it from the sea, and the largest vessels
may ride with safety within a stone's throw of the windows. In the
latter half of the sixteenth century there must have met, in the hall of
this mansion, a party as remarkable as could have been found anywhere in
England. Humfrey and Adrian Gilbert, with their half-brother, Walter
Raleigh, here, when little boys, played at sailors in the reaches of
Long Stream, in the summer evenings doubtless rowing down with the tide
to the port, and wondering at the quaint figure-heads and carved prows
of the ships which thronged it; or climbing on board, and listening,
with hearts beating, to the mariners' tales of the new earth beyond the
sunset. And here in later life, matured men, whose boyish dreams had
become heroic action, they used again to meet in the intervals of quiet,
and the rock is shown underneath the house where Raleigh smoked the
first tobacco. Another remarkable man could not fail to have made a
fourth at these meetings. A sailor-boy of Sandwich, the adjoining
parish, John Davis, showed early a genius which could not have escaped
the eye of such neighbours, and in the atmosphere of Greenaway he
learned to be as noble as the Gilberts, and as tender and delicate as
Raleigh.
In 1585 John Davis left Dartmouth on his first voyage into the Polar
Seas; and twice subsequently he went again, venturing in small,
ill-equipped vessels of thirty or forty tons into the most dangerous
seas. These voyages were as remarkable for their success as for the
daring with which they were accomplished, and Davis' epitaph is written
on the map of the world, where his name still remains to commemorate his
discoveries. Brave as he was, he is distinguished by a peculiar and
exquisite sweetness of nature, which, from many little facts of his
life, seems to have affected every one with whom he came in contact in a
remarkable degree. We find men, for the love of Master Davis, leaving
their firesides to sail with him, without other hope or motion; we find
silver bullets cast to shoot him in a mutiny; the hard, rude natures of
the mutineers being awed by something in his carriage which was not like
that of a common man. He has written the account of one of his northern
voyages himself; and there is an imaginative beauty in it, and a rich
delicacy of expression, which is called out in him by the first sight of
strange lands and things and people.
We have only space to tell something of the conclusion of his voyage
north. In latitude sixty-three degrees, he fell in with a barrier of
ice, which he coasted for thirteen days without finding an opening. The
very sight of an iceberg was new to all his crew; and the ropes and
shrouds, though it was midsummer, becoming compassed with ice,--
"The people began to fall sick and faint-hearted--whereupon, very
orderly, and with good discretion, they entreated me to regard the
safety of mine own life, as well as the preservation of theirs; and that
I should not, through over-boldness, leave their widows and fatherless
children to give me bitter curses.
"Whereupon, seeking counsel of God, it pleased His Divine Majesty to move
my heart to prosecute that which I hope shall be to His glory and to the
contentation of every Christian mind."
He had two vessels--one of some burden, the other a pinnace of thirty
tons. The result of the counsel which he had sought was, that he made
over his own large vessel to such as wished to return, and himself,
"thinking it better to die with honour than to return with infamy," went
on with such volunteers as would follow him, in a poor leaky cutter, up
the sea now in commemoration of that adventure called Davis' Strait. He
ascended four degrees north of the furthest known point, among storms
and icebergs, when the long days and twilight nights alone saved him
from being destroyed, and, coasting back along the American shore, he
discovered Hudson Strait, supposed then to be the long desired entrance
into the Pacific. This exploit drew the attention of Walsingham, and by
him Davis was presented to Burleigh, "who was also pleased to show him
great encouragement." If either these statesmen or Elizabeth had been
twenty years younger, his name would have filled a larger space in
history than a small corner of the map of the world; but, if he was
employed at all in the last years of the century, no _vates sacer_ has
been found to celebrate his work, and no clew is left to guide us. He
disappears; a cloud falls over him. He is known to have commanded
trading vessels in the Eastern seas, and to have returned five times
from India. But the details are all lost, and accident has only parted
the clouds for a moment to show us the mournful setting with which he,
too, went down upon the sea.
In taking out Sir Edward Michellthorne to India, in 1604, he fell in
with a crew of Japanese, whose ship had been burnt, drifting at sea,
without provisions, in a leaky junk. He supposed them to be pirates, but
he did not choose to leave them to so wretched a death, and took them on
board; and in a few hours, watching their opportunity, they murdered
him.
As the fool dieth, so dieth the wise, and there is no difference; it was
the chance of the sea, and the ill reward of a humane action--a
melancholy end for such a man--like the end of a warrior, not dying
Epaminondas-like on the field of victory, but cut off in some poor brawl
or ambuscade. But so it was with all these men. They were cut off in the
flower of their days, and few of them laid their bones in the sepulchres
of their fathers. They knew the service which they had chosen, and they
did not ask the wages for which they had not laboured. Life with them
was no summer holiday, but a holy sacrifice offered up to duty, and
what their Master sent was welcome. Beautiful is old age--beautiful is
the slow-dropping mellow autumn of a rich, glorious summer. In the old
man, Nature has fulfilled her work; she loads him with her blessings;
she fills him with the fruits of a well-spent life; and, surrounded by
his children and his children's children, she rocks him softly away to a
grave, to which he is followed with blessings. God forbid we should not
call it beautiful. It is beautiful, but not the most beautiful. There is
another life, hard, rough, and thorny, trodden with bleeding feet and
aching brow; the life of which the cross is the symbol; a battle which
no peace follows, this side the grave; which the grave gapes to finish,
before the victory is won; and--strange that it should be so--this is
the highest life of man. Look back along the great names of history;
there is none whose life has been other than this. They to whom it has
been given to do the really highest work in this earth--whoever they
are, Jew or Gentile, Pagan or Christian, warriors, legislators,
philosophers, priests, poets, kings, slaves--one and all, their fate has
been the same--the same bitter cup has been given them to drink. And so
it was with the servants of England in the sixteenth century. Their
life was a long battle, either with the elements or with men; and it was
enough for them to fulfil their work, and to pass away in the hour when
God had nothing more to bid them do.
Froude: "Short Studies on Great Subjects."
THE SEA-KING'S BURIAL
"My strength is failing fast,"
Said the sea-king to his men;
"I shall never sail the seas
As a conqueror again.
But while yet a drop remains
Of the life-blood in my veins,
Raise, O raise me from the bed;
Put the crown upon my head;
Put my good sword in my hand,
And so lead me to the strand,
Where my ship at anchor rides
Steadily;
If I cannot end my life
In the crimsoned battle-strife,
Let me die as I have lived,
On the sea."
They have raised King Balder up,
Put his crown upon his head;
They have sheathed his limbs in mail,
And the purple o'er him spread;
And amid the greeting rude
Of a gathering multitude,
Borne him slowly to the shore--
All the energy of yore
From his dim eyes flashing forth--
Old sea-lion of the north--
As he looked upon his ship
Riding free,
And on his forehead pale
Felt the cold, refreshing gale,
And heard the welcome sound
Of the sea.
They have borne him to the ship
With a slow and solemn tread;
They have placed him on the deck
With his crown upon his head,
Where he sat as on a throne;
And have left him there alone,
With his anchor ready weighed
And his snowy sails displayed
To the favouring wind, once more
Blowing freshly from the shore;
And have bidden him farewell
Tenderly,
Saying, "_King of mighty men,
We shall meet thee yet again,
In Valhalla, with the monarchs
Of the sea_."
Underneath him in the hold
They have placed the lighted brand;
And the fire was burning slow
As the vessel from the land,
Like a stag-hound from the slips,
Darted forth from out the ships.
There was music in her sail
As it swelled before the gale,
And a dashing at her prow
As it cleft the waves below,
And the good ship sped along,
Scudding free;
As on many a battle morn
In her time she had been borne,
To struggle and to conquer
On the sea.
And the king, with sudden strength,
Started up and paced the deck,
With his good sword for his staff
And his robe around his neck:
Once alone, he raised his hand
To the people on the land;
And with shout and joyous cry
Once again they made reply,
Till the loud, exulting cheer
Sounded faintly on his ear;
For the gale was o'er him blowing
Fresh and free;
And ere yet an hour had passed,
He was driven before the blast,
And a storm was on his path
On the sea.
"So blow, ye tempests, blow,
And my spirit shall not quail:
I have fought with many a foe,
I have weathered many a gale;
And in this hour of death,
Ere I yield my fleeting breath--
Ere the fire now burning slow
Shall come rushing from below,
And this worn and wasted frame
Be devoted to the flame--
I will raise my voice in triumph,
Singing free;--
To the great All-Father's home
I am driving through the foam,
I am sailing to Valhalla,
O'er the sea.
"So blow, ye stormy winds--
And, ye flames, ascend on high;--
In the easy, idle bed
Let the slave and coward die!
But give me the driving keel,
Clang of shields and flashing steel;
Happy, happy, thus I'd yield,
On the deck or in the field,
My last breath, shouting: 'On
To victory.'
But since this has been denied,
They shall say that I have died
Without flinching, like a monarch
Of the sea."
And Balder spoke no more,
And no sound escaped his lip;--
Neither recked he of the roar,
The destruction of his ship,
Nor the fleet sparks mounting high,
Nor the glare upon the sky;
Scarcely heard the billows dash,
Nor the burning timber crash:
Scarcely felt the scorching heat
That was gathering at his feet,
Nor the fierce flames mounting o'er him
Greedily.
But the life was in him yet,
And the courage to forget
All his pain, in his triumph
On the sea.
Once alone a cry arose,
Half of anguish, half of pride,
As he sprang upon his feet
With the flames on every side.
"I am coming!" said the king,
"Where the swords and bucklers ring--
Where the warrior lives again
With the souls of mighty men--
I am coming, great All-Father,
Unto Thee!
Unto Odin, unto Thor,
And the strong, true hearts of yore--
I am coming to Valhalla,
O'er the sea."
Charles Mackay
Reading enables us to see with the keenest eyes, to hear with the finest
ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time.
Lowell
MY CASTLES IN SPAIN
I am the owner of great estates. Many of them lie in the west, but the
greater part in Spain.
You may see my western possessions any evening at sunset when their
spires and battlements flash against the horizon. But my finest castles
are in Spain. It is a country famously romantic, and my castles are all
of perfect proportions and appropriately set in the most picturesque
situations.
I have never been in Spain myself, but I have naturally conversed much
with travellers to that country; although, I must allow, without
deriving from them much substantial information about my property there.
The wisest of them told me that there were more holders of real estate
in Spain than in any other region he had ever heard of, and they are all
great proprietors.
Every one of them possesses a multitude of the stateliest castles. It is
remarkable that none of the proprietors have ever been to Spain to take
possession and report to the rest of us the state of our property there,
and it is not easy for me to say how I know so much about my castles in
Spain.
The sun always shines upon them. They stand lofty and fair in a
luminous, golden atmosphere, a little hazy and dreamy, perhaps, like the
Indian summer, but in which no gales blow and there are no tempests.
All the sublime mountains and beautiful valleys and soft landscapes that
I have not yet seen are to be found in the grounds.
I have often wondered how I should reach my castles. I have inquired
very particularly, but nobody seemed to know the way. It occurred to me
that Bourne, the millionaire, must have ascertained the safest and most
expeditious route to Spain; so I stole a few minutes one afternoon and
went into his office.
He was sitting at his desk, writing rapidly, and surrounded by files of
papers and patterns, specimens, boxes,--everything that covers the
tables of a great merchant.
"A moment, please, Mr. Bourne." He looked up hastily, and wished me
good-morning, which courtesy I attributed to Spanish sympathy.
"What is it, sir?" he asked blandly, but with wrinkled brow.
"Mr. Bourne, have you any castles in Spain?" said I, without preface. He
looked at me for a few moments, without speaking and without seeming to
see me. His brow gradually smoothed, and his eyes apparently looking
into the street were really, I have no doubt, feasting upon the Spanish
landscape.
"Too many, too many," said he, at length, musingly, shaking his head and
without addressing me.
He feared, I thought, that he had too much impracticable property
elsewhere to own so much in Spain: so I asked:--
"Will you tell me what you consider the shortest and safest route
thither, Mr. Bourne? for, of course, a man who drives such an immense
trade with all parts of the world will know all that I have come to
inquire."
"My dear sir," answered he, wearily, "I have been trying all my life to
discover it; but none of my ships have ever been there--none of my
captains have any report to make.
"They bring me, as they brought my father, gold-dust from Guinea, ivory,
pearls, and precious stones from every part of the earth; but not a
fruit, not a solitary flower, from one of my castles in Spain.
"I have sent clerks, agents, and travellers of all kinds, philosophers,
pleasure hunters, and invalids, in all sorts of ships, to all sorts of
places, but none of them ever saw or heard of my castles, except a young
poet, and he died in a madhouse."
"Mr. Bourne, will you take five thousand at ninety-seven?" hastily
demanded a man whom, as he entered, I recognized as a broker. "We'll
make a splendid thing of it."
Bourne nodded assent, and the broker disappeared.
"Happy man!" muttered the merchant, as the broker went out; "he has no
castles in Spain."
"I am sorry to have troubled you, Mr. Bourne," said I, retiring.
"I'm glad you came," returned he; "but, I assure you, had I known the
route you hoped to ascertain from me I should have sailed years and
years ago. People sail for the Northwest Passage, which is nothing when
you have found it. Why don't the English Admiralty fit out expeditions
to discover all our castles in Spain?"
Yet I dream my dreams and attend to my castles in Spain. I have so much
property there that I could not in conscience neglect it.
All the years of my youth and hopes of my manhood are stored away, like
precious stones, in the vaults; and I know that I shall find everything
elegant, beautiful, and convenient when I come into possession.
As the years go by, I am not conscious that my interest diminishes.
Shall I tell a secret? Shall I confess that sometimes when I have been
sitting reading to my Prue "Cymbeline," perhaps, or a "Canterbury Tale,"
I have seemed to see clearly before me the broad highway to my castles
in Spain, and, as she looked up from her work and smiled in sympathy, I
have even fancied that I was already there?
George William Curtis: "Prue and I."
(Adapted)
ALADDIN
When I was a beggarly boy
And lived in a cellar damp,
I had not a friend or a toy,
But I had Aladdin's lamp;
When I could not sleep for cold,
I had fire enough in my brain,
And builded with roofs of gold
My beautiful castles in Spain!
Since then I have toiled day and night,
I have money and power good store,
But I'd give all my lamps of silver bright
For the one that is mine no more;
Take, Fortune, whatever you choose,
You gave, and may snatch again;
I have nothing 'twould pain me to lose,
For I own no more castles in Spain!
Lowell
DRAKE'S VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD
Francis Drake was born near Tavistock in the year 1545. He served his
time as an apprentice in a Channel coaster, and his master, who had been
struck with his character, left the vessel to him in his will when he
died. He was then twenty-one. His kinsman, John Hawkins, was fitting out
his third expedition to the Spanish Main, and young Drake, with a party
of his Kentish friends, went to Plymouth and joined him. In 1572 "he
made himself whole with the Spaniards" by seizing a convoy of bullion at
Panama, and on that occasion, having seen the South Pacific from the
mountains, "he fell on his knees and prayed God that he might one day
navigate those waters," which no English keel as yet had furrowed.
The time and the opportunity had come. He was now in the prime of his
strength, thirty-two years old, of middle height, with crisp brown hair,
a broad high forehead; gray, steady eyes, unusually long; small ears
tight to the head; the mouth and chin slightly concealed by the
moustache and beard, but hard, inflexible, and fierce. His dress, as he
appears in his portrait, is a loose, dark, seaman's shirt, belted at the
waist. About his neck is a plaited cord with a ring attached to it, in
which, as if the attitude was familiar, one of his fingers is slung,
displaying a small, delicate, but long and sinewy hand. When at sea he
wore a scarlet cap with a gold band, and was exacting in the respect
with which he required to be treated by his crew.
Such was Francis Drake when he stood on the deck of the Pelican in
Plymouth harbour, in November, 1577. The squadron, with which he was
preparing to sail into a chartless ocean and invade the dominions of the
King of Spain, consisted of his own ship, of a hundred and twenty tons,
the size of the smallest class of our modern Channel schooners, two
barques of fifty and thirty tons each, a second ship as it was called,
the Elizabeth, of eighty tons, not larger than a common revenue cutter,
and a pinnace, hardly more than a boat, intended to be burnt if it
could not bear the seas. These vessels, with a hundred and sixty-four
men, composed the force. The object of the expedition was kept as far as
possible secret. On the fifteenth of November the expedition sailed from
Plymouth Sound. The vessels struck across the Atlantic and made the
coast of South America on the fifth of April in latitude thirty-three
degrees South.
The perils of the voyage were now about to commence. No Englishman had
as yet passed Magellan's Strait. Cape Horn was unknown. Tierra del Fuego
was supposed to be part of a solid continent which stretched unbroken to
the Antarctic pole. A single narrow channel was the only access to the
Pacific then believed to exist. There were no charts, no records of past
experiences. It was known that Magellan had gone through, but that was
all. It was the wildest and coldest season of the year, and the vessels
in which the attempt was to be made were mere cockle-shells. They were
taken on shore, overhauled and scoured, the rigging looked to, and the
sails new bent.