1
Where Guelderland outspreads
Her green wide water-meads
Laced by the silver of the parted Rhine;
Where round the horizon low
The waving millsails go,
And poplar avenues stretch their pillar'd line;
That morn a clinging mist uncurl'd
Its folds o'er South-Fen town, and blotted out the world.
2
There, as the gray dawn broke,
Cloked by that ghost-white cloke,
The fifty knights of England sat in steel;
Each man all ear, for eye
Could not his nearest spy;
And in the mirk's dim hiding heart they feel,
--Feel more than hear,--the signal sound
Of tramp and hoof and wheel, and guns that bruise the ground.
3
--Sudden, the mist gathers up like a curtain, the theatre clear;
Stage of unequal conflict, and triumph purchased too dear!
Half our boot treasures of gallanthood there, with axe and with glaive,
One against ten,--what of that?--We are ready for glory or grave!
There, Spain and her thousands nearing, with lightning-tongued weapons of
war;--
Ebro's swarthy sons, and the bands from Epirus afar;
Crescia, Gonzaga, del Vasto,--world-famous names of affright,
Veterans of iron and blood, insatiate engines of fight:--
But ours were Norris and Essex and Stanley and Willoughby grim,
And the waning Dudley star, and the star that will never be dim,
Star of Philip the peerless,--and now at height of his noon,
Astrophel!--not for thyself but for England extinguish'd too soon!
4
Red walls of Zutphen behind; before them, Spain in her might:--
O! 'tis not war, but a game of heroic boyish delight!
For on, like a bolt-head of steel, go the fifty, dividing their way,
Through and over the brown mail-shirts,--Farnese's choicest array;
Over and through, and the curtel-axe flashes, the plumes in their pride
Sink like the larch to the hewer, a death-mown avenue wide:
While the foe in his stubbornness flanks them and bars them, with
merciless aim
Shooting from musket and saker a scornful death-tongue of flame.
As in an autumn afar, the Six Hundred in Chersonese hew'd
Their road through a host, for their England and honour's sake wasting
their blood,
Foolishness wiser than wisdom!--So these, since Azincourt morn,
First showing the world the calm open-eyed rashness of Englishmen born!
5
Foes ere the cloud went up, black Norris and Stanley in one
Pledge iron hands and kiss swords, each his mate's, in the face of the
sun,
Warm with the generous wine of the battle; and Willoughby's might
To the turf bore Crescia, and lifted again,--knight honouring knight;
All in the hurry and turmoil:--where North, half-booted and rough,
Launch'd on the struggle, and Sidney struck onward, his cuisses thrown
off,
Rash over-courage of poet and youth!--while the memories, how
At the joust long syne She look'd on, as he triumph'd, were hot on his
brow,
'Stella! mine own, my own star!'--and he sigh'd:--and towards him a flame
Shot its red signal; a shriek!--and the viewless messenger came;
Found the unguarded gap, the approach left bare to the prey,
Where through the limb to the life the death-stroke shatter'd a way.
6
--Astrophel! England's pride!
O stroke that, when he died,
Smote through the realm,--our best, our fairest ta'en!
For now the wound accurst
Lights up death's fury-thirst;--
Yet the allaying cup, in all that pain,
Untouch'd, untasted he gives o'er
To one who lay, and watch'd with eyes that craved it more:--
7
'Take it,' he said, ''tis thine;
Thy need is more than mine';--
And smiled as one who looks through death to life:
--Then pass'd, true heart and brave,
Leal from birth to grave:--
For that curse-laden roar of mortal strife,
With God's own peace ineffable fill'd,--
In that eternal Love all earthly passion still'd.
In 1585 Elizabeth, who was then aiding the United Provinces in their
resistance to Spain, sent Sir Philip Sidney (born 1554) as governor of
the fortress of Flushing in Zealand. The Earl of Leicester, chosen by
the Queen's unhappy partiality to command the English force, named Sidney
(his nephew) General of the horse. He marched thence to Zutphen in
Guelderland, a town besieged by the Spaniards, in hopes of destroying a
strong reinforcement which they were bringing in aid of the besiegers.
The details of the rash and heroic charge which followed may be read in
Motley's _History of the United Netherlands_, ch. ix.
St. 1 _Guelderland_; in this province the Rhine divides before entering
the sea: 'gliding through a vast plain.'--_South-Fen_; Zutphen, on the
Yssel (Rhine).
St. 3 _The bands from Epirus_; Crescia, the Epirote chief, commanded a
body of Albanian cavalry.--_The waning Dudley star_; Leicester, who was
near the end of his miserable career.--_Astrophel_; Sidney celebrated his
love for Penelope Devereux, Lady Rich, in the series of Sonnets and
Lyrics named _Astrophel and Stella_:--posthumously published in
1591.--After, or with Shakespeare's Sonnets, this series seems to me to
offer the most powerful picture of the passion of love in the whole range
of our poetry.
St. 4 _Saker_; early name for field-piece.--_The Six Hundred_; The Crimea
in ancient days was named _Chersonesus Taurica_.
St. 5 _Black Norris_; had been at variance with Sir W. Stanley before the
engagement. Morris was one of twelve gallant brothers, whose complexion
followed that of their mother, named by Elizabeth 'her own
crow.'--_North_; was lying bedrid from a wound in the leg, but could not
resist volunteering at Zutphen, and rode up 'with one boot on and one
boot off.'--_Cuisses_;
I saw young Harry, with his beaver on,
His cuisses on his thighs: (_Henry IV_, Part I: A. iv: S. i):--
Sidney flung off his 'in a fit of chivalrous extravagance.'--_At the
joust_; In Sonnets 41 and 53 of _Astrophel and Stella_ Sidney describes
how the sudden sight of his lady-love dazzled him as he rode in certain
tournaments. In Son. 69 he cries:
I, I, O, I, may say that she is mine.