1685
_Fear not_, _my child, though the days be dark_,
_Never fear_, _he will come again_,
_With the long brown hair_, _and the banner blue_,
_King Monmouth and all his men_!
The summer-smiling bay
Has doff'd its vernal gray;
A peacock breast of emerald shot with blue:
Is it peace or war that lands
On these pale quiet sands,
As round the pier the boats run-in their silent crew?
Bent knee, and forehead bare;
That moment was for prayer!
Then swords flash out, and--Monmouth!--is the cry:
The crumbling cliff o'erpast,
The hazard-die is cast,
'Tis James 'gainst James in arms! Soho! and Liberty!
--_Fear not, my child, though he come with few_;
_Alone will he come again_;
_God with him, and his right hand more strong_
_Than a thousand thousand men_!
They file by Colway now;
They rise o'er Uplyme brow;
And faithful Taunton hails her hero-knight:
And girlhood's agile hand
Weaves for the patriot band
The crown-emblazon'd flag, their gathering star of fight.
--Ah flag of shame and woe!
For not by these who go,
Scythe-men and club-men, foot and hunger-worn,
These levies raw and rude,
Can England be subdued,
Or that ancestral throne from its foundations torn!
Yet by the dour deep trench
Their mettle did not blench,
When mist and midnight closed o'er sad Sedgemoor;
Though on those hearts of oak
The tall cuirassiers broke,
And Afric's tiger-bands sprang forth with sullen roar:
Though the loud cannon plane
Death's lightning-riven lane,
Levelling that unskill'd valour, rude, unled:
--Yet happier in their fate
Than whom the war-fiends wait
To rend them limb from limb, the gibbet-withering dead!
--_Yet weep not, my child, though the dead be dead_,
_And the wounded rise not again_!
_For they are with God who for England fought_,
_And they bore them as Englishmen_.
Stout hearts, and sorely tried!
--But he, for whom they died,
Skulk'd like the wolf in Cranborne, torn and gaunt:--
Till, dragg'd and bound, he knelt
To one no prayers could melt,
Nor bond of blood, nor fear of fate, from vengeance daunt.
--O hill of death and gore,
Fast by the tower'd shore,
What wealth of precious blood is thine, what tears!
What calmly fronted scorn;
What pangs, not vainly borne!
For heart beats hot with heart, and human grief endears!
--_Then weep not, my child, though the days be dark_;
_Fear not; He will come again_,
_With Arthur and Harold and good Saint George_,
_King Monmouth and all his men_!
Monmouth's invasion forms one of the most brilliant,--perhaps the most
brilliant,--of Lord Macaulay's narratives. But many curious details are
added in the _History_ by Mr. G Roberts (1844).
The belief, which this poem represents, that 'King Monmouth,' as he was
called in the West, would return, lasted long. He landed in Lyme Bay,
June 11, 1685, between the Cobb (Harbour-pier) and the beginning of the
Ware cliffs: marching north, after a few days, by the road which left the
ruins of Colway House on the right and led over Uplyme to Axminster.
_Soho_; the watch-word on Monmouth's side at Sedgemoor; his London house
was in the Fields, (now Square), bearing that name.
_Faithful Taunton_; here the Puritan spirit was strong; and here Monmouth
was persuaded to take the title of king (June 20), symbolized by the flag
which the young girls of Taunton presented to him. It bore a crown with
the cypher J B.--Monmouth's own name being James.
_Dour deep trench_; Sedgemoor lies in a marshy district near Bridgewater,
much intersected by trenches or 'Rhines.' One, the Busses Rhine, lay
between the two armies as they fought, July 6. Monmouth was caught
hiding in Cranborne Chase, July 8; executed, after a vain attempt to move
the heart of his uncle the king, July 15, on Tower Hill.
_Afric's tiger-bands_; Kirke savage troops from Tangier.