Carry the queenly lass along!

--_Cold she lies, cold and dead,_--

She whose laughter was a song,

--_Lapped around with sheets of lead!_--

She whose blood was wine of the South,

--_Light her down to a couch of clay!_--

And a royal rose her mouth,

And her body made of may!

--Lift your torches, weeping, weeping,

Light her down to a couch of clay.

They should have left her in her vineyards, left her heart to her

land's own keeping,

Left her white breast room to breathe, and left her light foot

free to dance!

Hush! Between the solemn pinewoods, carry the lovely lady sleeping,

Out of the cold grey Northern mists, with banner and scutcheon,

plume, and lance,

Carry her southward, palled in purple, weeping, weeping, weeping, weeping,--

_O, ma patrie,

La plus cherie,

Adieu, plaisant pays de France!_

Well, sirs, that dark tide rose within my brain!

I snatched his keys and flung them over the hedge,

Then flung myself down on a bank of ferns

And wept and wept and wept.

It puzzled him.

Perchance he feared my mind was going and yet,

O, sirs, if you consider it rightly now,

With all those ages knocking at his doors,

With all that custom clamouring for his care,

Is it so strange a grave-digger should weep?

Well--he was kind enough and heaped my plate

That night at supper.

But I could never dig my graves at ease

In Peterborough Churchyard. So I came

To London--to St. Mary Magdalen's.

And thus, I chanced to drink my ale one night

Here in the Mermaid Inn. 'Twas All Souls' Eve,

And, on that bench, where master Ford now sits

Was master Shakespeare--

Well, the lights burned low,

And just like master Ford to-night he leaned

Suddenly forward. 'Timothy,' he said,

'That's a most marvellous ruby!'

My blood froze!

I stretched my hand out bare as it was born;

And he said nothing, only looked at me.

Then, seeing my pipe was empty, he bade me fill

And lit it for me.

Peach, the astrologer,

Was living then; and that same night I went

And told him all my trouble about this ring.

He took my hand in his, and held it--thus--

Then looked into my face and said this rhyme:--

_The ruby ring, that only three

While Time and Tide go by, shall see,

Weds your hand to history._

_Honour and pride the first shall lend;

The second shall give you gold to spend;

The third--shall warn you of your end._

Peach was a rogue, some say, and yet he spake

Most truly about the first," the sexton mused,

"For master Shakespeare, though they say in youth

Outside the theatres, he would hold your horse

For pence, prospered at last, bought a fine house

In Stratford, lived there like a squire, they say.

And here, here he would sit, for all the world

As he were but a poet! God bless us all,

And then--to think!--he rose to be a squire!

A deep one, masters! Well, he lit my pipe!"

"Why did they bury such a queen by night?"

Said Ford. "Kings might have wept for her. Did Death

Play epicure and glutton that so few

Were bidden to such a feast. Once on a time,

I could have wept, myself, to hear a tale

Of beauty buried in the dark. And hers

Was loveliness, far, far beyond the common!

Such beauty should be marble to the touch

Of time, and clad in purple to amaze

The moth. But she was kind and soft and fair,

A woman, and so she died. But, why the dark?"

"Sir, they gave out the coffin was too heavy

For gentlemen to bear!"--"For kings to bear?"

Ford flashed at him. The sexton shook his head,--

"Nay! Gentlemen to bear! But--the true cause--

Ah, sir, 'tis unbelievable, even to me,

A sexton, for a queen so fair of face!

And all her beds, even as the pedlar said,

Breathing Arabia, sirs, her walls all hung

With woven purple wonders and great tales

Of amorous gods, and mighty mirrors, too,

Imaging her own softness, night and dawn,

When through her sumptuous hair she drew the combs;

And like one great white rose-leaf half her breast

Shone through it, firm as ivory."

"Ay," said Lodge,

Murmuring his own rich music under breath,

"_About her neck did all the graces throng,

And lay such baits as did entangle death._"

"Well, sir, the weather being hot, they feared

She would not hold the burying!"...

"In some sort,"

Ford answered slowly, "if your tale be true,

She did not hold it. Many a knightly crest

Will bend yet o'er the ghost of that small hand."

There was a hush, broken by Ben at last,

Who turned to Ford--"How now, my golden lad?

The astrologer's dead hand is on thy purse!"

Ford laughed, grimly, and flung an angel down.

"Well, cause or consequence, rhyme or no rhyme,

There is thy gold. I will not break the spell,

Or thou mayst live to bury us one and all!"

"And, if I live so long," the old man replied,

Lighting his lanthorn, "you may trust me, sirs,

Mine Inn is quiet, and I can find you beds

Where Queens might sleep all night and never move.

Good-night, sirs, and God bless you, one and all."

He shouldered pick and spade. I opened the door.

The snow blew in, and, as he shuffled out,

There, in the strait dark passage, I could swear

I saw a spark of red upon his hand,

Like a great smouldering ruby.

I gasped. He stopped.

He peered at me.

"Twice in a night," he said.

"Nothing," I answered, "only the lanthorn-light."

He shook his head. "I'll tell you something more!

There's nothing, nothing now in life or death

That frightens me. Ah, things used to frighten me.

But never now. I thought I had ten years;

But if the warning comes and says '_Thou fool,

This night!_' Why, then, I'm ready."

I watched him go,

With glimmering lanthorn up the narrow street,

Like one that walked upon the clouds, through snow

That seemed to mix the City with the skies.

On Christmas Eve we heard that he was dead.

VIII

FLOS MERCATORUM

FLOS MERCATORUM! On that night of nights

We drew from out our Mermaid cellarage

All the old glory of London in one cask

Of magic vintage. Never a city on earth--

Rome, Paris, Florence, Bagdad--held for Ben

The colours of old London; and, that night,

We staved them like a wine, and drank, drank deep!

'Twas Master Heywood, whom the Mermaid Inn

Had dubbed our London laureate, hauled the cask

Out of its ancient harbourage. "Ben," he cried,

Bustling into the room with Dekker and Brome,

"The prentices are up!" Ben raised his head

Out of the chimney-corner where he drowsed,

And listened, reaching slowly for his pipe.

"_Clerk of the Bow Bell_," all along the Cheape

There came a shout that swelled into a roar.

"What! Will they storm the Mermaid?" Heywood laughed,

"They are turning into Bread Street!"

Down they came!

We heard them hooting round the poor old Clerk--

"Clubs! Clubs! The rogue would have us work all night!

He rang ten minutes late! Fifteen, by Paul's!"

And over the hubbub rose, like a thin bell,

The Clerk's entreaty--"Now, good boys, good boys,

Children of Cheape, be still, I do beseech you!

I took some forty winks, but then...." A roar

Of wrathful laughter drowned him--"Forty winks!

Remember Black May-day! We'll make you wink!"

There was a scuffle, and into the tavern rushed

Gregory Clopton, Clerk of the Bow Bell,--

A tall thin man, with yellow hair a-stream,

And blazing eyes.

"Hide me," he clamoured, "quick!

These picaroons will murder me!"

I closed

The thick oak doors against the coloured storm

Of prentices in red and green and ray,

Saffron and Reading tawny. Twenty clubs

Drubbed on the panels as I barred them out;

And even our walls and shutters could not drown

Their song that, like a mocking peal of bells,

Under our windows, made all Bread Street ring:--

"_Clerk of the Bow Bell,

With the yellow locks,

For thy late ringing

Thy head shall have knocks!_"

Then Heywood, seeing the Clerk was all a-quake,

Went to an upper casement that o'er-looked

The whole of Bread Street. Heywood knew their ways,

And parleyed with them till their anger turned

To shouts of merriment. Then, like one deep bell

His voice rang out, in answer to their peal:--

"_Children of Cheape,

Hold you all still!

You shall have Bow Bell

Rung at your will!_"

Loudly they cheered him. Courteously he bowed,

Then firmly shut the window; and, ere I filled

His cup with sack again, the crowd had gone.

"My clochard, sirs, is warm," quavered the Clerk.

"I do confess I took some forty winks!

They are good lads, our prentices of Cheape,

But hasty!"

"Wine!" said Ben. He filled a cup

And thrust it into Gregory's trembling hands.

"Yours is a task," said Dekker, "a great task!

You sit among the gods, a lord of time,

Measuring out the pulse of London's heart."

"Yea, sir, above the hours and days and years,

I sometimes think. 'Tis a great Bell--the Bow!

And hath been, since the days of Whittington."

"The good old days," growled Ben. "Both good and bad

Were measured by my Bell," the Clerk replied.

And, while he spoke, warmed by the wine, his voice

Mellowed and floated up and down the scale

As if the music of the London bells

Lingered upon his tongue. "I know them all,

And love them, all the voices of the bells.

FLOS MERCATORUM! That's the Bell of Bow

Remembering Richard Whittington. You should hear

The bells of London when they tell his tale.

Once, after hearing them, I wrote it down.

I know the tale by heart now, every turn."

"Then ring it out," said Heywood.

Gregory smiled

And cleared his throat.

"You must imagine, sirs,

The Clerk, sitting on high, among the clouds,

With London spread beneath him like a map.

Under his tower, a flock of prentices

Calling like bells, of little size or weight,

But bells no less, ask that the Bell of Bow

Shall tell the tale of Richard Whittington,

As thus."

Then Gregory Clopton, mellowing all

The chiming vowels, and dwelling on every tone

In rhythm or rhyme that helped to swell the peal

Or keep the ringing measure, beat for beat,

Chanted this legend of the London bells:--

Clerk of the Bow Bell, four and twenty prentices,

All upon a Hallowe'en, we prithee, for our joy,

Ring a little turn again for sweet Dick Whittington,

_Flos Mercatorum_, and a barefoot boy!--

"Children of Cheape," did that old Clerk answer,

"You will have a peal, then, for well may you know,

All the bells of London remember Richard Whittington

When they hear the voice of the big Bell of Bow!"--

Clerk with the yellow locks, mellow be thy malmsey!

He was once a prentice, and carolled in the Strand!

Ay, and we are all, too, Marchaunt Adventurers,

Prentices of London, and lords of Engeland.

"Children of Cheape," did that old Clerk answer,

"Hold you, ah hold you, ah hold you all still!

Souling if you come to the glory of a Prentice,

You shall have the Bow Bell rung at your will!"

"Whittington! Whittington! O, turn again, Whittington,

Lord Mayor of London," the big Bell began:

"Where was he born? O, at Pauntley in Gloucestershire

Hard by Cold Ashton, Cold Ashton," it ran.

"_Flos Mercatorum_," moaned the bell of All Hallowes,

"There was he an orphan, O, a little lad alone!"

"Then we all sang," echoed happy St. Saviour's,

"Called him, and lured him, and made him our own.

Told him a tale as he lay upon the hillside,

Looking on his home in the meadow-lands below!"

"Told him a tale," clanged the bell of Cold Abbey;

"Told him the truth," boomed the big Bell of Bow!

Sang of a City that was like a blazoned missal-book,

Black with oaken gables, carven and inscrolled;

Every street a coloured page, and every sign a hieroglyph,

Dusky with enchantments, a City paved with gold;

"Younger son, younger son, up with stick and bundle!"--

Even so we rung for him--"But--kneel before you go;

Watch by your shield, lad, in little Pauntley Chancel,

Look upon the painted panes that hold your Arms a-glow,--

Coat of Gules and Azure; but the proud will not remember it!

And the Crest a Lion's Head, until the new be won!

Far away, remember it! And O, remember this, too,--

Every barefoot boy on earth is but a younger son."

Proudly he answered us, beneath the painted window,--

"Though I be a younger son, the glory falls to me:

While my brother bideth by a little land in Gloucestershire,

All the open Earth is mine, and all the Ocean-sea.

Yet will I remember, yet will I remember,

By the chivalry of God, until my day be done,

When I meet a gentle heart, lonely and unshielded,

Every barefoot boy on earth is but a younger son!"

Then he looked to Northward for the tall ships of Bristol;

Far away, and cold as death, he saw the Severn shine:

Then he looked to Eastward, and he saw a string of colours

Trickling through the grey hills, like elfin drops of wine;

Down along the Mendip dale, the chapmen and their horses,

Far away, and carrying each its little coloured load,

Winding like a fairy-tale, with pack and corded bundle,

Trickled like a crimson thread along the silver road.

Quick he ran to meet them, stick and bundle on his shoulder!

Over by Cold Ashton, he met them trampling down,--

White shaggy horses with their packs of purple spicery,

Crimson kegs of malmsey, and the silks of London town.

When the chapmen asked of him the bridle-path to Dorset,

Blithely he showed them, and he led them on their way,

Led them through the fern with their bales of breathing Araby,

Led them to a bridle-path that saved them half a day.

Merrily shook the silver bells that hung the broidered bridle-rein,

Chiming to his hand, as he led them through the fern,

Down to deep Dorset, and the wooded Isle of Purbeck,

Then--by little Kimmeridge--they led him turn for turn.

Down by little Kimmeridge, and up by Hampshire forest-roads,

Round by Sussex violets, and apple-bloom of Kent,

Singing songs of London, telling tales of London,

All the way to London, with packs of wool they went.

"London was London, then! A clean, clear moat

Girdled her walls that measured, round about,

Three miles or less. She is big and dirty now,"

Said Dekker.

"Call it a silver moat," growled Ben,

"That's the new poetry! Call it crystal, lad!

But, till you kiss the Beast, you'll never find

Your Fairy Prince. Why, all those crowded streets,

Flung all their filth, their refuse, rags and bones,

Dead cats and dogs, into your clean clear moat,

And made it sluggish as old Acheron.

Fevers and plagues, death in a thousand shapes

Crawled out of it. London was dirty, lad;

And till you kiss that fact, you'll never see

The glory of this old Jerusalem!"

"Ay, 'tis the fogs that make the sunset red,"

Answered Tom Heywood. "London is earthy, coarse,

Grimy and grand. You must make dirt the ground,

Or lose the colours of friend Clopton's tale.

Ring on!" And, nothing loth, the Clerk resumed:--

Bravely swelled his heart to see the moat of London glittering

Round her mighty wall--they told him--two miles long!

Then--he gasped as, echoing in by grim black Aldgate,

Suddenly their shaggy nags were nodding through a throng:

Prentices in red and ray, marchaunts in their saffron,

Aldermen in violets, and minstrels in white,

Clerks in homely hoods of budge, and wives with crimson wimples,

Thronging as to welcome him that happy summer night.

"Back," they cried, and "Clear the way," and caught the ringing

bridle-reins:

"Wait! the Watch is going by, this vigil of St. John!"

Merrily laughed the chapmen then, reining their great white horses back,

"When the pageant passes, lad, we'll up and follow on!"

There, as thick the crowd surged, beneath the blossomed ale-poles,

Lifting up to Whittington a fair face afraid,

Swept against his horse by a billow of madcap prentices,

Hard against the stirrup breathed a green-gowned maid.

Swift he drew her up and up, and throned her there before him,

High above the throng with her laughing April eyes,

Like a Queen of Faerie on the great pack-saddle.

"Hey!" laughed the chapmen, "the prentice wins the prize!"

"Whittington! Whittington! the world is all before you!"

Blithely rang the bells and the steeples rocked and reeled!

Then--he saw her eyes grow wide, and, all along by Leaden Hall,

Drums rolled, earth shook, and shattering trumpets pealed.

Like a marching sunset, there, from Leaden Hall to Aldgate,

Flared the crimson cressets--O, her brows were haloed then!--

Then the stirring steeds went by with all their mounted trumpeters,

Then, in ringing harness, a thousand marching men.

Marching--marching--his heart and all the halberdiers,

And his pulses throbbing with the throbbing of the drums;

Marching--marching--his blood and all the burganets!

"Look," she cried, "O, look," she cried, "and now the morrice comes!"

Dancing--dancing--her eyes and all the Lincoln Green,

Robin Hood and Friar Tuck, dancing through the town!

"Where is Marian?" Laughingly she turned to Richard Whittington.

"Here," he said, and pointed to her own green gown.

Dancing--dancing--her heart and all the morrice-bells!

Then there burst a mighty shout from thrice a thousand throats!

Then, with all their bows bent, and sheaves of peacock arrows,

Marched the tall archers in their white silk coats,

White silk coats, with the crest of London City

Crimson on the shoulder, a sign for all to read,--

Marching--marching--and then the sworded henchmen,

Then, William Walworth, on his great stirring steed.

_Flos Mercatorum_, ay, the fish-monger, Walworth,--

He whose nets of silk drew the silver from the tide,

He who saved the king when the king was but a prentice,--

Lord Mayor of London, with his sword at his side!

Burned with magic changes, his blood and all the pageantry;

Burned with deep sea-changes, the wonder in her eyes;

_Flos Mercatorum!_ 'Twas the rose-mary of Paphos,

Reddening all the City for the prentice and his prize!

All the book of London, the pages of adventure,

Passed before the prentice on that vigil of St. John:

Then the chapmen shook their reins,--"We'll ride behind the revelry,

Round again to Cornhill! Up, and follow on!"

Riding on his pack-horse, above the shouting multitude,

There she turned and smiled at him, and thanked him for his grace:

"Let me down by _Red Rose Lane_," and, like a wave of twilight

While she spoke, her shadowy hair--touched his tingling face.

When they came to _Red Rose Lane_, beneath the blossomed ale-poles,

Light along his arm she lay, a moment, leaping down:

Then she waved "farewell" to him, and down the Lane he watched her

Flitting through the darkness in her gay green gown.

All along the Cheape, as he rode among the chapmen,

Round by _Black Friars_, to the _Two-Necked Swan_

Coloured like the sunset, prentices and maidens

Danced for red roses on the vigil of St. John.

Over them were jewelled lamps in great black galleries,

Garlanded with beauty, and burning all the night;

All the doors were shadowy with orpin and St. John's wort,

Long fennel, green birch, and lilies of delight.

"He should have slept here at the Mermaid Inn,"

Said Heywood as the chanter paused for breath.

"What? Has our Mermaid sung so long?" cried Ben.

"Her beams are black enough. There was an Inn,"

Said Tom, "that bore the name; and through its heart

There flowed the right old purple. I like to think

It was the same, where Lydgate took his ease

After his hood was stolen; and Gower, perchance;

And, though he loved the _Tabard_ for a-while,

I like to think the Father of us all,

The old Adam of English minstrelsy caroused

Here in the Mermaid Tavern. I like to think

Jolly Dan Chaucer, with his kind shrewd face

Fresh as an apple above his fur-fringed gown,

One plump hand sporting with his golden chain,

Looked out from that old casement over the sign,

And saw the pageant, and the shaggy nags,

With Whittington, and his green-gowned maid, go by.

"O, very like," said Clopton, "for the bells

Left not a head indoors that night." He drank

A draught of malmsey--and thus renewed his tale:--

"_Flos Mercatorum_," mourned the bell of All Hallowes,

"There was he an orphan, O, a little lad alone,

Rubbing down the great white horses for a supper!"

"True," boomed the Bow Bell, "his hands were his own!"

Where did he sleep? On a plump white wool-pack,

Open to the moon on that vigil of St. John,

Sheltered from the dew, where the black-timbered gallery

Frowned above the yard of the _Two-Necked Swan_.

Early in the morning, clanged the bell of St. Martin's,

Early in the morning, with a groat in his hand,

Mournfully he parted with the jolly-hearted chapmen,

Shouldered his bundle and walked into the _Strand_;

Walked into the _Strand_, and back again to _West Cheape_,

Staring at the wizardry of every painted sign,

Dazed with the steeples and the rich heraldic cornices

Drinking in the colours of the Cheape like wine.

All about the booths now, the parti-coloured prentices

Fluted like a flock of birds along a summer lane,

Green linnets, red caps, and gay gold finches,--

_What d'ye lack, and what d'ye lack, and what d'ye lack again?_

"Buy my dainty doublets, cut on double taffetas,

Buy my Paris thread," they cried, and caught him by the hand,

"Laces for your Heart's-Delight, and lawns to make her love you,

Cambric for her wimple, O, the finest in the land."

Ah, but he was hungry, foot-sore, weary,

Knocking at the doors of the armourers that day!

_What d'ye lack?_ they asked of him; but no man lacked a prentice:

When he told them what he lacked, they frowned and turned away.

Hard was his bed that night, beneath a cruel archway,

Down among the hulks, with his heart growing cold!

London is a rare town, but O, the streets of London,

Red though their flints be, they are not red with gold.

Pale in the dawn, ere he marched on his adventure,

Starving for a crust, did he kneel a-while again,

Then, upon the fourth night, he cried, O, like a wounded bird

"Let me die, if die I must, in _Red Rose Lane_."

Like a little wounded bird he trailed through the darkness,

Laid him on a door-step, and then--O, like a breath

Pitifully blowing out his life's little rushlight,

Came a gush of blackness, a swoon deep as death.

Then he heard a rough voice! Then he saw a lanthorn!

Then he saw a bearded face, and blindly wondered whose:

Then--a marchaunt's portly legs, with great Rose-Windows,

Bigger than St. Paul's, he thought, embroidered on his shoes.

"Alice!" roared the voice, and then, O like a lilied angel,

Leaning from the lighted door a fair face afraid,

Leaning over _Red Rose Lane_, O, leaning out of Paradise,

Drooped the sudden glory of his green-gowned maid!

* * * *

"O, mellow be thy malmsey," grunted Ben,

Filling the Clerk another cup.

"The peal,"

Quoth Clopton, "is not ended; but the pause

In ringing, chimes to a deep inward ear

And tells its own deep tale. Silence and sound,

Darkness and light, mourning and mirth,--no tale,

No painting, and no music, nay, no world,

If God should cut their fruitful marriage-knot.

A shallow sort to-day would fain deny

A hell, sirs, to this boundless universe.

To such I say 'no hell, no Paradise!'

Others would fain deny the topless towers

Of heaven, and make this earth a hell indeed.

To such I say, 'the unplumbed gulfs of grief

Are only theirs for whom the blissful chimes

Ring from those unseen heights.' This earth, mid-way,

Hangs like a belfry where the ringers grasp

Their ropes in darkness, each in his own place,

Each knowing, by the tune in his own heart,

Never by sight, when he must toss through heaven

The tone of his own bell. Those bounded souls

Have never heard our chimes! Why, sirs, myself

Simply by running up and down the scale

Descend to hell or soar to heaven. My bells

Height above height, deep below deep, respond!

Their scale is infinite. Dare I, for one breath,

Dream that one note hath crowned and ended all,

Sudden I hear, far, far above those clouds,

Like laughing angels, peal on golden peal,

Innumerable as drops of April rain,

Yet every note distinct, round as a pearl,

And perfect in its place, a chime of law,

Whose pure and boundless mere arithmetic

Climbs with my soul to God."

Ben looked at him,

Gently. "Resume, old moralist," he said.

"On to thy marriage-bells!"

"The fairy-tales

Are wiser than they know, sirs. All our woes

Lead on to those celestial marriage-bells.

The world's a-wooing; and the pure City of God

Peals for the wedding of our joy and pain!

This was well seen of Richard Whittington;

For only he that finds the London streets

Paved with red flints, at last shall find them paved

Like to the Perfect City, with pure gold.

Ye know the world! what was a London waif

To Hugh Fitzwarren's daughter? He was fed

And harboured; and the cook declared she lacked

A scullion. So, in Hugh Fitzwarren's house,

He turned the jack, and scoured the dripping-pan.

How could he hope for more?

This marchaunt's house

Was builded like a great high-gabled inn,

Square, with a galleried courtyard, such as now

The players use. Its rooms were rich and dim

With deep-set coloured panes and massy beams.

Its ancient eaves jutted o'er _Red Rose Lane_

Darkly, like eyebrows of a mage asleep.

Its oaken stair coiled upward through a dusk

Heavy with fume of scented woods that burned

To keep the Plague away,--a gloom to embalm

A Pharaoh, but to dull the cheek and eye

Of country lads like Whittington.

He pined

For wind and sunlight. Yet he plied his task

Patient as in old tales of Elfin-land,

The young knight would unhelm his golden locks

And play the scullion, so that he might watch

His lady's eyes unknown, and oftener hear

Her brook-like laughter rippling overhead;

Her green gown, like the breath of Eden boughs,

Rustling nigh him. And all day long he found

Sunshine enough in this. But when at night

He crept into the low dark vaulted den,

The cobwebbed cellar, where the cook had strewn

The scullion's bed of straw (and none too thick

Lest he should sleep too long), he choked for breath;

And, like an old man hoarding up his life,

Fostered his glimmering rushlight as he sate

Bolt upright, while a horrible scurry heaved

His rustling bed, and bright black-beaded eyes

Peered at him from the crannies of the wall.

Then darkness whelmed him, and perchance he slept,--

Only to fight with nightmares and to fly

Down endless tunnels in a ghastly dream,

Hunted by horrible human souls that took

The shape of monstrous rats, great chattering snouts,

Vile shapes of shadowy cunning and grey greed,

That gnaw through beams, and undermine tall towns,

And carry the seeds of plague and ruin and death

Under the careless homes of sleeping men.

Thus, in the darkness, did he wage a war

With all the powers of darkness. 'If the light

Do break upon me, by the grace of God,'

So did he vow, 'O, then will I remember,

Then, then, will I remember, ay, and help

To build that lovelier City which is paved

For rich and poor alike, with purest gold.'

Ah, sirs, he kept his vow. Ye will not smile

If, at the first, the best that he could do

Was with his first poor penny-piece to buy

A cat, and bring her home, under his coat

By stealth (or else that termagant, the cook,

Had drowned it in the water-butt, nor deemed

The water worse to drink). So did he quell

First his own plague, but bettered others, too.

Now, in those days, Marchaunt Adventurers

Shared with their prentices the happy chance

Of each new venture. Each might have his stake,

Little or great, upon the glowing tides

Of high romance that washed the wharfs of Thames;

And every lad in London had his groat

Or splendid shilling on some fair ship at sea.

So, on an April eve, Fitzwarren called

His prentices together; for, ere long,

The _Unicorn_, his tall new ship, must sail

Beyond the world to gather gorgeous webs

From Eastern looms, great miracles of silk

Dipt in the dawn by wizard hands of Ind;

Or, if they chanced upon that fabled coast

Where Sydon, river of jewels, like a snake

Slides down the gorge its coils of crimson fire,

Perchance a richer cargo,--rubies, pearls,

Or gold bars from the Gates of Paradise.

And many a moon, at least, a faerie foam

Would lap Blackfriars wharf, where London lads

Gazed in the sunset down that misty reach

For old black battered hulks and tattered sails

Bringing their dreams home from the uncharted sea.

And one flung down a groat--he had no more.

One staked a shilling, one a good French crown;

And one an angel, O, light-winged enough

To reach Cathay; and not a lad but bought

His pennyworth of wonder,

So they thought,

Till all at once Fitzwarren's daughter cried

'Father, you have forgot poor Whittington!'

"Snails,' laughed the rosy marchaunt, 'but that's true!

Fetch Whittington! The lad must stake his groat!

'Twill bring us luck!'

'Whittington! Whittington!'

Down the dark stair, like a gold-headed bird,

Fluttered sweet Alice. 'Whittington! Richard! Quick!

Quick with your groat now for the _Unicorn_!'

'A groat!' cried Whittington, standing there aghast,

With brown bare arms, still coloured by the sun,

Among his pots and pans. 'Where should I find

A groat? I staked my last groat in a cat!'

--'What! Have you nothing? Nothing but a cat?

Then stake the cat,' she said; and the quick fire

That in a woman's mind out-runs the thought

Of man, lit her grey eyes.

Whittington laughed

And opened the cellar-door. Out sailed his wealth,

Waving its tail, purring, and rubbing its head

Now on his boots, now on the dainty shoe

Of Alice, who straightway, deaf to his laughing prayers,

Caught up the cat, whispered it, hugged it close,

Against its grey fur leaned her glowing cheek,

And carried it off in triumph.

_Red Rose Lane_

Echoed with laughter as, with amber eyes

Blinking, the grey cat in a seaman's arms

Went to the wharf. 'Ay, but we need a cat,'

The captain said. So, when the painted ship

Sailed through a golden sunrise down the Thames,

A grey tail waved upon the misty poop,

And Whittington had his venture on the seas.

It was a nine days' jest, and soon forgot.

But, all that year,--ah, sirs, ye know the world,

For all the foolish boasting of the proud,

Looks not beneath the coat of Taunton serge

For Gules and Azure. A prince that comes in rags

To clean your shoes and, out of his own pride,

Waits for the world to paint his shield again

Must wait for ever and a day.

The world

Is a great hypocrite, hypocrite most of all

When thus it boasts its purple pride of race,

Then with eyes blind to all but pride of place

Tramples the scullion's heraldry underfoot,

Nay, never sees it, never dreams of it,

Content to know that, here and now, his coat

Is greasy....

So did Whittington find at last

Such nearness was most distant; that to see her,

Talk with her, serve her thus, was but to lose

True sight, true hearing. He must save his life

By losing it; forsake, to win, his love;

Go out into the world to bring her home.

It was but labour lost to clean the shoes,

And turn the jack, and scour the dripping-pan.

For every scolding blown about her ears

The cook's great ladle fell upon the head

Of Whittington; who, beneath her rule, became

The scullery's general scapegoat. It was he

That burned the pie-crust, drank the hippocras,

Dinted the silver beaker....

Many a month

He chafed, till his resolve took sudden shape

And, out of the dark house at the peep of day,

Shouldering bundle and stick again, he stole

To seek his freedom, and to shake the dust

Of London from his shoes....

You know the stone

On Highgate, where he sate awhile to rest,

With aching heart, and thought 'I shall not see

Her face again.' There, as the coloured dawn

Over the sleeping City slowly bloomed,

A small black battered ship with tattered sails

Blurring the burnished glamour of the Thames

Crept, side-long to a wharf.

Then, all at once,

The London bells rang out a welcome home;

And, over them all, tossing the tenor on high,

The Bell of Bow, a sun among the stars,

Flooded the morning air with this refrain:--

'Turn again, Whittington! Turn again, Whittington!

_Flos Mercatorum_, thy ship hath come home!

Trailing from her cross-trees the crimson of the sunrise,

Dragging all the glory of the sunset thro' the foam.

Turn again, Whittington,

Turn again, Whittington,

Lord Mayor of London!

Turn again, Whittington! When thy hope was darkest,

Far beyond the sky-line a ship sailed for thee.

_Flos Mercatorum_, O, when thy faith was blindest,

Even then thy sails were set beyond the Ocean-sea.'

So he heard and heeded us, and turned again to London,

Stick and bundle on his back, he turned to _Red Rose Lane_,

Hardly hearing as he went the chatter of the prentices,--

_What d'ye lack, and what d'ye lack, and what d'ye lack again?_

Back into the scullery, before the cook had missed him,

Early in the morning his labours he began:

Once again to clean the shoes and clatter with the water-pail,

Once again to scrub the jack and scour the dripping-pan.

All the bells of London were pealing as he laboured.

Wildly beat his heart, and his blood began to race.

Then--there came a light step and, suddenly, beside him

Stood his lady Alice, with a light upon her face.

'Quick,' she said, 'O, quick,' she said, 'they want you,

Richard Whittington!'

'Quick,' she said; and, while she spoke, her lighted eyes betrayed

All that she had hidden long, and all she still would hide from him.

So--he turned and followed her, his green-gowned maid.

* * * *

There, in a broad dark oaken-panelled room

Rich with black carvings and great gleaming cups

Of silver, sirs, and massy halpace built

Half over _Red Rose Lane_, Fitzwarren sat;

And, at his side, O, like an old romance

That suddenly comes true and fills the world

With April colours, two bronzed seamen stood,

Tattered and scarred, and stained with sun and brine.

'_Flos Mercatorum_,' Hugh Fitzwarren cried,

Holding both hands out to the pale-faced boy,

'The prentice wins the prize! Why, Whittington,

Thy cat hath caught the biggest mouse of all!'

And, on to the table, tilting a heavy sack,

One of the seamen poured a glittering stream

Of rubies, emeralds, opals, amethysts,

That turned the room to an Aladdin's cave,

Or magic goblet brimmed with dusky wine

Where clustering rainbow-coloured bubbles clung

And sparkled, in the halls of Prester John.

'And that,' said Hugh Fitzwarren, 'is the price

Paid for your cat in Barbary, by a King

Whose house was rich in gems, but sorely plagued

With rats and mice. Gather it up, my lad,

And praise your master for his honesty;

For, though my cargo prospered, yours outshines

The best of it. Take it, my lad, and go;

You're a rich man; and, if you use it well,

Riches will make you richer, and the world

Will prosper in your own prosperity.

The miser, like the cold and barren moon,

Shines with a fruitless light. The spendthrift fool

Flits like a Jack-o-Lent over quags and fens;

But he that's wisely rich gathers his gold

Into a fruitful and unwasting sun

That spends its glory on a thousand fields

And blesses all the world. Take it and go.'

Blankly, as in a dream, Whittington stared.

'How should I take it, sir? The ship was yours,

And ...'

'Ay, the ship was mine; but in that ship

Your stake was richer than we knew. 'Tis yours.'

'Then,' answered Whittington, 'if this wealth be mine,

Who but an hour ago was all so poor,

I know one way to make me richer still.'

He gathered up the glittering sack of gems,

Turned to the halpace, where his green-gowned maid

Stood in the glory of the coloured panes.

He thrust the splendid load into her arms,

Muttering--'Take it, lady! Let me be poor!

But rich, at least, in that you not despise

The waif you saved.'

--'Despise you, Whittington?'--

'O, no, not in the sight of God! But I

Grow tired of waiting for the Judgment Day!

I am but a man. I am a scullion now;

But I would like, only for half an hour,

To stand upright and say "I am a king!"

Take it!'

And, as they stood, a little apart,

Their eyes were married in one swift level look,

Silent, but all that souls could say was said.

* * * *

And

'I know a way,' said the Bell of St. Martin's.

'Tell it, and be quick,' laughed the prentices below!

'Whittington shall marry her, marry her, marry her!

Peal for a wedding,' said the big Bell of Bow.

He shall take a kingdom up, and cast it on the sea again;

He shall have his caravels to traffic for him now;

He shall see his royal sails rolling up from Araby,

And the crest--a honey-bee--golden at the prow.

Whittington! Whittington! The world is all a fairy tale!--

Even so we sang for him.--But O, the tale is true!

Whittington he married her, and on his merry marriage-day,

O, we sang, we sang for him, like lavrocks in the blue.

Far away from London, these happy prentice lovers

Wandered through the fern to his western home again,

Down by deep Dorset to the wooded isle of Purbeck,

Round to little Kimmeridge, by many a lover's lane.

There did they abide as in a dove-cote hidden

Deep in happy woods until the bells of duty rang;

Then they rode the way he went, a barefoot boy to London,

Round by Hampshire forest-roads, but as they rode he sang:--

_Kimmeridge in Dorset is the happiest of places!

All the little homesteads are thatched with beauty there!

All the old ploughmen, there, have happy smiling faces,

Christmas roses in their cheeks, and crowns of silver hair.

Blue as are the eggs in the nest of the hedge-sparrow,

Gleam the little rooms in the homestead that I know:

Death, I think, has lost the way to Kimmeridge in Dorset;

Sorrow never knew it, or forgot it, long ago!

Kimmeridge in Dorset, Kimmeridge in Dorset,

Though I may not see you more thro' all the years to be,

Yet will I remember the little happy homestead

Hidden in that Paradise where God was good to me._

* * * *

So they turned to London, and with mind and soul he laboured,

_Flos Mercatorum_, for the mighty years to be,

Fashioning, for profit--to the years that should forget him!--

This, our sacred City that must shine upon the sea.

London was a City when the Poulters ruled the Poultry!

Rosaries of prayer were hung in Paternoster Row,

Gutter Lane was Guthrun's, then; and, bright with painted missal-books,

_Ave Mary Corner_, sirs, was fairer than ye know.

London was mighty when her marchaunts loved their merchandise,

Bales of Eastern magic that empurpled wharf and quay:

London was mighty when her booths were a dream-market,

Loaded with the colours of the sunset and the sea.

There, in all their glory, with the Virgin on their bannerols,

Glory out of Genoa, the Mercers might be seen,

Walking to their Company of Marchaunt Adventurers;--

Gallantly they jetted it in scarlet and in green.

There, in all the glory of the lordly Linen Armourers,

Walked the Marchaunt Taylors with the Pilgrim of their trade,

Fresh from adventuring in Italy and Flanders,

_Flos Mercatorum_, for a green-gowned maid.

_Flos Mercatorum!_ Can a good thing come of Nazareth?

High above the darkness, where our duller senses drown,

Lifts the splendid Vision of a City, built on merchandise,

Fairer than that City of Light that wore the violet crown,

Lifts the sacred vision of a far-resplendent City,

Flashing, like the heart of heaven, its messages afar,

Trafficking, as God Himself through all His interchanging worlds,

Holding up the scales of law, weighing star by star,

Stern as Justice, in one hand the sword of Truth and Righteousness;

Blind as Justice, in one hand the everlasting scales,

Lifts the sacred Vision of that City from the darkness,

Whence the thoughts of men break out, like blossoms, or like sails!

Ordered and harmonious, a City built to music,

Lifting, out of chaos, the shining towers of law,--

Ay, a sacred City, and a City built of merchandise,

_Flos Mercatorum_, was the City that he saw.

And by that light," quoth Clopton, "did he keep

His promise. He was rich; but in his will

He wrote those words which should be blazed with gold

In London's _Liber Albus_:--

_The desire

And busy intention of a man, devout

And wise, should be to fore-cast and secure

The state and end of this short life with deeds

Of mercy and pity, especially to provide

For those whom poverty insulteth, those

To whom the power of labouring for the needs

Of life, is interdicted._

He became

The Father of the City. Felons died

Of fever in old Newgate. He rebuilt

The prison. London sickened, from the lack

Of water, and he made fresh fountains flow.

He heard the cry of suffering and disease,

And built the stately hospital that still

Shines like an angel's lanthorn through the night,

The stately halls of St. Bartholomew.

He saw men wrapt in ignorance, and he raised

Schools, colleges, and libraries. He heard

The cry of the old and weary, and he built

Houses of refuge.

Even so he kept

His prentice vows of Duty, Industry,

Obedience, words contemned of every fool

Who shrinks from law; yet were those ancient vows

The adamantine pillars of the State.

Let all who play their Samson be well warned

That Samsons perish, too!

His monument

Is London!"

"True," quoth Dekker, "and he deserves

Well of the Mermaid Inn for one good law,

Rightly enforced. He pilloried that rogue

Will Horold, who in Whittington's third year

Of office, as Lord Mayor, placed certain gums

And spices in great casks, and filled them up

With feeble Spanish wine, to have the taste

And smell of Romeney,--Malmsey!"

"Honest wine,

Indeed," replied the Clerk, "concerns the State,

That solemn structure touched with light from heaven,

Which he, our merchant, helped to build on earth.

And, while he laboured for it, all things else

Were added unto him, until the bells

More than fulfilled their prophecy.

One great eve,

Fair Alice, leaning from her casement, saw

Another Watch, and mightier than the first,

Billowing past the newly painted doors

Of Whittington Palace--so men called his house

In Hart Street, fifteen yards from old Mark Lane,--

thousand burganets and halberdiers;

A thousand archers in their white silk coats,

A thousand mounted men in ringing mail,

A thousand sworded henchmen; then, his Guild,

Advancing, on their splendid bannerols

The Virgin, glorious in gold; and then,

_Flos Mercatorum_, on his great stirring steed

Whittington! On that night he made a feast

For London and the King. His feasting hall

Gleamed like the magic cave that Prester John

Wrought out of one huge opal. East and West

Lavished their wealth on that great Citizen

Who, when the King from Agincourt returned

Victorious, but with empty coffers, lent

Three times the ransom of an Emperor

To fill them--on the royal bond, and said

When the King questioned him of how and whence,

'I am the steward of your City, sire!

There is a sea, and who shall drain it dry?'

Over the roasted swans and peacock pies,

The minstrels in the great black gallery tuned

All hearts to mirth, until it seemed their cups

Were brimmed with dawn and sunset, and they drank

The wine of gods. Lord of a hundred ships,

Under the feet of England, Whittington flung

The purple of the seas. And when the Queen,

Catharine, wondered at the costly woods

That burned upon his hearth, the Marchaunt rose,

He drew the great sealed parchments from his breast,

The bonds the King had given him on his loans,

Loans that might drain the Mediterranean dry.

'They call us hucksters, madam, we that love

Our City,' and, into the red-hot heart of the fire,

He tossed the bonds of sixty thousand pounds.

'The fire burns low,' said Richard Whittington.

Then, overhead, the minstrels plucked their strings;

And, over the clash of wine-cups, rose a song

That made the old timbers of their feasting-hall

Shake, as a galleon shakes in a gale of wind,

When she rolls glorying through the Ocean-sea:--

Marchaunt Adventurers, O, what shall it profit you

Thus to seek your kingdom in the dream-destroying sun?

Ask us why the hawthorn brightens on the sky-line:

Even so our sails break out when Spring is well begun!

_Flos Mercatorum!_ Blossom wide, ye sail of Englande,

Hasten ye the kingdom, now the bitter days are done!

Ay, for we be members, one of another,

'Each for all and all for each,' quoth Richard Whittington!

_Chorus:_--Marchaunt Adventurers,

Marchaunt Adventurers,

Marchaunt Adventurers, the Spring is well begun!

Break, break out on every sea, O, fair white sails of Englande!

'Each for all, and all for each,' quoth Richard Whittington.

Marchaunt Adventurers, O what 'ull ye bring home again?

Woonders and works and the thunder of the sea!

Whom will ye traffic with? The King of the sunset!--

What shall be your pilot, then?--A wind from Galilee!

--Nay, but ye be marchaunts, will ye come back empty-handed?--

Ay, we be marchaunts, though our gain we ne'er shall see!

Cast we now our bread upon the waste wild waters;

After many days it shall return with usury.

_Chorus:_--Marchaunt Adventurers,

Marchaunt Adventurers,

What shall be your profit in the mighty days to be?

Englande! Englande! Englande! Englande!

Glory everlasting and the lordship of the sea.

What need to tell you, sirs, how Whittington

Remembered? Night and morning, as he knelt

In those old days, O, like two children still,

Whittington and his Alice bowed their heads

Together, praying.

From such simple hearts,

O never doubt it, though the whole world doubt

The God that made it, came the steadfast strength

Of England, all that once was her strong soul,

The soul that laughed and shook away defeat

As her strong cliffs hurl back the streaming seas.

Sirs, in his old age Whittington returned,

And stood with Alice, by the silent tomb

In little Pauntley church.

There, to his Arms,

The Gules and Azure, and the Lion's Head

So proudly blazoned on the painted panes;

(O, sirs, the simple wistfulness of it

Might move hard hearts to laughter, but I think

Tears tremble through it, for the Mermaid Inn)

He added his new crest, the hard-won sign

And lowly prize of his own industry,

_The Honey-bee_. And, far away, the bells

Peal softly from the pure white City of God:--

_Ut fragrans nardus

Fama fuit iste Ricardus._

With folded hands he waits the Judgment now.

Slowly our dark bells toll across the world,

For him who waits the reckoning, his accompt

Secure, his conscience clear, his ledger spread

A _Liber Albus_ flooded with pure light.

_Flos Mercatorum,

Fundator presbyterorum_,...

Slowly the dark bells toll for him who asks

No more of men, but that they may sometimes

Pray for the souls of Richard Whittington,

Alice, his wife, and (as themselves of old

Had prayed) the father and mother of each of them.

Slowly the great notes fall and float away:--

_Omnibus exemplum

Barathrum vincendo morosum

Condidit hoc templum ...

Pauperibus pater ...

Finiit ipse dies

Sis sibi Christe quies. Amen._"

IX

RALEIGH

Ben was our only guest that day. His tribe

Had flown to their new shrine--the Apollo Room,

To which, though they enscrolled his golden verse

Above their doors like some great-fruited vine,

Ben still preferred our _Mermaid_, and to smoke

Alone in his old nook; perhaps to hear

The voices of the dead,

The voices of his old companions.

Hovering near him,--Will and Kit and Rob.

"Our Ocean-shepherd from the Main-deep sea,

Raleigh," he muttered, as I brimmed his cup,

"Last of the men that broke the fleets of Spain,

'Twas not enough to cage him, sixteen years,

Rotting his heart out in the Bloody Tower,

But they must fling him forth in his old age

To hunt for El Dorado. Then, mine host,

Because his poor old ship _The Destiny_

Smashes the Spaniard, but comes tottering home

Without the Spanish gold, our gracious king,

To please a catamite,

Sends the old lion back to the Tower again.

The friends of Spain will send him to the block

This time. That male Salome, Buckingham,

Is dancing for his head. Raleigh is doomed."

A shadow stood in the doorway. We looked up;

And there, but O, how changed, how worn and grey,

Sir Walter Raleigh, like a hunted thing,

Stared at us.

"Ben," he said, and glanced behind him.

Ben took a step towards him.

"O, my God,

Ben," whispered the old man in a husky voice,

Half timorous and half cunning, so unlike

His old heroic self that one might weep

To hear it, "Ben, I have given them all the slip!

I may be followed. Can you hide me here

Till it grows dark?"

Ben drew him quickly in, and motioned me

To lock the door. "Till it grows dark," he cried,

"My God, that you should ask it!"

"Do not think,

Do not believe that I am quite disgraced,"

The old man faltered, "for they'll say it, Ben;

And when my boy grows up, they'll tell him, too,

His father was a coward. I do cling

To life for many reasons, not from fear

Of death. No, Ben, I can disdain that still;

But--there's my boy!"

Then all his face went blind.

He dropt upon Ben's shoulder and sobbed outright,

"They are trying to break my pride, to break my pride!"

The window darkened, and I saw a face

Blurring the panes. Ben gripped the old man's arm,

And led him gently to a room within,

Out of the way of guests.

"Your pride," he said,

"That is the pride of England!"

At that name--

_England!_--

As at a signal-gun, heard in the night

Far out at sea, the weather and world-worn man,

That once was Raleigh, lifted up his head.

Old age and weakness, weariness and fear

Fell from him like a cloak. He stood erect.

His eager eyes, full of great sea-washed dawns,

Burned for a moment with immortal youth,

While tears blurred mine to see him.

"You do think

That England will remember? You do think it?"

He asked with a great light upon his face.

Ben bowed his head in silence.

* * * *

"I have wronged

My cause by this," said Raleigh. "Well they know it

Who left this way for me. I have flung myself

Like a blind moth into this deadly light

Of freedom. Now, at the eleventh hour,

Is it too late? I might return and--"

"No!

Not now!" Ben interrupted. "I'd have said

Laugh at the headsman sixteen years ago,

When England was awake. She will awake

Again. But now, while our most gracious king,

Who hates tobacco, dedicates his prayers

To Buckingham--

This is no land for men that, under God,

Shattered the Fleet Invincible."

A knock

Startled us, at the outer door. "My friend

Stukeley," said Raleigh, "if I know his hand.

He has a ketch will carry me to France,

Waiting at Tilbury."

I let him in,--

A lean and stealthy fellow, Sir Lewis Stukeley,--

liked him little. He thought much of his health,

More of his money bags, and most of all

On how to run with all men all at once

For his own profit. At the _Mermaid Inn_

Men disagreed in friendship and in truth;

But he agreed with all men, and his life

Was one soft quag of falsehood. Fugitives

Must use false keys, I thought; and there was hope

For Raleigh if such a man would walk one mile

To serve him now. Yet my throat moved to see him

Usurping, with one hand on Raleigh's arm,

A kind of ownership. "_Lend me ten pounds_,"

Were the first words he breathed in the old man's ear,

And Raleigh slipped his purse into his hand.

* * * *

Just over Bread Street hung the bruised white moon

When they crept out. Sir Lewis Stukeley's watch-dog,

A derelict bo'sun, with a mulberry face,

Met them outside. "The coast quite clear, eh, Hart?"

Said Stukeley. "Ah, that's good. Lead on, then, quick."

And there, framed in the cruddle of moonlit clouds

That ended the steep street, dark on its light,

And standing on those glistening cobblestones

Just where they turned to silver, Raleigh looked back

Before he turned the corner. He stood there.

A figure like foot-feathered Mercury,

Tall, straight and splendid, waving his plumed hat

To Ben, and taking his last look, I felt,

Upon our _Mermaid Tavern_. As he paused,

His long fantastic shadow swayed and swept

Against our feet. Then, like a shadow, he passed.

"It is not right," said Ben, "it is not right.

Why did they give the old man so much grace?

Witness and evidence are what they lack.

Would you trust Stukeley--not to draw him out?

Raleigh was always rash. A phrase or two

Will turn their murderous axe into a sword

Of righteousness--

Why, come to think of it,

Blackfriar's Wharf, last night, I landed there,

And--no, by God!--Raleigh is not himself,

The tide will never serve beyond Gravesend.

It is a trap! Come on! We'll follow them!

Quick! To the river side!"--

We reached the wharf

Only to see their wherry, a small black cloud

Dwindling far down that running silver road.

Ben touched my arm.

"Look there," he said, pointing up-stream.

The moon

Glanced on a cluster of pikes, like silver thorns,

Three hundred yards away, a little troop

Of weaponed men, embarking hurriedly.

Their great black wherry clumsily swung about,

Then, with twelve oars for legs, came striding down,

An armoured beetle on the glittering trail

Of some small victim.

Just below our wharf

A little dinghy waddled.

Ben cut the painter, and without one word

Drew her up crackling thro' the lapping water,

Motioned me to the tiller, thrust her off,

And, pulling with one oar, backing with the other,

Swirled her round and down, hard on the track

Of Raleigh. Ben was an old man now but tough,

O tough as a buccaneer. We distanced them.

His oar blades drove the silver boiling back.

By Broken Wharf the beetle was a speck.

It dwindled by Queen Hythe and the Three Cranes.

By Bellyn's Gate we had left it, out of sight.

By Custom House and Galley Keye we shot

Thro' silver all the way, without one glimpse

Of Raleigh. Then a dreadful shadow fell

And over us the Tower of London rose

Like ebony; and, on the glittering reach

Beyond it, I could see the small black cloud

That carried the great old seaman slowly down

Between the dark shores whence in happier years

The throng had cheered his golden galleons out,

And watched his proud sails filling for Cathay.

There, as through lead, we dragged by Traitor's Gate,

There, in the darkness, under the Bloody Tower,

There, on the very verge of victory,

Ben gasped and dropped his oars.

"Take one and row," he said, "my arms are numbed.

We'll overtake him yet!" I clambered past him,

And took the bow oar.

Once, as the pace flagged,

Over his shoulder he turned his great scarred face

And snarled, with a trickle of blood on his coarse lips,

"Hard!"--

And blood and fire ran through my veins again,

For half a minute more.

Yet we fell back.

Our course was crooked now. And suddenly

A grim black speck began to grow behind us,

Grow like the threat of death upon old age.

Then, thickening, blackening, sharpening, foaming, swept

Up the bright line of bubbles in our wake,

That armoured wherry, with its long twelve oars

All well together now.

"Too late," gasped Ben,

His ash-grey face uplifted to the moon,

One quivering hand upon the thwart behind him,

A moment. Then he bowed over his knees

Coughing. "But we'll delay them. We'll be drunk,

And hold the catch-polls up!"

We drifted down

Before them, broadside on. They sheered aside.

Then, feigning a clumsy stroke, Ben drove our craft

As they drew level, right in among their blades.

There was a shout, an oath. They thrust us off;

And then we swung our nose against their bows

And pulled them round with every well-meant stroke.

A full half minute, ere they won quite free,

Cursing us for a pair of drunken fools.

We drifted down behind them.

"There's no doubt,"

Said Ben, "the headsman waits behind all this

For Raleigh. This is a play to cheat the soul

Of England, teach the people to applaud

The red fifth act."

Without another word we drifted down

For centuries it seemed, until we came

To Greenwich.

Then up the long white burnished reach there crept

Like little sooty clouds the two black boats

To meet us.

"He is in the trap," said Ben,

"And does not know it yet. See, where he sits

By Stukeley as by a friend."

Long after this,

We heard how Raleigh, simply as a child,

Seeing the tide would never serve him now,

And they must turn, had taken from his neck

Some trinkets that he wore. "Keep them," he said

To Stukeley, "in remembrance of this night."

He had no doubts of Stukeley when he saw

The wherry close beside them. He but wrapped

His cloak a little closer round his face.

Our boat rocked in their wash when Stukeley dropped

The mask. We saw him give the sign, and heard

His high-pitched quavering voice--"IN THE KING'S NAME!"

Raleigh rose to his feet. "I am under arrest?"

He said, like a dazed man.

And Stukeley laughed.

Then, as he bore himself to the grim end,

All doubt being over, the old sea-king stood

Among those glittering points, a king indeed.

The black boats rocked. We heard his level voice,

"_Sir Lewis, these actions never will turn out

To your good credit._" Across the moonlit Thames

It rang contemptuously, cold as cold steel,

And passionless as the judgment that ends all.

* * * *

Some three months later, Raleigh's widow came

To lodge a se'nnight at the Mermaid Inn.

His house in Bread Street was no more her own,

But in the hands of Stukeley, who had reaped

A pretty harvest ...

She kept close to her room, and that same night,

Being ill and with some fever, sent her maid

To fetch the apothecary from Friday Street,

Old "Galen" as the Mermaid christened him.

At that same moment, as the maid went out,

Stukeley came in. He met her at the door;

And, chucking her under the chin, gave her a letter.

"Take this up to your mistress. It concerns

Her property," he said. "Say that I wait,

And would be glad to speak with her."

The wench

Looked pertly in his face, and tripped upstairs.

I scarce could trust my hands.

"Sir Lewis," I said,

"This is no time to trouble her. She is ill."

"Let her decide," he answered, with a sneer.

Before I found another word to say

The maid tripped down again. I scarce believed

My senses, when she beckoned him up the stair.

Shaking from head to foot, I blocked the way.

"Property!" Could the crux of mine and thine

Bring widow and murderer into one small room?

"Sir Lewis," I said, "she is ill. It is not right!

She never would consent."

He sneered again,

"You are her doctor? Out of the way, old fool!

She has decided!"

"Go," I said to the maid,

"Fetch the apothecary. Let it rest

With him!"

She tossed her head. Her quick eyes glanced,

Showing the white, like the eyes of a vicious mare.

She laughed at Stukeley, loitered, then obeyed.

And so we waited, till the wench returned,

With Galen at her heels. His wholesome face,

Russet and wrinkled like an apple, peered

Shrewdly at Stukeley, twinkled once at me,

And passed in silence, leaving a whiff of herbs

Behind him on the stair.

Five minutes later,

To my amazement, that same wholesome face

Leaned from the lighted door above, and called

"Sir Lewis Stukeley!"

Sir Judas hastened up.

The apothecary followed him within.

The door shut. I was left there in the dark

Bewildered; for my heart was hot with thoughts

Of those last months. Our Summer's Nightingale,

Our Ocean-Shepherd from the Main-deep Sea,

The Founder of our Mermaid Fellowship,

Was this his guerdon--at the Mermaid Inn?

Was this that maid-of-honour whose romance

With Raleigh, once, had been a kingdom's talk?

Could Bess Throckmorton slight his memory thus?

"It is not right," I said, "it is not right.

She wrongs him deeply."

I leaned against the porch

Staring into the night. A ghostly ray

Above me, from her window, bridged the street,

And rested on the goldsmith's painted sign

Opposite.

I could hear the muffled voice

Of Stukeley overhead, persuasive, bland;

And then, her own, cooing, soft as a dove

Calling her mate from Eden cedar-boughs,

Flowed on and on; and then--all my flesh crept

At something worse than either, a long space

Of silence that stretched threatening and cold,

Cold as a dagger-point pricking the skin

Over my heart.

Then came a stifled cry,

A crashing door, a footstep on the stair

Blundering like a drunkard's, heavily down;

And with his gasping face one tragic mask

Of horror,--may God help me to forget

Some day the frozen awful eyes of one

Who, fearing neither hell nor heaven, has met

That ultimate weapon of the gods, the face

And serpent-tresses that turn flesh to stone--

Stukeley stumbled, groping his way out,

Blindly, past me, into the sheltering night.

* * * *

It was the last night of another year

Before I understood what punishment

Had overtaken Stukeley. Ben, and Brome--

Ben's ancient servant, but turned poet now--

Sat by the fire with the old apothecary

To see the New Year in.

The starry night

Had drawn me to the door. Could it be true

That our poor earth no longer was the hub

Of those white wheeling orbs? I scarce believed

The strange new dreams; but I had seen the veils

Rent from vast oceans and huge continents,

Till what was once our comfortable fire,

Our cosy tavern, and our earthly home

With heaven beyond the next turn in the road,

All the resplendent fabric of our world

Shrank to a glow-worm, lighting up one leaf

In one small forest, in one little land,

Among those wild infinitudes of God.

A tattered wastrel wandered down the street,

Clad in a seaman's jersey, staring hard

At every sign. Beneath our own, the light

Fell on his red carbuncled face. I knew him--

The bo'sun, Hart.

He pointed to our sign

And leered at me. "That's her," he said, "no doubt,

The sea-witch with the shiny mackerel tail

Swishing in wine. That's what Sir Lewis meant.

He called it blood. Blood is his craze, you see.

This is the Mermaid Tavern, sir, no doubt?"

I nodded. "Ah, I thought as much," he said.

"Well--happen this is worth a cup of ale."

He thrust his hand under his jersey and lugged

A greasy letter out. It was inscribed

THE APOTHECARY AT THE MERMAID TAVERN.

I led him in. "I knew it, sir," he said,

While Galen broke the seal. "Soon as I saw

That sweet young naked wench curling her tail

In those red waves.--The old man called it blood.

Blood is his craze, you see.--But you can tell

'Tis wine, sir, by the foam. Malmsey, no doubt.

And that sweet wench to make you smack your lips

Like oysters, with her slippery tail and all!

Why, sir, no doubt, this was the Mermaid Inn."

"But this," said Galen, lifting his grave face

To Ben, "this letter is from all that's left

Of Stukeley. The good host, there, thinks I wronged

Your Ocean-shepherd's memory. From this letter,

I think I helped to avenge him. Do not wrong

His widow, even in thought. She loved him dearly.

You know she keeps his poor grey severed head

Embalmed; and so will keep it till she dies;

Weeps over it alone. I have heard such things

In wild Italian tales. But _this_ was true.

Had I refused to let her speak with Stukeley

I feared she would go mad. This letter proves

That I--and she perhaps--were instruments,

Of some more terrible chirurgery

Than either knew."

"Ah, when I saw your sign,"

The bo'sun interjected, "I'd no doubt

That letter was well worth a cup of ale."

"Go--paint your bows with hell-fire somewhere else,

Not at this inn," said Ben, tossing the rogue

A good French crown. "Pickle yourself in hell."

And Hart lurched out into the night again,

Muttering "Thank you, sirs. 'Twas worth all that.

No doubt at all."

"There are some men," said Galen,

Spreading the letter out on his plump knees,

"Will heap up wrong on wrong; and, at the last,

Wonder because the world will not forget

Just when it suits them, cancel all they owe,

And, like a mother, hold its arms out wide

At their first cry. And, sirs, I do believe

That Stukeley, on that night, had some such wish

To reconcile himself. What else had passed

Between the widow and himself I know not;

But she had lured him on until he thought

That words and smiles, perhaps a tear or two,

Might make the widow take the murderer's hand

In friendship, since it might advantage both.

Indeed, he came prepared for even more.

Villains are always fools. A wicked act,

What is it but a false move in the game,

A blind man's blunder, a deaf man's reply,

The wrong drug taken in the dead of night?

I always pity villains.

I mistook

The avenger for the victim. There she lay

Panting, that night, her eyes like summer stars

Her pale gold hair upon the pillows tossed

Dishevelled, while the fever in her face

Brought back the lost wild roses of her youth

For half an hour. Against a breast as pure

And smooth as any maid's, her soft arms pressed

A bundle wrapped in a white embroidered cloth.

She crooned over it as a mother croons

Over her suckling child. I stood beside her.

--That was her wish, and mine, while Stukeley stayed.--

And, over against me, on the other side,

Stood Stukeley, gnawing his nether lip to find

She could not, or she would not, speak one word

In answer to his letter.

'Lady Raleigh,

You wrong me, and you wrong yourself,' he cried,

'To play like a green girl when great affairs

Are laid before you. Let me speak with you

Alone.'

'But I am all alone,' she said,

'Far more alone than I have ever been

In all my life before. This is my doctor.

He must not leave me.'

Then she lured him on,

Played on his brain as a musician plays

Upon the lute.

'Forgive me, dear Sir Lewis,

If I am grown too gay for widowhood.

But I have pondered for a long, long time

On all these matters. I know the world was right;

And Spain was right, Sir Lewis. Yes, and you,

You too, were right; and my poor husband wrong.

You see I knew his mind so very well.

I knew his every gesture, every smile.

I lived with him. I think I died with him.

It is a strange thing, marriage. For my soul

(As if myself were present in this flesh)

Beside him, slept in his grey prison-cell

On that last dreadful dawn. I heard the throng

Murmuring round the scaffold far away;

And, with the smell of sawdust in my nostrils,

I woke, bewildered as himself, to see

That tall black-cassocked figure by his bed.

I heard the words that made him understand:

_The Body of our Lord--take and eat this!_

I rolled the small sour flakes beneath my tongue

With him. I caught, with him, the gleam of tears,

Far off, on some strange face of sickly dread.

_The Blood_--and the cold cup was in my hand,

Cold as an axe-heft washed with waterish red.

I heard his last poor cry to wife and child.--

Could any that heard forget it?--_My true God,

Hold you both in His arms, both in His arms._

And then--that last poor wish, a thing to raise

A smile in some. I have smiled at it myself

A thousand times.

"_Give me my pipe_," he said,

"_My old Winchester clay, with the long stem,

And half an hour alone. The crowd can wait.

They have not waited half so long as I._"

And then, O then, I know what soft blue clouds,

What wavering rings, fragrant ascending wreaths

Melted his prison walls to a summer haze,

Through which I think he saw the little port

Of Budleigh Salterton, like a sea-bird's nest

Among the Devon cliffs--the tarry quay

Whence in his boyhood he had flung a line

For bass or whiting-pollock. I remembered

(Had he not told me, on some summer night,

His arm about my neck, kissing my hair)

He used to sit there, gazing out to sea;

Fish, and for what? Not all for what he caught

And handled; but for rainbow-coloured things,

The water-drops that jewelled his thin line,

Flotsam and jetsam of the sunset-clouds;

While the green water, gurgling through the piles,

Heaving and sinking, helped him to believe

The fast-bound quay a galleon plunging out

Superbly for Cathay. There would he sit

Listening, a radiant boy, child of the sea,

Listening to some old seaman's glowing tales,

His grey eyes rich with pictures--

Then he saw,

And I with him, that gathering in the West,

To break the Fleet Invincible. O, I heard

The trumpets and the neighings and the drums.

I watched the beacons on a hundred hills.

I drank that wine of battle from _his_ cup,

And gloried in it, lying against his heart.

I sailed with him and saw the unknown worlds!

The slender ivory towers of old Cathay

Rose for us over lilac-coloured seas

That crumbled a sky-blue foam on long shores

Of shining sand, shores of so clear a glass

They drew the sunset-clouds into their bosom

And hung that City of Vision in mid-air

Girdling it round, as with a moat of sky,

Hopelessly beautiful. O, yet I heard,

Heard from his blazoned poops the trumpeters

Blowing proud calls, while overhead the flag

Of England floated from white towers of sail--

And yet, and yet, I knew that he was wrong,

And soon he knew it, too.

I saw the cloud

Of doubt assail him, in the Bloody Tower,

When, being withheld from sailing the high seas

For sixteen years, he spread a prouder sail,

Took up his pen, and, walled about with stone,

Began to write--his _History of the World_.

And emperors came like Lazarus from the grave

To wear his purple. And the night disgorged

Its empires, till, O, like the swirl of dust

Around their marching legions, that dim cloud

Of doubt closed round him. Was there any man

So sure of heart and brain as to record

The simple truth of things himself had seen?

Then who could plumb that night? The work broke off!

He knew that he was wrong. I knew it, too!

Once more that stately structure of his dreams

Melted like mist. His eagles perished like clouds.

Death wound a thin horn through the centuries.

The grave resumed his forlorn emperors.

His empires crumbled back to a little ash

Knocked from his pipe.--

He dropped his pen in homage to the truth.

The truth? _O, eloquent, just and mighty Death!_

Then, when he forged, out of one golden thought,

A key to open his prison; when the King

Released him for a tale of faerie gold

Under the tropic palms; when those grey walls

Melted before his passion; do you think

The gold that lured the King was quite the same

As that which Raleigh saw? You know the song:

"Say to the King," quoth Raleigh,

"I have a tale to tell him;

Wealth beyond derision,

Veils to lift from the sky,

Seas to sail for England,

And a little dream to sell him,

Gold, the gold of a vision

That angels cannot buy."

Ah, no! For all the beauty and the pride,

Raleigh was wrong; but not so wrong, I think,

As those for whom his kingdoms oversea

Meant only glittering dust. The fight he waged

Was not with them. They never worsted him.

It was _The Destiny_ that brought him home

Without the Spanish gold.--O, he was wrong,

But such a wrong, in Gloriana's day,

Was more than right, was immortality.

He had just half an hour to put all this

Into his pipe and smoke it,--

The red fire,

The red heroic fire that filled his veins

When the proud flag of England floated out

Its challenge to the world--all gone to ash?

What! Was the great red wine that Drake had quaffed

Vinegar? He must fawn, haul down his flag,

And count all nations nobler than his own,

Tear out the lions from the painted shields

That hung his poop, for fear that he offend

The pride of Spain? Treason to sack the ships

Of Spain? The wounds of slaughtered Englishmen

Cried out--_there is no law beyond the line!_

Treason to sweep the seas with Francis Drake?

Treason to fight for England?

If it were so,

The times had changed and quickly. He had been

A schoolboy in the morning of the world

Playing with wooden swords and winning crowns

Of tinsel; but his comrades had outgrown

Their morning-game, and gathered round to mock

His battles in the sunset. Yet he knew

That all his life had passed in that brief day;

And he was old, too old to understand

The smile upon the face of Buckingham,

The smile on Cobham's face, at that great word

_England_!

He knew the solid earth was changed

To something less than dust among the stars--

And, O, be sure he knew that he was wrong,

That gleams would come,

Gleams of a happier world for younger men,

That Commonwealth, far off. This was a time

Of sadder things, destruction of the old

Before the new was born. At least he knew

It was his own way that had brought the world

Thus far, England thus far! How could he change,

Who had loved England as a man might love

His mistress, change from year to fickle year?

For the new years would change, even as the old.

No--he was wedded to that old first love,

Crude flesh and blood, and coarse as meat and drink,

The woman--England; no fine angel-isle,

Ruled by that male Salome--Buckingham!

Better the axe than to live on and wage

These new and silent and more deadly wars

That play at friendship with our enemies.

Such times are evil. Not of their own desire

They lead to good, blind agents of that Hand

Which now had hewed him down, down to his knees,

But in a prouder battle than men knew.

His pipe was out, the guard was at the door.

Raleigh was not a god. But, when he climbed

The scaffold, I believe he looked a man.

And when the axe fell, I believe that God

Set on his shoulders that immortal head

Which he desired on earth.

O, he was wrong!

But when that axe fell, not one shout was raised.

That mighty throng around that crimson block

Stood silent--like the hushed black cloud that holds

The thunder. You might hear the headsman's breath.

Stillness like that is dangerous, being charged,

Sometimes, with thought, Sir Lewis! England sleeps!

What if, one day, the Stewart should be called

To know that England wakes? What if a shout

Should thunder-strike Whitehall, and the dogs lift

Their heads along the fringes of the crowd

To catch a certain savour that I know,

The smell of blood and sawdust?--

Ah, Sir Lewis,

'Tis hard to find one little seed of right

Among so many wrongs. Raleigh was wrong,

And yet--it was because he loved his country

Next to himself, Sir Lewis, by your leave,

His country butchered him. You did not know

That I was only third in his affections?

The night I told him--we were parting then--

I had begged the last disposal of his body,

Did he not say, with O, so gentle a smile,

"_Thou hadst not always the disposal of it

In life, dear Bess. 'Tis well it should be thine

In death!_"'

'The jest was bitter at such an hour,

And somewhat coarse in grain,' Stukeley replied.

'Indeed I thought him kinder.'

'Kinder,' she said,

Laughing bitterly.

Stukeley looked at her.

She whispered something, and his lewd old eyes

Fastened upon her own. He knelt by her.

'Perhaps,' he said, 'your woman's wit has found

A better way to solve this bitter business.'

Her head moved on the pillow with little tossings.

He touched her hand. It leapt quickly away.

She hugged that strange white bundle to her breast,

And writhed back, smiling at him, across the bed.

'Ah, Bess,' he whispered huskily, pressing his lips

To that warm hollow where her head had lain,

'There is one way to close the long dispute,

Keep the estates unbroken in your hands

And stop all slanderous tongues, one happy way.

We have some years to live; and why alone?'

'Alone?' she sighed. 'My husband thought of that.

He wrote a letter to me long ago,

When he was first condemned. He said--he said--

Now let me think--what was it that he said?--

I had it all by heart. "_Beseech you, Bess,

Hide not yourself for many days_", he said.'

'True wisdom that,' quoth Stukeley, 'for the love

That seeks to chain the living to the dead

Is but self-love at best!'

'And yet,' she said,

'How his poor heart was torn between two cares,

Love of himself and care for me, as thus:

_Love God! Begin to repose yourself on Him!

Therein you shall find true and lasting riches;

But all the rest is nothing. When you have tired

Your thoughts on earthly things, when you have travelled

Through all the glittering pomps of this proud world

You shall sit down by Sorrow in the end.

Begin betimes, and teach your little son

To serve and fear God also.

Then God will be a husband unto you,

And unto him a father; nor can Death

Bereave you any more. When I am gone,

No doubt you shall be sought unto by many

For the world thinks that I was very rich.

No greater misery can befall you, Bess,

Than to become a prey, and, afterwards,

To be despised.'_

'Human enough,' said Stukeley,

'And yet--self-love, self-love!'

'Ah no,' quoth she,

'You have not heard the end: _God knows, I speak it

Not to dissuade you_--not to dissuade you, mark--

_From marriage. That will be the best for you,

Both in respect of God and of the world._

Was _that_ self-love, Sir Lewis? Ah, not all.

And thus he ended: _For his father's sake

That chose and loved you in his happiest times,

Remember your poor child! The Everlasting,

Infinite, powerful, and inscrutable God,

Keep you and yours, have mercy upon me,

And teach me to forgive my false accusers_--

Wrong, even in death, you see. Then--_My true wife,

Farewell!

Bless my poor boy! Pray for me! My true God,

Hold you both in His arms, both in His arms!_

I know that he was wrong. You did not know,

Sir Lewis, that he had left me a little child.

Come closer. You shall see its orphaned face,

The sad, sad relict of a man that loved

His country--all that's left to me. Come, look!'

She beckoned Stukeley nearer. He bent down

Curiously. Her feverish fingers drew

The white wrap from the bundle in her arms,

And, with a smile that would make angels weep,

She showed him, pressed against her naked breast,

Terrible as Medusa, the grey flesh

And shrivelled face, embalmed, the thing that dropped

Into the headsman's basket, months agone,--

The head of Raleigh.

Half her body lay

Bare, while she held that grey babe to her heart;

But Judas hid his face....

'Living,' she said, 'he was not always mine;

But--dead--I shall not wean him'--

Then, I too

Covered my face--I cannot tell you more.

There was a dreadful silence in that room,

Silence that, as I know, shattered the brain

Of Stukeley.--When I dared to raise my head

Beneath that silent thunder of our God,

The man had gone--

This is his letter, sirs,

Written from Lundy Island: "_For God's love,

Tell them it is a cruel thing to say

That I drink blood. I have no secret sin.

A thousand pound is not so great a sum;

And that is all they paid me, every penny.

Salt water, that is all the drink I taste

On this rough island. Somebody has taught

The sea-gulls how to wail around my hut

All night, like lost souls. And there is a face,

A dead man's face that laughs in every storm,

And sleeps in every pool along the coast.

I thought it was my own, once. But I know

These actions never, never, on God's earth,

Will turn out to their credit, who believe

That I drink blood._"

He crumpled up the letter

And tossed it into the fire.

"Galen," said Ben,

"I think you are right--that one should pity villains."

* * * *

The clock struck twelve. The bells began to peal.

We drank a cup of sack to the New Year.

"New songs, new voices, all as fresh as may,"

Said Ben to Brome, "but I shall never live

To hear them."

All was not so well, indeed,

With Ben, as hitherto. Age had come upon him.

He dragged one foot as in paralysis.

The critics bayed against the old lion, now,

And called him arrogant. "My brain," he said,

"Is yet unhurt although, set round with pain,

It cannot long hold out." He never stooped,

Never once pandered to that brainless hour.

His coat was thread-bare. Weeks had passed of late

Without his voice resounding in our inn.

"The statues are defiled, the gods dethroned,

The Ionian movement reigns, not the free soul.

And, as for me, I have lived too long," he said.

"Well--I can weave the old threnodies anew."

And, filling his cup, he murmured, soft and low,

A new song, breaking on an ancient shore:

I

Marlowe is dead, and Greene is in his grave,

And sweet Will Shakespeare long ago is gone!

Our Ocean-shepherd sleeps beneath the wave;

Robin is dead, and Marlowe in his grave.

Why should I stay to chant an idle stave,

And in my Mermaid Tavern drink alone?

For Kit is dead and Greene is in his grave,

And sweet Will Shakespeare long ago is gone.

II

Where is the singer of the Faerie Queen?

Where are the lyric lips of Astrophel?

Long, long ago, their quiet graves were green;

Ay, and the grave, too, of their Faerie Queen!

And yet their faces, hovering here unseen,

Call me to taste their new-found oenomel;

To sup with him who sang the Faerie Queen;

To drink with him whose name was Astrophel.

III

I drink to that great Inn beyond the grave!

--If there be none, the gods have done us wrong.--

Ere long I hope to chant a better stave,

In some great Mermaid Inn beyond the grave;

And quaff the best of earth that heaven can save,

Red wine like blood, deep love of friends and song.

I drink to that great Inn beyond the grave;

And hope to greet my golden lads ere long.

He raised his cup and drank in silence. Brome

Drank with him, too. The bells had ceased to peal.

Galen shook hands, and bade us all good-night.

Then Brome, a little wistfully, I thought,

Looked at his old-time master, and prepared

To follow.

"Good-night--Ben," he said, a pause

Before he spoke the name. "Good-night! Good-night!

My dear old Brome," said Ben.

And, at the door,

Brome whispered to me, "He is lonely now.

There are not many left of his old friends.

We all go out--like this--into the night.

But what a fleet of stars!" he said, and shook

My hand, and smiled, and pointed to the sky.

And, when I looked into the room again,

The lights were very dim, and I believed

That Ben had fallen asleep. His great grey head

Was bowed across the table, on his arms.

Then, all at once, I knew that he was weeping;

And like a shadow I crept back again,

And stole into the night.

There as I stood

Under the painted sign, I could have vowed

That I, too, heard the voices of the dead,

The voices of his old companions,

Gathering round him in that lonely room,

Till all the timbers of the Mermaid Inn

Trembled above me with their ghostly song:

I

Say to the King, quoth Raleigh

I have a tale to tell him,

Wealth beyond derision,

Veils to lift from the sky,

Seas to sail for England

And a little dream to sell him,--

Gold, the gold of a vision,

That angels cannot buy.

II

Fair thro' the walls of his dungeon,

--What were the stones but a shadow?--

Streamed the light of the rapture,

The lure that he followed of old,

The dream of his old companions,

The vision of El Dorado,

The fleet that they never could capture,

The City of Sunset-gold.

III

Yet did they sail the seas

And, dazed with exceeding wonder,

Straight through the sunset-glory

Plunge into the dawn:

Leaving their home behind them,

By a road of splendour and thunder,

They came to their home in amazement

Simply by sailing on.

NEW POEMS

A WATCHWORD OF THE FLEET

[_For purposes of recognition at night a small squadron of

Elizabethan ships, crossing the Atlantic, adopted as a

watchword the sentence: Before the world--was God._]

They diced with Death. Their big sea-boots

Were greased with blood. They swept the seas

For England; and--we reap the fruits

Of their heroic deviltries!

Our creed is in the cold machine,

The inhuman devildoms of brain,

The bolt that splits the midnight main,

Loosed at a lever's touch; the lean

Torpedo; "Twenty Miles of Power";

The steel-clad Dreadnoughts' dark array!

Yet ... we that keep the conning tower

Are not so strong as they

Whose watchword we disdain.

They laughed at odds for England's sake!

We count, yet cast our strength away.

One Admiral with the soul of Drake

Would break the fleets of hell to-day!

Give us the splendid heavens of youth,

Give us the banners of deathless flame,

The ringing watchwords of their fame,

The faith, the hope, the simple truth!

Then shall the Deep indeed be swayed

Through all its boundless breadth and length,

Nor this proud England lean dismayed

On twenty miles of strength,

Or shrink from aught but shame.

Pull out by night, O leave the shore

And lighted streets of Plymouth town,

Pull out into the Deep once more!

There, in the night of their renown,

The same great waters roll their gloom

Around our midget period;

And the huge decks that Raleigh trod

Over our petty darkness loom!

Along the line the cry is passed

From all their heaven-illumined spars,

Clear as a bell, from mast to mast,

It rings against the stars:

_Before the world--was God._

NEW WARS FOR OLD

"_Peace with its luxury is the corrupter of Nations._"

_Any militarist Journal._

I

Peace! When have we prayed for peace?

Over us burns a star

Bright, beautiful, red for strife!

Yours are only the drum and the fife

And the golden braid and the surface of life!

Ours is the white-hot war!

II

Peace? When have we prayed for peace?

Ours are the weapons of men!

Time changes the face of the world!

Therefore your ancient flags are furled,

And ours are the unseen legions hurled

Up to the heights again!

III

Peace? When have we prayed for peace?

Is there no wrong to right?

Wrong crying to God on high

Here where the weak and the helpless die,

And the homeless hordes of the city go by,

The ranks are rallied to-night!

IV

Peace? When have we prayed for peace?

Are ye so dazed with words?

Earth, heaven, shall pass away

Ere for your passionless peace we pray!

Are ye deaf to the trumpets that call us to-day,

Blind to the blazing swords?

THE PRAYER FOR PEACE

"_Unless public opinion can rise to the height of discussing

the substitution of law for force as a great world-movement,

the American arbitration proposals cannot be carried out._"

_Sir Edward Grey._

I

Dare we--though our hope deferred

Left us faithless long ago--

Dare we let our hearts be stirred,

Lift them to the light and _know_,

Cast away our cynic shields,

Break the sword that Mockery wields,

_Know_ that Truth indeed prevails,

And that Justice holds the scales?

Britain, kneel!

Kneel, Imperial Commonweal!

II

Dare we know that this great hour,

Dawning on thy long renown,

Marks the purpose of thy power,

Crowns thee with a mightier crown,

Know that to this purpose climb

All the blood-red wars of Time?

If indeed thou _hast_ a goal

Beaconing to thy warrior soul,

Britain, kneel!

Kneel, Imperial Commonweal!

III

Dare we know what every age

Writes with an unerring hand,

Read the midnight's moving page,

Read the stars and understand,--

Out of Chaos ye shall draw

Linked harmonies of Law,

Till around the Eternal Sun

All your peoples move in one?

Britain, kneel!

Kneel, Imperial Commonweal!

IV

Dare we know that wearied eyes

Dimmed with dust of every day

_Can_, once more, desire the skies

And the glorious upward way?

Dare we, if the Truth should still

Vex with doubt our alien will,

Take it to our Maker's throne,

Let Him speak with us alone?

Britain, kneel!

Kneel, Imperial Commonweal!

V

_Dare we cast our pride away?

Dare we tread where Lincoln trod?

All the Future, by this day,

Waits to judge us and our God!

Set the struggling peoples free!

Crown with Law their Liberty!

Proud with an immortal pride,

Kneel we at our Sister's side!

Britain, kneel!

Kneel, Imperial Commonweal!_

THE SWORD OF ENGLAND

(_Written during a European war crisis_)

Not as one muttering in a spell-bound sleep

Shall England speak the word;

Not idly bid the embattled lightnings leap,

Nor lightly draw the sword!

Let statesmen grope by night in a blind dream,

The cold clear morning star

Should like a trophy in her helmet gleam

When England sweeps to war!

Not like a derelict, drunk with surf and spray,

And drifting down to doom;

But like the Sun-god calling up the day

Should England rend that gloom.

Not as in trance, at some hypnotic call,

Nor with a doubtful cry;

But a clear faith, like a banner above us all,

Rolling from sky to sky.

She sheds no blood to that vain god of strife

Whom striplings call "renown";

She knows that only they who reverence life

Can nobly lay it down;

And these will ride from child and home and love,

Through death and hell that day;

But O, her faith, her flag, must burn above,

Her soul must lead the way!

THE DAWN OF PEACE

Yes--"on our brows we feel the breath

Of dawn," though in the night we wait!

An arrow is in the heart of Death,

A God is at the doors of Fate!

The spirit that moved upon the Deep

Is moving through the minds of men:

The nations feel it in their sleep,

A change has touched their dreams again.

Voices, confused, and faint, arise,

Troubling their hearts from East and West.

A doubtful light is in their skies,

A gleam that will not let them rest:

The dawn, the dawn is on the wing,

The stir of change on every side,

Unsignalled as the approach of Spring,

Invincible as the hawthorn-tide.

Have ye not heard it, far and nigh,

The voice of France across the dark,

And all the Atlantic with one cry

Beating the shores of Europe?--hark!

Then--if ye will--uplift your word

Of cynic wisdom! Once again

Tell us He came to bring a sword,

Tell us He lived and died in vain.

Say that we dream! Our dreams have woven

Truths that out-face the burning sun:

The lightnings, that we dreamed, have cloven

Time, space, and linked all lands in one!

Dreams! But their swift celestial fingers

Have knit the world with threads of steel,

Till no remotest island lingers

Beyond the world's one Commonweal.

Tell us that custom, sloth, and fear

Are strong, then name them "common-sense"!

Tell us that greed rules everywhere,

Then dub the lie "experience":

Year after year, age after age,

Has handed down, thro' fool and child,

For earth's divinest heritage

The dreams whereon old wisdom smiled.

Dreams are they? But ye cannot stay them,

Or thrust the dawn back for one hour!

Truth, Love, and Justice, if ye slay them,

Return with more than earthly power:

Strive, if ye will, to seal the fountains

That send the Spring thro' leaf and spray:

Drive back the sun from the Eastern mountains,

Then--bid this mightier movement stay.

It is the Dawn of Peace! The nations

From East to West have heard a cry,--

"Through all earth's blood-red generations

By hate and slaughter climbed thus high,

Here--on this height--still to aspire,

One only path remains untrod,

One path of love and peace climbs higher!

Make straight that highway for our God."

THE BRINGERS OF GOOD NEWS

Like fallen stars the watch-fires gleamed

Along our menaced age that night!

Our bivouacked century tossed and dreamed

Of battle with the approaching light.

Rumors of change, a sea-like roar,

Shook the firm earth with doubt and dread:

The clouds, in rushing legions bore

Their tattered eagles overhead.

I saw the muffled sentries rest

On the dark hills of Time. I saw

Around them march from East to West

The stars of the unresting law.

I knew that in their mighty course

They brought the dawn, they brought the day;

And that the unconquerable force

Of the new years was on the way.

I heard the feet of that great throng!

I saw them shine, like hope, afar!

Their shout, their shout was like a song,

And O, 'twas not a song of war!

Yet, as the whole world with their tramp

Quivered, a signal-lightning spoke,

A bugle warned our darkling camp,

And, like a thunder-cloud, it woke.

Our searchlights raked the world's wide ends.

O'er the dark hills a grey light crept.

Down, through the light, that host of friends

We took for foemen, triumphing swept.

The old century could not hear their cry,

How should it hear the song they sang?

_We bring good news!_ It pierced the sky!

_We bring good news!_ The welkin rang.

One shout of triumph and of faith;

And then--our shattering cannon roared!

But, over the reeking ranks of death,

The song rose like a single sword.

_We bring good news!_ Red flared the guns!

_We bring good news!_ The sabres flashed!

And the dark age with its own sons

In blind and furious battle clashed.

A swift, a terrible bugle pealed.

The sulphurous clouds were rolled away.

Embraced, embraced, on that red field,

The wounded and the dying lay.

_We bring good news!_ Blood choked the word,

--_We knew you not; so dark the night!--

O father, was I worth your sword?

O son, O herald of the light!_

_We bring good news!_--The darkness fills

Mine eyes!--Nay, the night ebbs away!

And, over the everlasting hills,

The great new dawn led on the day.

THE LONELY SHRINE

(_A few months after the Milton Ter-centenary._)

I

The crowd has passed away,

Faded the feast, and most forget!

Master, we come with lowly hearts to pay

Our deeper debt.

II

High they upheld the wine,

And royally, royally drank to thee!

Loud were their plaudits. Now the lonely shrine

Accepts our knee.

III

All dark and silent now!

Master, thy few are faithful still,

And nightly hear thy brooks that warbling flow

By Siloa's hill.

AT NOON

(AFTER THE FRENCH OF VERLAINE)

The sky is blue above the roof,

So calm, so blue;

One rustling bough above the roof

Rocks, the noon through.

The bell-tower in the sky, aloof,

Tenderly rings!

A bird upon the bough, aloof,

Sorrows and sings.

My God, my God, and life is here

So simple and still!

Far off, the murmuring town I hear

At the wind's will....

_What hast thou done, thou, weeping there?

O quick, the truth!

What hast thou done, thou, weeping there,

With thy lost youth?_

TO A FRIEND OF BOYHOOD LOST AT SEA

O warm blue sky and dazzling sea,

Where have you hid my friend from me?

The white-chalk coast, the leagues of surf

Laugh to the May-light, now as then,

And violets in the short sweet turf

Make fragmentary heavens again,

And sea-born wings of rustling snow

Pass and re-pass as long ago.

Old friend, do you remember yet

The days when secretly we met

In that old harbor years a-back,

Where I admired your billowing walk,

Or in that perilous fishing smack

What tarry oaths perfumed your talk,

The sails we set, the ropes we spliced,

The raw potato that we sliced,

For mackerel-bait--and how it shines

Far down, at end of the taut lines!--

And the great catch we made that day,

Loading our boat with rainbows, quick

And quivering, while you smoked your clay

And I took home your "Deadwood Dick"

In yellow and red, when day was done

And you took home my Stevenson?

Not leagues, as when you sailed the deep,

But only some frail bars of sleep

Sever us now! Methinks you still

Recall, as I, in dreams, the quay,

The little port below the hill:

And all the changes of the sea,

Like some great music, can but roll

Our lives still nearer to the goal.

OUR LADY OF THE TWILIGHT

Our Lady of the Twilight

From out the sunset-lands

Comes gently stealing o'er the world

And stretches out her hands,

Over the blotched and broken wall,

The blind and foetid lane,

She stretches out her hands and all

Is beautiful again.

No factory chimneys can defile

The beauty of her dress:

She stoops down with her heavenly smile

To heal and love and bless:

All tortured things, all evil powers,

All shapes of dark distress

Are turned to fragrance and to flowers

Beneath her kind caress.

Our Lady of the Twilight,

She melts our prison-bars!

She makes the sea forget the shore,

She fills the sky with stars,

And stooping over wharf and mill,

Chimney and shed and dome,

Turns them to fairy palaces,

Then calls her children home.

She stoops to bless the stunted tree,

And from the furrowed plain,

And from the wrinkled brow she smooths

The lines of care and pain:

Hers are the gentle hands and eyes

And hers the peaceful breath

That ope, in sunset-softened skies,

The quiet gates of death.

_Our Lady of the Twilight,

She hath such gentle hands,

So lovely are the gifts she brings

From out the sunset-lands,

So bountiful, so merciful

So sweet of soul is she;

And over all the world she draws

Her cloak of charity._

THE HILL-FLOWERS

"_I will lift up mine eyes to the hills"_

I

_Moving through the dew, moving through the dew,

Ere I waken in the city--Life, thy dawn makes all things new!

And up a fir-clad glen, far from all the haunts of men,

Up a glen among the mountains, oh my feet are wings again!_

Moving through the dew, moving through the dew,

O mountains of my boyhood, I come again to you,

By the little path I know, with the sea far below,

And above, the great cloud-galleons with their sails of rose and snow;

As of old, when all was young, and the earth a song unsung

And the heather through the crimson dawn its Eden incense flung

From the mountain-heights of joy, for a careless-hearted boy,

And the lavrocks rose like fountain sprays of bliss that ne'er could cloy,

From their little beds of bloom, from the golden gorse and broom,

With a song to God the Giver, o'er that waste of wild perfume;

Blowing from height to height, in a glory of great light,

While the cottage-clustered valleys held the lilac last of night,

So, when dawn is in the skies, in a dream, a dream, I rise,

And I follow my lost boyhood to the heights of Paradise.

Life, thy dawn makes all things new! Hills of Youth, I come to you,

Moving through the dew, moving through the dew.

II

Moving through the dew, moving through the dew,

Floats a brother's face to meet me! Is it you? Is it you?

For the night I leave behind keeps these dazzled eyes still blind!

But oh, the little hill-flowers, their scent is wise and kind;

And I shall not lose the way from the darkness to the day,

While dust can cling as their scent clings to memory for aye;

And the least link in the chain can recall the whole again,

And heaven at last resume its far-flung harvests, grain by grain.

To the hill-flowers clings my dust, and tho' eyeless Death may thrust

All else into the darkness, in their heaven I put my trust;

And a dawn shall bid me climb to the little spread of thyme

Where first I heard the ripple of the fountain-heads of rhyme.

And a fir-wood that I know, from dawn to sunset-glow,

Shall whisper to a lonely sea, that swings far, far below.

Death, thy dawn makes all things new. Hills of Youth, I come to you,

Moving through the dew, moving through the dew.

THE CAROL OF THE FIR-TREE

Quoth the Fir-tree, "Orange and vine"

_Sing 'Nowell, Nowell, Nowell'!_

"Have their honour: I have mine!"

_In Excelsis Gloria!_

"I am kin to the great king's house,"

_Ring 'Nowell, Nowell, Nowell'!_

"And Lebanon whispers in my boughs."

_In Excelsis Gloria!_

Apple and cherry, pear and plum,

_Winds of Autumn, sigh 'Nowell_'!

All the trees like mages come

_Bending low with 'Gloria'!_

Holding out on every hand

_Summer pilgrims to Nowell!_

Gorgeous gifts from Elfin-land.

_And the May saith 'Gloria'!_

Out of the darkness--who shall say

_Gold and myrrh for this Nowell!_

How they win their wizard way?

_Out of the East with 'Gloria'!_

Men that eat of the sun and dew

_Angels laugh and sing, 'Nowell.'_

Call it "fruit," and say it "grew"!

_Into the West with 'Gloria'!_

"Leaves that fall," whispered the Fir

_Through the forest sing 'Nowell'!_

"I am winter's minister."

_In Excelsis Gloria!_

Summer friends may come and go,

_Up the mountain sing 'Nowell.'_

Love abides thro' storm and snow.

_Down the valley, 'Gloria'!_

"On my boughs, on mine on mine,"

_Father and mother, sing 'Nowell'!_

"All the fruits of the earth shall twine."

_Bending low with 'Gloria.'_

"Sword of wood and doll of wax"

_Little children, sing 'Nowell.'_

"Swing on the stem was cleft with the axe!"

_Craftsmen all, a 'Gloria.'_

"Hear! I have looked on the other side."

_Out of the East, O sing 'Nowell'!_

"Because to live this night I died!"

_Into the West with 'Gloria.'_

"Hear! In this lighted room I have found"

_Ye that seek, O sing 'Nowell'!_

"The spell that worketh underground."

_Ye that doubt, a 'Gloria.'_

"I have found it, even I,"

_Ye that are lowly, sing 'Nowell'!_

"The secret of this alchemy!"

_Ye that are poor, a 'Gloria.'_

"Look, your tinsel turneth to gold."

_Sing 'Nowell! Nowell! Nowell!'_

"Your dust to a hand for love to hold!"

_In Excelsis Gloria._

"Lay the axe at my young stem now!"

_Woodman, woodman, sing 'Nowell.'_

"Set a star on every bough!"

_In Excelsis Gloria!_

"Hall and cot shall see me stand,"

_Rich and poor man, sing 'Nowell'!_

"Giver of gifts from Elfin-land."

_Oberon, answer 'Gloria.'_

"Hung by the hilt on your Christmas-tree"

_Little children, sing 'Nowell'!_

"Your wooden sword is a cross for me."

_Emperors, a 'Gloria.'_

"I have found that fabulous stone"

_Ocean-worthies, cry 'Nowell.'_

"Which turneth all things into one,"

_Wise men all, a 'Gloria.'_

"It is not ruby nor anything"

_Jeweller, jeweller, sing 'Nowell'!_

"Fit for the crown of an earthly King:"

_In Excelsis Gloria!_

"It is not here! It is not there!"

_Traveller, rest and cry 'Nowell'!_

"It is one thing and everywhere!"

_Heaven and Earth sing 'Gloria.'_

"It is the earth, the moon, the sun,"

_Mote in the sunbeam, sing 'Nowell'!_

"And all the stars that march as one."

_In Excelsis Gloria!_

"Here, by the touch of it, I can see"

_Sing, O Life, a sweet Nowell!_

"The world's King die on a Christmas-tree."

_Answer, Death, with 'Gloria.'_

"Here, not set in a realm apart,"

_East and West are one 'Nowell'!_

"Holy Land is in your Heart!"

_North and South one 'Gloria'!_

"Death is a birth, birth is a death,"

_Love is all, O sing 'Nowell'!_

"And London one with Nazareth."

_And all the World a 'Gloria.'_

"And angels over your heart's roof sing"

_Birds of God, O pour 'Nowell'!_

"That a poor man's son is the Son of a King!"

_Out of your heart this 'Gloria'!_

"Round the world you'll not away"

_In your own soul, they sing 'Nowell'!_

"From Holy Land this Christmas Day!"

_In your own soul, this 'Gloria.'_

LAVENDER

Lavender, lavender

That makes your linen sweet;

The hawker brings his basket

Down the sooty street:

The dirty doors and pavements

Are simmering in the heat:

He brings a dream to London,

And drags his weary feet.

Lavender, lavender,

From where the bee hums,

To the loud roar of London,

With purple dreams he comes,

From ragged lanes of wild-flowers

To ragged London slums,

With a basket full of lavender

And purple dreams he comes.

Is it nought to you that hear him?

With the old strange cry

The weary hawker passes,

And some will come and buy,

And some will let him pass away

And only heave a sigh,

But most will neither heed nor hear

When dreams go by.

_Lavender, lavender!

His songs were fair and sweet,

He brought us harvests out of heaven,

Full sheaves of radiant wheat;

He brought us keys to Paradise,

And hawked them thro' the street;

He brought his dreams to London,

And dragged his weary feet._

Lavender, lavender!

He is gone. The sunset glows;

But through the brain of London

The mystic fragrance flows.

Each foggy cell remembers,

Each ragged alley knows,

The land he left behind him,

The land to which he goes.

The End