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diff --git a/17923.txt b/17923.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e51638c --- /dev/null +++ b/17923.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7272 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Visions of England, by Francis T. +Palgrave, Edited by Henry Morley + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Visions of England + Lyrics on leading men and events in English History + + +Author: Francis T. Palgrave + +Editor: Henry Morley + +Release Date: March 5, 2006 [eBook #17923] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VISIONS OF ENGLAND*** + + + + + + +Transcribed from the 1889 Cassell and Company edition by David Price, +ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + + +THE VISIONS OF ENGLAND: LYRICS OF LEADING MEN AND EVENTS IN ENGLISH +HISTORY + + +BY +FRANCIS T. PALGRAVE +_Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford_ +_Late Fellow of Exeter College_ + +TANTA RES EST, UT PAENE VITIO MENTIS TANTUM OPUS INGRESSUS MIHI VIDEAR + +CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED: +_LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_ +1889 + + + + +By the same Author + + +THE VISIONS OF ENGLAND: Seventy Lyrics on leading Men and Events in +English History: 8vo. 7/6 + +LYRICAL POEMS, Four Books: Extra Fcap. 8vo. 6/- + +ORIGINAL HYMNS: 18mo. 1/6 + +* * * * * + +_Poetry edited by the same_ + +THE GOLDEN TREASURY OF ENGLISH LYRICAL POETRY: 18mo. 4/6 + +THE CHILDREN'S TREASURY OF ENGLISH LYRICAL POETRY, with Notes and +Glossary: 18mo. 2/6. Or in two parts, 1/- each + +SHAKESPEARE'S LYRICS. SONGS FROM THE PLAYS AND SONNETS, with Notes: +18mo. 4/6 + +SELECTION FROM R. HERRICK'S LYRICAL POETRY, with Essay and Notes: 18mo. +4/6 + +THE POETICAL WORKS OF J. KEATS, reprinted; _literatim_ from the original +editions, with Notes: 18mo. 4/6 + +LYRICAL POEMS BY LORD TENNYSON, selected and arranged, with Notes: 18mo. +4/6 + +GLEN DESSERAY AND OTHER POEMS, by J. C. Shairp, late Principal of the +United College, S. Andrews, and Professor of Poetry in the University of +Oxford. With Essay and Notes. 8vo. + +Messrs. MACMILLAN, Bedford St., Covent Garden + +* * * * * + +_To be published presently_ + +THE TREASURY OF SACRED SONG, selected from the English Lyrical Poetry of +Four Centuries, with Notes Explanatory and Biographical + +CLARENDON PRESS, OXFORD +_Aug_. 1889 + + + + +INTRODUCTION. + + +Again, on behalf of readers of this NATIONAL LIBRARY, I have to thank a +poet of our day--in this case the Oxford Professor of Poetry--for joining +his voice to the voices of the past through which our better life is +quickened for the duties of to-day. Not for his own verse only, but for +his fine sense also of what is truest in the poets who have gone before, +the name of Francis Turner Palgrave is familiar to us all. Many a home +has been made the richer for his gathering of voices of the past into a +dainty "Golden Treasury of English Songs." Of this work of his own I may +cite what was said of it in _Macmillan's Magazine_ for October, 1882, by +a writer of high authority in English Literature, Professor A. W. Ward, +of Owens College. "A very eminent authority," said Professor Ward, "has +accorded to Mr. Palgrave's historical insight, praise by the side of +which all words of mine must be valueless," Canon [now Bishop] Stubbs +writes:--"I do not think that there is one of the _Visions_ which does +not carry my thorough consent and sympathy all through." + +Here, then, Mr. Palgrave re-issues, for the help of many thousands more, +his own songs of the memories of the Nation, addressed to a Nation that +has not yet forfeited the praise of Milton. Milton said of the +Englishman, "If we look at his native towardliness in the roughcast, +without breeding, some nation or other may haply be better composed to a +natural civility and right judgment than he. But if he get the benefit +once of a wise and well-rectified nurture, I suppose that wherever +mention is made of countries, manners, or men, the English people, among +the first that shall be praised, may deserve to be accounted a right +pious, right honest, and right hardy nation." So much is shown by the +various utterances in this NATIONAL LIBRARY. So much is shown, in the +present volume of it, by a poet's vision of the England that has been +till now, and is what she has been. + +H. M. + +TO THE NAMES OF +HENRY HALLAM AND FRANCIS PALGRAVE +FRIENDS AND FELLOW-LABOURERS IN ENGLISH HISTORY +FOR FORTY YEARS, +WHO, DIFFERING OFTEN IN JUDGMENT, +WERE AT ONE THROUGHOUT LIFE IN DEVOTED LOVE OF +JUSTICE, TRUTH, AND ENGLAND, +_IN AFFECTIONATE AND REVERENT REMEMBRANCE_ +THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED AND DEDICATED + + + + +PREFACE + + +As the scheme which the Author has here endeavoured to execute has not, +so far as he knows, the advantage of any near precedent in any +literature, he hopes that a few explanatory words may be offered without +incurring censure for egotism. + +Our history is so eminently rich and varied, and at the same time, by the +fact of our insular position, so stamped with unity, that from days very +remote it has supplied matter for song. This, among Celts and Angles, at +first was lyrical. But poetry, for many centuries after the Conquest, +mainly took the annalistic form, and, despite the ability often shown, +was hence predoomed to failure. For a nation's history cannot but +present many dull or confused periods, many men and things intractable by +poetry, though, perhaps, politically effective and important, which +cannot be excluded from any narrative aiming at consecutiveness; and, by +the natural laws of art, these passages, when rendered in verse, in their +effect become more prosaic than they would be in a prose rendering. + +My attempt has therefore been to revert to the earlier and more natural +conditions of poetry, and to offer,--not a continuous narrative; not +poems on every critical moment or conspicuous man in our long annals,--but +single lyrical pictures of such leading or typical characters and scenes +in English history, and only such, as have seemed amenable to a strictly +poetical treatment. Poetry, not History, has, hence, been my first and +last aim; or, perhaps I might define it, History for Poetry's sake. At +the same time, I have striven to keep throughout as closely to absolute +historical truth in the design and colouring of the pieces as the +exigencies of poetry permit:--the result aimed at being to unite the +actual tone and spirit of the time concerned, with the best estimate +which has been reached by the research and genius of modern +investigators. Our island story, freed from the 'falsehood of +extremes,'--exorcised, above all, from the seducing demon of +party-spirit, I have thus here done my best to set forth. And as this +line of endeavour has conducted and constrained me, especially when the +seventeenth century is concerned, to judgments--supported indeed by +historians conspicuous for research, ability, and fairness, but often +remote from the views popularized by the writers of our own day,--upon +these points a few justificatory notes have been added. + +A double aim has hence governed and limited both the selection and the +treatment of my subjects. The choice has necessarily fallen, often, not +on simply picturesque incident or unfamiliar character, but on the men +and things that we think of first, when thinking of the long chronicle of +England,--or upon such as represent and symbolize the main current of it. +Themes, however, on which able or popular song is already extant,--notably +in case of Scotland,--I have in general avoided. In the rendering, my +desire has been always to rest the poetry of each Vision on its own +intrinsic interest; to write with a straightforward eye to the object +alone; not studious of ornament for ornament's sake; allowing the least +possible overt intrusion of the writer's personality; and, in accordance +with lyrical law, seeking, as a rule, to fix upon some factual picture +for each poem. + +* * * * * + +To define, thus, the scope of what this book attempts, is, in itself, a +confession of presumptuousness,--the writer's own sense of which is but +feebly and imperfectly expressed in the words from Vergil's letter to +Augustus prefixed as my motto. In truth, so rich and so wide are the +materials, that to scheme a lyrical series which should really paint the +_Gesta Anglorum_ in their fulness might almost argue 'lack of wit,' +_vitium mentis_, in much greater powers than mine. No criticism, however +severe, can add to my own consciousness how far the execution of the +work, in regard to each of its aims, falls below the plan. Yet I would +allow myself the hope, great as the deficiencies may be, that the love of +truth and the love of England are mine by inheritance in a degree +sufficient to exempt this book, (the labour of several years), from +infidelity to either:--that the intrinsic worth and weight of my subject +may commend these songs, both at home, and in the many Englands beyond +sea, to those who, (despite the inevitably more engrossing attractions of +the Present, and the emphatic bias of modern culture towards the +immediate and the tangible), maintain that high and soul-inspiring +interest which, identifying us with our magnificent Past, and all its +varied lessons of defeat and victory, offers at the same time,--under the +guidance from above,--our sole secure guarantee for prosperous and +healthy progress in the Future. + + The world has cycles in its course, when all + That once has been, is acted o'er again; + +and only the nation which, at each moment of political or social +evolution, looks lovingly backward to its own painfully-earned +experience--_Respiciens_, _Prospiciens_, as Tennyson's own chosen device +expresses it--has solid reason to hope, that its movement is true +Advance--that its course is Upward. + +* * * * * + +It remains only to add, that the book has been carefully revised and +corrected, and that nineteen pieces published in the original volume of +1881 are not reprinted in the present issue. + +F. T. P. +_July_, 1889 + + + + +THE VISIONS OF ENGLAND + + +PRELUDE + + +_CAESAR TO EGBERT_ + +1 + + England, fair England! Empress isle of isles! + --Round whom the loving-envious ocean plays, + Girdling thy feet with silver and with smiles, + Whilst all the nations crowd thy liberal bays; + With rushing wheel and heart of fire they come, + Or glide and glance like white-wing'd doves that know + And seek their proper home:-- + England! not England yet! but fair as now, +When first the chalky strand was stirr'd by Roman prow. + +2 + + On thy dear countenance, great mother-land, + Age after age thy sons have set their sign, + Moulding the features with successive hand + Not always sedulous of beauty's line:-- + Yet here Man's art in one harmonious aim + With Nature's gentle moulding, oft has work'd + The perfect whole to frame: + Nor does earth's labour'd face elsewhere, like thee, +Give back her children's heart with such full sympathy + +3 + + --On marshland rough and self-sprung forest gazed + The imperial Roman of the eagle-eye; + Log-splinter'd forts on green hill-summits raised, + Earth huts and rings that dot the chalk-downs high:-- + Dark rites of hidden faith in grove and moor; + Idols of monstrous build; wheel'd scythes of war; + Rock tombs and pillars hoar: + Strange races, Finn, Iberian, Belgae, Celt; +While in the wolds huge bulls and antler'd giants dwelt. + +4 + + --Another age!--The spell of Rome has past + Transforming all our Britain; Ruthless plough, + Which plough'd the world, yet o'er the nations cast + The seed of arts, and law, and all that now + Has ripen'd into commonwealths:--Her hand + With network mile-paths binding plain and hill + Arterialized the land: + The thicket yields: the soil for use is clear; +Peace with her plastic touch,--field, farm, and grange are here. + +5 + + Lo, flintwall'd cities, castles stark and square + Bastion'd with rocks that rival Nature's own; + Red-furnaced baths, trim gardens planted fair + With tree and flower the North ne'er yet had known; + Long temple-roofs and statues poised on high + With golden wings outstretch'd for tiptoe flight, + Quivering in summer sky:-- + The land had rest, while those stern legions lay +By northern ramparts camp'd, and held the Pict at bay. + +6 + + Imperious Empire! Thrice-majestic Rome! + No later age, as earth's slow centuries glide, + Can raze the footprints stamp'd where thou hast come, + The ne'er-repeated grandeur of thy stride! + --Though now so dense a darkness takes the land, + Law, peace, wealth, letters, faith,--all lights are quench'd + By violent heathen hand:-- + Vague warrior kings; names writ in fire and wrong; +Aurelius, Urien, Ida;--shades of ancient song. + +7 + + And Thou--O whether born of flame and wave, + Or Gorlois' son, or Uther's, blameless lord, + True knight, who died for those thou couldst not save + When the Round Table brake their plighted word,-- + The lord of song hath set thee in thy grace + And glory, rescued from the phantom world, + Before us face to face; + No more Avilion bowers the King detain; +The mystic child returns; the Arthur reigns again! + +8 + + --Now, as some cloud that hides a mountain bulk + Thins to white smoke, and mounts in lighten'd air, + And through the veil the gray enormous hulk + Burns, and the summit, last, is keen and bare,-- + From wasted Britain so the gloaming clears; + Another birth of time breaks eager out, + And England fair appears:-- + Imperial youth sign'd on her golden brow, +While the prophetic eyes with hope and promise glow. + +9 + + Then from the wasted places of the land, + Charr'd skeletons of cities, circling walls + Of Roman might, and towers that shatter'd stand + Of that lost world survivors, forth she calls + Her new creation:--O'er the land is wrought + The happy villagedom by English tribes + From Elbe and Baltic brought; + Red kine light up with life the ravaged plain; +The forest glooms are pierced; the plough-land laughs again. + +10 + + Each from its little croft the homesteads peep, + Green apple-garths around, and hedgeless meads, + Smooth-shaven lawns of ever-shifting sheep, + Wolds where his dappled crew the swineherd feeds:-- + Pale gold round pure pale foreheads, and their eyes + More dewy blue than speedwell by the brook + When Spring's fresh current flies, + The free fair maids come barefoot to the fount, +Or poppy-crown'd with fire, the car of harvest mount. + +11 + + On the salt stream that rings us, ness and bay, + The nation's old sea-soul beats blithe and strong; + The black foam-breasters taste Biscayan spray, + And where 'neath Polar dawns the narwhals throng:-- + Free hands, free hearts, for labour and for glee, + Or village-moot, when thane with churl unites + Beneath the sacred tree; + While wisdom tempers force, and bravery leads, +Till spears beat _Aye_! on shields, and words at once are deeds. + +12 + + Again with life the ruin'd cities smile, + Again from mother-Rome their sacred fire + Knowledge and Faith rekindle through the isle, + Nigh quench'd by barbarous war and heathen ire:-- + --No more on Balder's grave let Anglia weep + When winter storms entomb the golden year + Sunk in Adonis-sleep; + Another God has risen, and not in vain! +The Woden-ash is low, the Cross asserts her reign. + +13 + + --Land of the most law-loving,--the most free! + My dear, dear England! sweet and green as now + The flower-illumined garden of the sea, + And Nature least impair'd by axe and plough! + A laughing land!--Thou seest not in the north + How the black Dane and vulture Norseman wait + The sign of coming forth, + The foul Landeyda flap its raven plume, +And all the realms once more eclipsed in pagan gloom! + +14 + + --O race, of many races well compact! + As some rich stream that runs in silver down + From the White Mount:--his baby steps untrack'd + Where clouds and emerald cliffs of crystal frown; + Now, alien founts bring tributary flood, + Or kindred waters blend their native hue, + Some darkening as with blood; + These fraught with iron strength and freshening brine, +And these with lustral waves, to sweeten and refine. + +15 + + Now calm as strong, and clear as summer air, + Blessing and blest of earth and sky, he glides: + Now on some rock-ridge rends his bosom fair, + And foams with cloudy wrath and hissing tides: + Then with full flood of level-gliding force, + His discord-blended melody murmurs low + Down the long seaward course:-- + So through Time's mead, great River, greatly glide: +Whither, thou may'st not know:--but He, who knows, will guide. + +St. 3 Sketches Prehistoric England. St. 4 _Mile-paths_; old English name +for Roman roads. St. 5 _Tree and flower_; such are reported to have been +naturalized in England by the Romans.--_Northern ramparts_; that of +Agricola and Lollius Urbicus from Forth to Clyde, and the greater work of +Hadrian and Severus between Tyne and Solway. St. 6, 7 The Arthurian +legends,--now revivified for us by Tennyson's magnificent _Idylls of the +King_,--form the visionary links in our history between the decline of +the Roman power and the earlier days of the Saxon conquest. St. 9 +_Villagedom_; Angles and Saxons seem at first to have burned the larger +towns of the Romanized Britons and left them deserted, in favour of +village-life. St. 11 _Village-moot_: Held on a little hill or round a +sacred tree: 'the ealdermen spoke, groups of freemen stood round, +clashing shields in applause, settling matters by loud shouts of _Aye_ or +_Nay_.' (J. R. Green, _History of the English People_). St. 12 Balder, +the God of Light, like Adonis in the old Greek story, is a nature-myth, +figuring the Sun, yearly dying in winter, and yearly restored to life. +St. 13 _Landeyda_; Name of Danish banner: 'the desolation of the land.' + +For further details upon points briefly noticed in this _Prelude_, +readers are referred to Mr. J. R. Green's _History_, and to Mr. T. +Wright's _The Celt_, _The Roman_, and _The Saxon_, as sources readily +accessible. + + + +THE FIRST AND LAST LAND + + +_AT SENNEN_ + +Thrice-blest, alone with Nature!--here, where gray + Belerium fronts the spray +Smiting the bastion'd crags through centuries flown, + While, 'neath the hissing surge, +Ocean sends up a deep, deep undertone, + +As though his heavy chariot-wheels went round: + Nor is there other sound +Save from the abyss of air, a plaintive note, + The seabirds' calling cry, +As 'gainst the wind with well-poised weight they float, + +Or on some white-fringed reef set up their post, + And sentinel the coast:-- +Whilst, round each jutting cape, in pillar'd file, + The lichen-bearded rocks +Like hoary giants guard the sacred Isle. + +--Happy, alone with Nature thus!--Yet here + Dim, primal man is near;-- +The hawk-eyed eager traders, who of yore + Through long Biscayan waves +Star-steer'd adventurous from the Iberic shore + +Or the Sidonian, with their fragrant freight + Oil-olive, fig, and date; +Jars of dark sunburnt wine, flax-woven robes, + Or Tyrian azure glass +Wavy with gold, and agate-banded globes:-- + +Changing for amber-knobs their Eastern ware + Or tin-sand silvery fair, +To temper brazen swords, or rim the shield + Of heroes, arm'd for fight:-- +While the rough miners, wondering, gladly yield + +The treasured ore; nor Alexander's name + Know, nor fair Helen's shame; +Or in his tent how Peleus' wrathful son + Looks toward the sea, nor heeds +The towers of still-unconquer'd Ilion. + +_Belerium_; The name given to the Land's End by Diodorus, the Greek +historical compiler. He describes the natives as hospitable and +civilized. They mined tin, which was bought by traders and carried +through Gaul to the south-east, and may, as suggested here, have been +used in their armour by the warriors during the Homeric Siege of Troy. + + + +PAULINUS AND EDWIN + + +627 + +The black-hair'd gaunt Paulinus + By ruddy Edwin stood:-- +'Bow down, O King of Deira, + Before the holy Rood! +Cast forth thy demon idols, + And worship Christ our Lord!' +--But Edwin look'd and ponder'd, + And answer'd not a word. + +Again the gaunt Paulinus + To ruddy Edwin spake: +'God offers life immortal + For His dear Son's own sake! +Wilt thou not hear his message + Who bears the Keys and Sword?' +--But Edwin look'd and ponder'd, + And answer'd not a word. + +Rose then a sage old warrior; + Was five-score winters old; +Whose beard from chin to girdle + Like one long snow-wreath roll'd:-- +'At Yule-time in our chamber + We sit in warmth and light, +While cavern-black around us + Lies the grim mouth of Night. + +'Athwart the room a sparrow + Darts from the open door: +Within the happy hearth-light + One red flash,--and no more! +We see it born from darkness, + And into darkness go:-- +So is our life, King Edwin! + Ah, that it should be so! + +'But if this pale Paulinus + Have somewhat more to tell; +Some news of whence and whither, + And where the Soul may dwell:-- +If on that outer darkness + The sun of Hope may shine;-- +He makes life worth the living! + I take his God for mine!' + +So spake the wise old warrior; + And all about him cried +'Paulinus' God hath conquer'd! + And he shall he our guide:-- +For he makes life worth living, + Who brings this message plain,-- +When our brief days are over, + That we shall live again.' + +Paulinus was one of the four missionaries sent form Rome by Gregory the +Great in 601. The marriage of Edwin, King of Northumbria, with +Ethelburga, sister to Eadbald of Kent, opened Paulinus' way to northern +England. Bede, born less than fifty years after, has given an admirable +narrative of Edwin's conversion: which is very completely told in +Bright's _Early English Church History_, B. IV. + +Deira, (from old-Welsh _deifr_, waters), then comprised Eastern Yorkshire +from Tees to Humber. Goodmanham, where the meeting described was held, +is some 23 miles from York. + + + +ALFRED THE GREAT + + + 849-901 + +1 + +The fair-hair'd boy is at his mother's knee, + A many-colour'd page before them spread, + Gay summer harvest-field of gold and red, +With lines and staves of ancient minstrelsy. +But through her eyes alone the child can see, + From her sweet lips partake the words of song, + And looks as one who feels a hidden wrong, +Or gazes on some feat of gramarye. +'When thou canst use it, thine the book!' she cried: +He blush'd, and clasp'd it to his breast with pride:-- + 'Unkingly task!' his comrades cry; In vain; +All work ennobles nobleness, all art, +He sees; Head governs hand; and in his heart + All knowledge for his province he has ta'en. + +2 + +Few the bright days, and brief the fruitful rest, + As summer-clouds that o'er the valley flit:-- + To other tasks his genius he must fit; +The Dane is in the land, uneasy guest! +--O sacred Athelney, from pagan quest + Secure, sole haven for the faithful boy + Waiting God's issue with heroic joy +And unrelaxing purpose in the breast! +The Dragon and the Raven, inch by inch, +For England fight; nor Dane nor Saxon flinch; + Then Alfred strikes his blow; the realm is free:-- +He, changing at the font his foe to friend, +Yields for the time, to gain the far-off end, + By moderation doubling victory. + +O much-vex'd life, for us too short, too dear! + The laggard body lame behind the soul; + Pain, that ne'er marr'd the mind's serene control; +Breathing on earth heaven's aether atmosphere, +God with thee, and the love that casts out fear! + A soul in life's salt ocean guarding sure + The freshness of youth's fountain sweet and pure, +And to all natural impulse crystal-clear: +To service or command, to low and high +Equal at once in magnanimity, + The Great by right divine thou only art! +Fair star, that crowns the front of England's morn, +Royal with Nature's royalty inborn, + And English to the very heart of heart! + +_The fair-hair'd boy_: There is a singular unanimity among historians in +regard to this 'darling of the English,' whose life has been vividly +sketched by Freeman (_Conquest_, ch. ii); by Green (_English People_, B. +I: ch. iii); and, earlier, by my Father in his short _History of the +Anglo-Saxons_, ch. vi-viii. + +_Changing at the font_: Alfred was godfather to Guthrun the Dane, when +baptized after his defeat at Ethandune in 878. + + + +A DANISH BARROW + + +_ON THE EAST DEVON COAST_ + +Lie still, old Dane, below thy heap! + --A sturdy-back and sturdy-limb, + Whoe'er he was, I warrant him +Upon whose mound the single sheep + Browses and tinkles in the sun, + Within the narrow vale alone. + +Lie still, old Dane! This restful scene + Suits well thy centuries of sleep: + The soft brown roots above thee creep, +The lotus flaunts his ruddy sheen, + And,--vain memento of the spot,-- + The turquoise-eyed forget-me-not. + +Lie still!--Thy mother-land herself + Would know thee not again: no more + The Raven from the northern shore +Hails the bold crew to push for pelf, + Through fire and blood and slaughter'd kings, + 'Neath the black terror of his wings. + +And thou,--thy very name is lost! + The peasant only knows that here + Bold Alfred scoop'd thy flinty bier, +And pray'd a foeman's prayer, and tost + His auburn, head, and said 'One more + Of England's foes guards England's shore,' + +And turn'd and pass'd to other feats, + And left thee in thine iron robe, + To circle with the circling globe, +While Time's corrosive dewdrop eats + The giant warrior to a crust + Of earth in earth, and rust in rust. + +So lie: and let the children play + And sit like flowers upon thy grave, + And crown with flowers,--that hardly have +A briefer blooming-tide than they;-- + By hurrying years borne on to rest, + As thou, within the Mother's breast. + + + +HASTINGS + + +October 14: 1066 + +'Gyrth, is it dawn in the sky that I see? or is all the sky blood? +Heavy and sore was the fight in the North: yet we fought for the good. +O but--Brother 'gainst brother!--'twas hard!--Now I come with a will +To baste the false bastard of France, the hide of the tanyard and mill! + Now on the razor-edge lies + England the priceless, the prize! +God aiding, the Raven at Stamford we smote; +One stroke more for the land here I strike and devote!' + +Red with fresh breath on her lips came the dawn; and Harold uprose; +Kneels as man before God; then takes his long pole-axe, and goes +Where round their woven wall, tough ash-palisado, they crowd; +Mightily cleaves and binds, to his comrades crying aloud + 'Englishmen stalwart and true, + But one word has Harold for you! +When from the field the false foreigners run, +Stand firm in your castle, and all will be won! + +'Now, with God o'er us, and Holy Rood, arm!'--And he ran for his spear: +But Gyrth held him back, 'mong his brothers Gyrth the most honour'd, most +dear: +'Go not, Harold! thine oath is against thee! the Saints look askance: +I am not king; let me lead them, me only: mine be the chance!' + --'No! The leader must lead! + Better that Harold should bleed! +To the souls I appeal, not the dust of the tomb:-- +King chosen of Edward and England, I come!' + +Over Heathland surge banners and lances, three armies; William the last, +Clenching his mace; Rome's gonfanon round him Rome's majesty cast: +O'er his Bretons Fergant, o'er the hireling squadrons Montgomery lords, +Jerkin'd archers, and mail-clads, and horsemen with pennons and swords:-- + --England, in threefold array, + Anchor, and hold them at bay, +Firm set in your own wooden walls! and the wave +Of high-crested Frenchmen will break on their grave. + +So to the palisade on! There, Harold and Leofwine and Gyrth +Stand like a triple Thor, true brethren in arms as in birth: +And above the fierce standards strain at their poles as they flare on the +gale; +One, the old Dragon of Wessex, and one, a Warrior in mail. + 'God Almighty!' they cry! + 'Haro!' the Northmen reply:-- +As when eagles are gather'd and loud o'er the prey, +Shout! for 'tis England the prize of the fray! + +And as when two lightning-clouds tilt, between them an arrowy sleet +Hisses and darts; till the challenging thunders are heard, and they meet; +Across fly javelins and serpents of flame: green earth and blue sky +Blurr'd in the blind tornado:--so now the battle goes high. + Shearing through helmet and limb + Glaive-steel and battle-axe grim: +As the flash of the reaper in summer's high wheat, +King Harold mows horseman and horse at his feet. + +O vainly the whirlwind of France up the turf to the palisade swept: +Shoulder to shoulder the Englishmen stand, and the shield-wall is kept:-- +As, in a summer to be, when England and she yet again +Strove for the sovranty, firm stood our squares, through the pitiless +rain + Death rain'd o'er them all day; + --Happier, not braver than they +Who on Senlac e'en yet their still garrison keep, +Sleeping a long Marathonian sleep! + +'Madmen, why turn?' cried the Duke,--for the horsemen recoil from the +slope; +'Behold me! I live!'--and he lifted the ventayle; 'before you is hope: +Death, not safety, behind!'--and he spurs to the centre once more, +Lion-like leaps on the standard and Harold: but Gyrth is before! + 'Down! He is down!' is the shout: + 'On with the axes! Out, Out!' +--He rises again; the mace circles its stroke; +Then falls as the thunderbolt falls on the oak. + +--Gyrth is crush'd, and Leofwine is crush'd; yet the shields hold their +wall: +'Edith alone of my dear ones is left me, and dearest of all! +Edith has said she would seek me to-day when the battle is done; +Her love more precious alone than kingdoms and victory won; + O for the sweetness of home! + O for the kindness to come!' +Then around him again the wild war-dragons roar, +And he drinks the red wine-cup of battle once more. + +--'Anyhow from their rampart to lure them, to shatter the bucklers and +wall, +Acting a flight,' in his craft thought William, and sign'd to recall +His left battle:--O countrymen! slow to be roused! roused, always, as +then, +Reckless of life or death, bent only to quit you like men!-- + As bolts from the bow-string they go, + Whirl them and hurl them below, +Where the deep foss yawns for the foe in his course, +Piled up and brimming with horseman and horse. + +As when October's sun, long caught in a curtain of gray, +With a flood of impatient crimson breaks out, at the dying of day, +And trees and green fields, the hills and the skies, are all steep'd in +the stain;-- +So o'er the English one hope flamed forth, one moment,--in vain! + As hail when the corn-fields are deep, + Down the fierce arrow-points sweep: +Now the basnets of France o'er the palisade frown; +The shield-fort is shatter'd; the Dragon is down. + +O then there was dashing and dinting of axe and of broad-sword and spear: +Blood crying out to blood: and Hatred that casteth out fear! +Loud where the fight is the loudest, the slaughter-breath hot in the air, +O what a cry was that!--the cry of a nation's despair! + --Hew down the best of the land! + Down them with mace and with brand! +The fell foreign arrow has crash'd to the brain; +England with Harold the Englishman slain! + +Yet they fought on for their England! of ineffaceable fame +Worthy, and stood to the death, though the greedy sword, like a flame, +Bit and bit yet again in the solid ranks, and the dead +Heap where they die, and hills of foemen about them are spread:-- + --Hew down the heart of the land, + There, to a man, where they stand! +Till night with her blackness uncrimsons the stain, +And the merciful shroud overshadows our slain. + +Heroes unburied, unwept!--But a wan gray thing in the night +Like a marsh-wisp flits to and fro through the blood-lake, the steam of +the fight; +Turning the bodies, exploring the features with delicate touch; +Stumbling as one that finds nothing: but now!--as one finding too much: + Love through mid-midnight will see: + Edith the fair! It is he! +Clasp him once more, the heroic, the dear! +Harold was England: and Harold lies here. + +_The hide of the tanyard_; See the story of Arlette or Herleva, the +tanner's daughter, mother to William 'the Bastard.' + +_At Stamford_; At Stamford Bridge, over the Derwent, Harold defeated his +brother Tostig and Harold Hardrada, Sep 25, 1066. + +_Your castle_; Harold's triple palisade upon the hill of battle is so +described by the chronicler, Henry of Huntingdon. + +_Rome's gonfanon_; The consecrated banner, sent to William from Rome. + +_The fierce standards_; These were planted on the spot chosen by the +Conqueror for the high-altar of the Abbey of Battle. The _Warrior_ was +Harold's 'personal ensign.' + +_In a summer to be_; June 18, 1815. + +_The ventayle_; Used here for the _nasale_ or nose-piece shown in the +Bayeux Tapestry. + + + +DEATH IN THE FOREST + + +August 2: 1100 + +Where the greenwood is greenest +At gloaming of day, +Where the twelve-antler'd stag +Faces boldest at bay; +Where the solitude deepens, +Till almost you hear +The blood-beat of the heart +As the quarry slips near; +His comrades outridden +With scorn in the race, +The Red King is hallooing +His bounds to the chase. + + What though the Wild Hunt +Like a whirlwind of hell +Yestereve ran the forest, +With baying and yell:-- +In his cups the Red heathen +Mocks God to the face; +--'In the devil's name, shoot; +Tyrrell, ho!--to the chase!' + +--Now with worms for his courtiers +He lies in the narrow +Cold couch of the chancel! +--But whence was the arrow? + +The dread vision of Serlo +That call'd him to die, +The weird sacrilege terror +Of sleep, have gone by. +The blood of young Richard +Cries on him in vain, +In the heart of the Lindwood +By arbalest slain. +And he plunges alone +In the Serpent-glade gloom, +As one whom the Furies +Hound headlong to doom. + + His sin goes before him, +The lust and the pride; +And the curses of England +Breathe hot at his side. +And the desecrate walls +Of the Evil-wood shrine +Lo, he passes--unheeding +Dark vision and sign:-- + +--Now with worms for his courtiers +He lies in the narrow +Cold couch of the chancel: +--But whence was the arrow? + +Then a shudder of death +Flicker'd fast through the wood:-- +And they found the Red King +Red-gilt in his blood. +What wells up in his throat? +Is it cursing, or prayer? +Was it Henry, or Tyrrell, +Or demon, who there +Has dyed the fell tyrant +Twice crimson in gore, +While the soul disincarnate +Hunts on to hell-door? + + --Ah! friendless in death! +Rude forest-hands fling +On the charcoaler's wain +What but now was the king! +And through the long Minster +The carcass they bear, +And huddle it down +Without priest, without prayer:-- + +Now with worms for his courtiers +He lies in the narrow +Cold couch of the chancel: +--But whence was the arrow? + +_In his cups_; Rufus, it is said, was 'fey,' as the old phrase has it, on +the day of his death. He feasted long and high, and then chose out two +cross-bow shafts, presenting them to Tyrrell with the exclamation given +above. + +_Serlo_; He was Abbot of Gloucester, and had sent to Rufus the narrative +of an ominous dream, reported in the Monastery. + +_The true dreams_; On his last night Rufus 'laid himself down to sleep, +but not in peace; the attendants were startled by the King's voice--a +bitter cry--a cry for help--a cry for deliverance--he had been suddenly +awakened by a dreadful dream, as of exquisite anguish befalling him in +that ruined church, at the foot of the Malwood rampart.' Palgrave: +_Hist. of Normandy and of England_, B. IV: ch. xii. + +_Young Richard_; Son to Robert Courthose, and hunting, as his uncle's +guest, in the New Forest in May 1100, was mysteriously slain by a heavy +bolt from a Norman Arbalest. + +_The Evil-wood walls_; 'Amongst the sixty churches which had been +'ruined,' my Father remarks, in his notice of the New Forest, 'the +sanctuary below the mystic Malwood was peculiarly remarkable. . . . You +reach the Malwood easily from the Leafy Lodge in the favourite deer-walk, +the Lind-hurst, the Dragon's wood.' + +_Through the long Minster_; Winchester. Rufus, with much hesitation, was +buried in the chancel as a king; but no religious service or ceremonial +was celebrated:--'All men thought that prayers were hopeless.' + + + +EDITH OF ENGLAND + + +1100 + +Through sapling shades of summer green, + By glade and height and hollow, +Where Rufus rode the stag to bay, +King Henry spurs a jocund way, + Another chase to follow. +But when he came to Romsey gate + The doors are open'd free, +And through the gate like sunshine streams + A maiden company:-- +One girdled with the vervain-red, + And three in sendal gray, +And touch the trembling rebeck-strings + To their soft roundelay;-- + +--The bravest knight may fail in fight; + The red rust edge the sword; +The king his crown in dust lay down; + But Love is always Lord! + +King Henry at her feet flings down, + His helmet ringing loudly:-- +His kisses worship Edith's hand; +'Wilt thou be Queen of all the land?' + --O red she blush'd and proudly! +Red as the crimson girdle bound + Beneath her gracious breast; +Red as the silken scarf that flames + Above his lion-crest. +She lifts and casts the cloister-veil + All on the cloister-floor:-- +The novice maids of Romsey smile, + And think of love once more. + +'Well, well, to blush!' the Abbess cried, + 'The veil and vow deriding +That rescued thee, in baby days, +From insolence of Norman gaze, + In pure and holy hiding. +--O royal child of South and North, + Malcolm and Margaret, +The promised bride of Heaven art thou, + And Heaven will not forget! +What recks it, if an alien King + Encoronet thy brow, +Or if the false Italian priest + Pretend to loose the vow?' + +O then to white the red rose went + On Edith's cheek abiding! +With even glance she answer'd meek +'I leave the life I did not seek, + In holy Church confiding':-- +Then Love smiled true on Henry's face, + And Anselm join'd the hands +That in one race two races bound + By everlasting bands. +So Love is Lord, and Alfred's blood + Returns the land to sway; +And all her joyous maidens join + In their soft roundelay: + +--For though the knight may fail in fight, + The red rust edge the sword, +The king his crown in dust lay down, + Yet Love is always Lord! + +Edith, (who, after marriage, took the name Matilda in compliment to +Henry's mother), daughter to Malcolm King of Scotland by Margaret, +granddaughter of Edmund Ironside, had been brought up by her aunt +Christina, and placed in Romsey Abbey for security against Norman +violence. But she had always refused to take the vows, and was hence, in +opposition to her aunt's wish, declared canonically free to marry by +Anselm; called here an _Italian priest_, as born at Aosta. Henry had +been long attached to the Princess, and married her shortly after his +accession. + + + +A CRUSADER'S TOMB + + +1230 + +Unnamed, unknown:--his hands across his breast + Set in sepulchral rest, +In yon low cave-like niche the warrior lies, + --A shrine within a shrine,-- +Full of gray peace, while day to darkness dies. + +Then the forgotten dead at midnight come + And throng their chieftain's tomb, +Murmuring the toils o'er which they toil'd, alive, + The feats of sword and love; +And all the air thrills like a summer hive. + +--How so, thou say'st!--This is the poet's right! + He looks with larger sight +Than they who hedge their view by present things, + The small, parochial world +Of sight and touch: and what he sees, he sings. + +The steel-shell'd host, that, gleaming as it turns, + Like autumn lightning burns, +A moment's azure, the fresh flags that glance + As cornflowers o'er the corn, +Till war's stern step show like a gala dance, + +He also sees; and pierces to the heart, + Scanning the genuine part +Each Red-Cross pilgrim plays: Some, gold-enticed; + By love or lust or fame +Urged; or who yearn to kiss the grave of Christ + +And find their own, life-wearied:--Motley band! + O! ere they quit the Land +How maim'd, how marr'd, how changed from all that pride + In which so late they left +Orwell or Thames, with sails out-swelling wide + +And music tuneable with the timing oar + Clear heard from shore to shore; +All Europe streaming to the mystic East! + --Now on their sun-smit ranks +The dusky squadrons close in vulture-feast, + +And that fierce Day-star's blazing ball their sight + Sears with excess of light; +Or through dun sand-clouds the blue scimitar's edge + Slopes down like fire from heaven, +Mowing them as the thatcher mows the sedge. + +Then many a heart remember'd, as the skies + Grew dark on dying eyes, +Sweet England; her fresh fields and gardens trim; + Her tree-embower'd halls; +And the one face that was the world to him. + +--And one who fought his fight and held his way, + Through life's long latter day +Moving among the green, green English meads, + Ere in this niche he took +His rest, oft 'mid his kinsfolk told the deeds + +Of that gay passage through the Midland sea; + Cyprus and Sicily; +And how the Lion-Heart o'er the Moslem host + Triumph'd in Ascalon +Or Acre, by the tideless Tyrian coast, + +Yet never saw the vast Imperial dome, + Nor the thrice-holy Tomb:-- +--As that great vision of the hidden Grail + By bravest knights of old +Unseen:--seen only of pure Parcivale. + +The 'Thud Crusade,' 1189-1193, is the subject of this poem. Richard +Coeur de Lion carried his followers by way of Sicily and Cyprus: making a +transient conquest of the latter. In the Holy Land the siege of Acre +consumed the time and strength of the Crusaders. They suffered terribly +in the wilderness of Mount Carmel, and when at last preparing to march on +Jerusalem (1192) were recalled to Ascalon. Richard now advanced to +Bethany, but was unable to reach the Holy City. The tale is that while +riding with a party of knights one of them called out, 'This way, my +lord, and you will see Jerusalem.' But Richard hid his face and said, +'Alas!--they who are not worthy to win the Holy City are not worthy to +behold it.' + +_The vast Imperial dome_; The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built by +the Emperor Constantine; A.D. 326-335. + +_The hidden Grail_; This vision forms the subject of one of Tennyson's +noblest _Idylls_. + + + +A BALLAD OF EVESHAM + + +August 4: 1265 + +Earl Simon on the Abbey tower +In summer sunshine stood, +While helm and lance o'er Greenhill heights +Come glinting through the wood. +'My son!' he cried, 'I know his flag +Amongst a thousand glancing':-- +Fond father! no!--'tis Edward stern +In royal strength advancing. + +The Prince fell on him like a hawk +At Al'ster yester-eve, +And flaunts his captured banner now +And flaunts but to deceive:-- +--Look round! for Mortimer is by, +And guards the rearward river:-- +The hour that parted sire and son +Has parted them for ever! + +'Young Simon's dead,' he thinks, and look'd +Upon his living son: +'Now God have mercy on our souls, +Our bodies are undone! +But, Hugh and Henry, ye can fly +Before their bowmen smite us-- +They come on well! But 'tis from me +They learn'd the skill to fight us.' + +--'For England's cause, and England's laws, +With you we fight and fall!' +--'Together, then, and die like men, +And Heaven has room for all!' +--Then, face to face, and limb to limb, +And sword with sword inwoven, +That stubborn courage of the race +On Evesham field was proven + +O happy hills! O summer sky +Above the valley bent! +Your peacefulness rebukes the rage +Of blood on blood intent! +No thought was then for death or life +Through that long dreadful hour, +While Simon 'mid his faithful few +Stood like an iron tower, + +'Gainst which the winds and waves are hurl'd +In vain, unmoved, foursquare; +And round him raged the insatiate swords +Of Edward and De Clare: +And round him in the narrow combe +His white-cross comrades rally, +While ghastly gashings, cloud the beck +And crimson all the valley, + +And triple sword-thrusts meet his sword, +And thrice the charge he foils, +Though now in threefold flood the foe +Round those devoted boils: +And still the light of England's cause +And England's love was o'er him, +Until he saw his gallant boy +Go down in blood before him:-- + +He hove his huge two-handed blade, +He cried ''Tis time to die!' +And smote around him like a flail, +And clear'd a space to lie:-- +'Thank God!'--no more;--nor now could life +From loved and lost divide him:-- +And night fell o'er De Montfort dead, +And England wept beside him. + +In the words given here to Simon (and, indeed, in the bulk of my +narrative) I have almost literally followed Prothero's _Life_. The +struggle, like other critical conflicts in the days of unprofessional +war, was very brief. + + + +THE DIRGE OF LLYWELYN + + +December 10: 1282 + +Llanyis on Irfon, thine oaks in the drear +Red eve of December are wind-swept and sere, +Where a king by the stream in his agony lies, +And the life of a land ebbs away as he dies. + +Caradoc, thy sceptre for centuries kept, +Shall it pass like the ripple, unhonour'd, unwept: +Unknowing the lance, and the victim unknown, +Far from Aberffraw's halls and Eryri the lone! + +O dark day of winter and Cambria's shame, +To the treason of Builth when from Gwynedd he came, +And Walwyn and Frankton and Mortimer fell +Closed round unawares by the fold in the dell! + +--As who, where the shadow beneath him is thrown, +By some well in Saharan high noontide alone +Sits under the palm-tree, nor hears the low breath +Of the russet-maned foe panting hot for his death; + +So Llywelyn,--unarm'd, unaware:--Is it she, +Bright star of his morning, when Gwynedd was free, +Fair bride, the long sought, taken early, goes by? +In the heart of the breeze the lost Eleanor's sigh? + +Or the one little daughter's sweet face with a gleam +Of glamour looks out, as the dream in a dream? +Or for childhood's first sunshine and calm does he yearn, +As the days of Maesmynan in memory return? + +Or,--dear to the heart's-blood as first-love or wife,-- +The mountains whose freedom was one with his life, +Gray farms and green vales of that ancient domain, +The thousand-years' kingdom, he dreams of again? + +Or is it the rage of stark Edward; the base +Unkingly revenge on a kinglier race; +The wrong idly wrought on the patriot dead; +The dark castle of doom; the scorn-diadem'd head? + +--Lo, where Rhodri and Owain await thee!--The foe +Slips nearing in silence: one flash--and one blow! +And the ripple that passes wafts down to the Wye +The last prayer of Llywelyn, the nation's last sigh. + +But Llanynis yet sees the white rivulet gleam, +And the leaf of December fall sere on the stream; +While Irfon his dirge whispers on through the combe, +And the purple-topt hills gather round in their gloom. + +_Where a king_; The war in which Llywelyn fell was the inevitable result +of the growing power of England under Edward I; and, considering the vast +preponderance of weight against the Welsh Prince it could not have ended +but in the conquest of Wales. Yet its issue, as told here, was +determined as if by chance. + +_Aberffraw_; in Anglesea: the residence of the royal line of Gywnedd from +the time of Rhodri Mawr onwards. + +_Eryri_; the Eagle's rock is a name for Snowdon. The bird has been seen +in the neighbourhood within late years. + +_Is it she_; Eleanor, daughter to Simon de Montfort. After some years of +betrothal and impediment arising from the jealousy of Edward I, she and +Llywelyn were married in 1278. But after only two years of happiness, +Eleanor died, leaving one child, Catharine or Gwenllian. + +_Maesmynan_; by Caerwys in Flintshire; where Llywelyn lived retiredly in +youth. + +_The thousand-years' kingdom_; The descent of the royal house of North +Wales is legendarily traced from Caradoc-Caractacus. But the accepted +genealogy of the Princes of Gwynedd begins with Cunedda Wledig +(Paramount) cir. 400: ending in 1282 with Llywelyn son of Gruffydd. + +_The scorn-diadem'd head_; On finding whom he had slain, Frankton carried +Llywelyn's head to Edward at Rhuddlan, who, with a barbarity unworthy of +himself, set it over the Tower of London, wreathed in mockery of a +prediction (ascribed to Merlin) upon the coronation of a Welsh Prince in +London. + +_Rhodri and Owain_; Rhodri Mawr, (843), who united under his supremacy +the other Welsh principalities, Powys and Dinefawr; Owain Gwynedd, +(1137),--are among the most conspicuous of Llywelyn's royal predecessors. + + + +THE REJOICING OF THE LAND + + +1295 + +So the land had rest! and the cloud of that heart-sore struggle and pain +Rose from her ancient hills, and peace shone o'er her again, +Sunlike chasing the plagues wherewith the land was defiled; +And the leprosy fled, and her flesh came again, as the flesh of a child. +--They were stern and stark, the three children of Rolf, the first from +Anjou: +For their own sake loving the land, mayhap, but loving her true; +France the wife, and England the handmaid; yet over the realm +Their eyes were in every place, their hands gripp'd firm on the helm. +Villein and earl, the cowl and the plume, they were bridled alike; +One law for all, but arm'd law,--not swifter to aid than to strike. +Lo, in the twilight transept, the holy places of God, +Not with sunset the steps of the altar are dyed, but with scarlet of +blood! +Clang of iron-shod feet, and sheep for their shepherd who cry; +Curses and swords that flash, and the victim proffer'd to die! +--Bare thy own back to the smiter, O king, at the shrine of the dead: +Thy friend thou hast slain in thy folly; the blood of the Saint on thy +head: +Proud and priestly, thou say'st;--yet tender and faithful and pure; +True man, and so, true saint;--the crown of his martyrdom sure:-- +As friend with his friend, he could brave thee and warn; thou hast +silenced the voice, +Ne'er to be heard again:--nor again will Henry rejoice! +Green Erin may yield her, fair Scotland submit; but his sunshine is o'er; +The tooth of the serpent, the child of his bosom, has smote him so sore:-- +Like a wolf from the hounds he dragg'd off to his lair, not turning to +bay:-- +Crying 'shame on a conquer'd king!'--the grim ghost fled sullen away. +--Then, as in gray Autumn the heavens are pour'd on the rifted hillside, +When the Rain-stars mistily gleam, and torrents leap white in their +pride, +And the valley is all one lake, and the late, unharvested shocks +Are rapt to the sea, the dwellings of man, the red kine and the flocks,-- +O'er England the ramparts of law, the old landmarks of liberty fell, +As the brothers in blood and in lust, twin horror begotten of hell, +Suck'd all the life of the land to themselves, like Lofoden in flood, +One in his pride, in his subtlety one, mocking England and God. +Then tyranny's draught--once only--we drank to the dregs!--and the stain +Went crimson and black through the soul of the land, for all time, not in +vain! +We bore the bluff many-wived king, rough rival and victor of Rome; +We bore the stern despot-protector, whose dawning and sunset were gloom; +For they temper'd the self of the tyrant with love of the land, +Some touch of the heart, some remorse, refraining the grip of the hand. +But John's was blackness of darkness, a day of vileness and shame; +Shrieks of the tortured, and silence, and outrage the mouth cannot name. +--O that cry of the helpless, the weak that writhe under the foe, +Wrong man-wrought upon man, dumb unwritten annals of woe! +Cry that goes upward from earth as she rolls through the peace of the +skies +'How long? Hast thou forgotten, O God!' . . . and silence replies! +Silence:--and then was the answer;--the light o'er Windsor that broke, +The Meadow of Law--true Avalon where the true Arthur awoke! +--Not thou, whose name, as a seed o'er the world, plume-wafted on air, +Britons on each side sea,--Caerlleon and Cumbria,--share, +Joy of a downtrod race, dear hope of freedom to-be, +Dream of poetic hearts, whom the vision only can see! . . . +For thine were the fairy knights, fair ideals of beauty and song; +But ours, in the ways of men, walk'd sober, and stumbling, and strong;-- +Stumbling as who in peril and twilight their pathway trace out, +Hard to trace, and untried, and the foe above and about; +For the Charter of Freedom, the voice of the land in her Council secure +All doing, all daring,--and, e'en when defeated, of victory sure! +Langton, our Galahad, first, stamp'd Leader by Rome unaware, +Pembroke and Mowbray, Fitzwarine, Fitzalan, Fitzwalter, De Clare:-- +--O fair temple of Freedom and Law!--the foundations ye laid:-- +But again came the storm, and the might of darkness and wrong was +array'd, +A warfare of years; and the battle raged, and new heroes arose +From a soil that is fertile in manhood's men, and scatter'd the foes, +And set in their place the bright pillars of Order, Liberty's shrine, +O'er the land far-seen, as o'er Athens the home of Athena divine. +--So the land had rest:--and the cloud of that heart-sore struggle and +pain +Sped from her ancient hills, and peace shone o'er her again, +Sunlike chasing the plagues wherewith the land was defiled: +And the leprosy fled, and her flesh came again, as the flesh of a child. +For lo! the crown'd Statesman of Law, Justinian himself of his realm, +Edward, since Alfred our wisest of all who have watch'd by the helm! +He who yet preaches in silence his life-word, the light of his way, +From his marble unadorn'd chest, in the heart of the West Minster gray, +_Keep thy Faith_ . . . In the great town-twilight, this city of gloom, +--O how unlike that blithe London he look'd on!--I look on his tomb, +In the circle of kings, round the shrine, where the air is heavy with +fame, +Dust of our moulder'd chieftains, and splendour shrunk to a name. +Silent synod august, ye that tried the delight and the pain, +Trials and snares of a throne, was the legend written in vain? +Speak, for ye know, crown'd shadows! who down each narrow and strait +As ye might, once guided,--a perilous passage,--the keel of the State, +Fourth Henry, fourth Edward, Elizabeth, Charles,--now ye rest from your +toil, +Was it best, when by truth and compass ye steer'd, or by statecraft and +guile? +Or is it so hard, that steering of States, that as men who throw in +With party their life, honour soils his own ermine, a lie is no sin? . . . +--Not so, great Edward, with thee,--not so!--For he learn'd in his youth +The step straightforward and sure, the proud, bright bearing of truth:-- +Arm'd against Simon at Evesham, yet not less, striking for Law,-- +Ages of temperate freedom, a vision of order, he saw!-- +--Vision of opulent years, a murmur of welfare and peace: +Orchard golden-globed, plain waving in golden increase; +Hopfields fairer than vineyards, green laughing tendrils and bine; +Woodland misty in sunlight, and meadow sunny with kine;-- +Havens of heaving blue, where the keels of Guienne and the Hanse +Jostle and creak by the quay, and the mast goes up like a lance, +Gay with the pennons of peace, and, blazon'd with Adria's dyes, +Purple and orange, the sails like a sunset burn in the skies. +Bloodless conquests of commerce, that nation with nation unite! +Hand clasp'd frankly in hand, not steel-clad buffets in fight: +On the deck strange accents and shouting; rough furcowl'd men of the +north, +Genoa's brown-neck'd sons, and whom swarthy Smyrna sends forth: +Freights of the south; drugs potent o'er death from the basilisk won, +Odorous Phoenix-nest, and spice of a sunnier sun:-- +Butts of Malvasian nectar, Messene's vintage of old, +Cyprian webs, damask of Arabia mazy with gold: +Sendal and Samite and Tarsien, and sardstones ruddy as wine, +Graved by Athenian diamond with forms of beauty divine. +To the quay from the gabled alleys, the huddled ravines of the town, +Twilights of jutting lattice and beam, the Guild-merchants come down, +Cheapening the gifts of the south, the sea-borne alien bales, +For the snow-bright fleeces of Leom'ster, the wealth of Devonian vales; +While above them, the cavernous gates, on which knight-robbers have gazed +Hopeless, in peace look down, their harrows of iron upraised; +And Dustyfoot enters at will with his gay Autolycus load, +And the maidens are flocking as doves when they fling the light grain on +the road. +Low on the riverain mead, where the dull clay-cottages cling +To the tall town-ward and the towers, as nests of the martin in spring, +Where the year-long fever lurks, and gray leprosy burrows secure, +Are the wattled huts of the Friars, the long, white Church of the poor: +--Haven of wearied eyelids; of hearts that care not to live; +Shadow and silence of prayer; the peace which the world cannot give! +Tapers hazily gloaming through fragrance the censers outpour; +Chant ever rising and rippling in sweetness, as waves on the shore; +Casements of woven stone, with more than the rainbow bedyed; +Beauty of holiness! Spell yet unbroken by riches and pride! +--Ah! could it be so for ever!--the good aye better'd by Time:-- +First-Faith, first-Wisdom, first-Love,--to the end be true to their +prime! . . +Far rises the storm o'er horizons unseen, that will lay them in dust, +Crashings of plunder'd cloisters, and royal insatiate lust:-- +Far, unseen, unheard!--Meanwhile the great Minster on high +Like a stream of music, aspiring, harmonious, springs to the sky:-- +Story on story ascending their buttress'd beauty unfold, +Till the highest height is attain'd, and the Cross shines star-like in +gold, +Set as a meteor in heaven; a sign of health and release:-- +And the land rejoices below, and the heart-song of England is Peace. + +This date has been chosen as representing at once the culminating point +in the reign of Edward, and of Mediaevalism in England. The sound, the +fascinating elements of that period rapidly decline after the thirteenth +century in Church and State, in art and in learning. + +'In the person of the great Edward,' says Freeman, 'the work of +reconciliation is completed. Norman and Englishman have become one under +the best and greatest of our later Kings, the first who, since the Norman +entered our land, . . . followed a purely English policy.' + +_The three children_; William I and II, and Henry I. + +_The transept_; of Canterbury Cathedral, after Becket's death named the +'Martyrdom.' + +_Nor again_; See the _Early Plantagenets_, by Bishop Stubbs: one of the +very few masterpieces among the shoal of little books on great subjects +in which a declining literature is fertile. + +_Britons on each side sea_; Armorica and Cornwall, Wales and Strathclyde, +all share in the great Arthurian legend. + +_Justinian_; 'Edward,' says Dr. Stubbs, 'is the great lawgiver, the great +politician, the great organiser of the mediaeval English polity:' (_Early +Plantagenets_). + +_Keep thy Faith_; 'Pactum serva' may be still seen inscribed on the huge +stone coffin of Edward I. + +_The keels of Guienne . . . Adria's dyes_; The ships of Gascony, of the +Hanse Towns, of Genoa, of Venice, are enumerated amongst those which now +traded with England. + +_Malvasian nectar_; 'Malvoisie,' the sweet wine of the Southern Morea, +gained its name from Monemvasia, or Napoli di Malvasia, its port of +shipment. + +_Sendal_; A thin rich silk. _Samite_; A very rich stuff, sometimes +wholly of silk, often crimson, interwoven with gold and silver thread, +and embroidered. _Tarsien_; Silken stuff from Tartary. + +_Athenian diamond_; A few very fine early gems ascribed to Athens, are +executed wholly with diamond-point. + +_The snow-bright fleeces_; Those of Leominster were very long famous. + +_Devonian vales_; The ancient mining region west of Tavistock. + +_Dustyfoot_; Old name for pedlar. + + + +CRECY + + +August 26: 1346 + + At Crecy by Somme in Ponthieu + High up on a windy hill + A mill stands out like a tower; + King Edward stands on the mill. + The plain is seething below + As Vesuvius seethes with flame, + But O! not with fire, but gore, + Earth incarnadined o'er, + Crimson with shame and with fame!-- +To the King run the messengers, crying +'Thy Son is hard-press'd to the dying!' + --'Let alone: for to-day will be written in story + To the great world's end, and for ever: + So let the boy have the glory.' + + Erin and Gwalia there + With England are one against France; + Outfacing the oriflamme red + The red dragons of Merlin advance:-- + As harvest in autumn renew'd + The lances bend o'er the fields; + Snow-thick our arrow-heads white + Level the foe as they light; + Knighthood to yeomanry yields:-- +Proud heart, the King watches, as higher +Goes the blaze of the battle, and nigher:-- + 'To-day is a day will be written in story + To the great world's end, and for ever! + Let the boy alone have the glory.' + + Harold at Senlac-on-Sea + By Norman arrow laid low,-- + When the shield-wall was breach'd by the shaft, + --Thou art avenged by the bow! + Chivalry! name of romance! + Thou art henceforth but a name! + Weapon that none can withstand, + Yew in the Englishman's hand, + Flight-shaft unerring in aim! +As a lightning-struck forest the foemen +Shiver down to the stroke of the bowmen:-- + --'O to-day is a day will be written in story + To the great world's end, and for ever! + So, let the boy have the glory.' + + Pride of Liguria's shore + Genoa wrestles in vain; + Vainly Bohemia's King + Kinglike is laid with the slain. + The Blood-lake is wiped-out in blood, + The shame of the centuries o'er; + Where the pride of the Norman had sway + The lions lord over the fray, + The legions of France are no more:-- +--The Prince to his father kneels lowly; +--'His is the battle! his wholly! + For to-day is a day will be written in story + To the great world's end, and for ever:-- + So, let him have the spurs, and the glory!' + +_Erin and Gwalia_; Half of Edward's army consisted of light armed footmen +from Ireland and Wales--the latter under their old Dragon-flag. + +_Chivalry_; The feudal idea of an army, resting 'on the superiority of +the horseman to the footman, of the mounted noble to the unmounted +churl,' may be said to have been ruined by this battle: (_Green_, B. IV: +ch. iii). + +_Liguria_; 15,000 cross-bowmen from Genoa were in Philip's army. + +_The Blood-lake_; Senlac; Hastings. + + + +THE BLACK SEATS + + +1348-9 + + Blue and ever more blue + The sky of that summer's spring: + No cloud from dawning to night: + The lidless eyeball of light + Glared: nor could e'en in darkness the dew + Her pearls on the meadow-grass string. + As a face of a hundred years, + Mummied and scarr'd, for the heart + Is long dry at the fountain of tears, + Green earth lay brown-faced and torn, + Scarr'd and hard and forlorn. + And as that foul monster of Lerna + Whom Heracles slew in his might, + But this one slaying, not slain, + From the marshes, poisonous, white, + Crawl'd out a plague-mist and sheeted the plain, + A hydra of hell and of night. + --Whence upon men has that horror past? + From Cathaya westward it stole to Byzance,-- + The City of Flowers,--the vineyards of France;-- + O'er the salt-sea ramparts of England, last, + Reeking and rank, a serpent's breath:-- +What is this, men cry in their fear, what is this that cometh? + 'Tis the Black Death, they whisper: + The black black Death! + + The heart of man at the name + To a ball of ice shrinks in, + With hope, surrendering life:-- + The husband looks on the wife, + Reading the tokens of doom in the frame, + The pest-boil hid in the skin, + And flees and leaves her to die. + Fear-sick, the mother beholds + In her child's pure crystalline eye + A dull shining, a sign of despair. + Lo, the heavens are poison, not air; + And they fall as when lambs in the pasture + With a moan that is hardly a moan, + Drop, whole flocks, where they stand; + And the mother lays her, alone, + Slain by the touch of her nursing hand, + Where the household before her is strown. + --Earth, Earth, open and cover thy dead! + For they are smitten and fall who bear + The corpse to the grave with a prayerless prayer, + And thousands are crush'd in the common bed:-- + --Is it Hell that breathes with an adder's breath? + Is it the day of doom, men cry, the Judge that cometh? + --'Tis the Black Death, God help us! + The black black Death. + + Maid Alice and maid Margaret + In the fields have built them a bower + Of reedmace and rushes fine, + Fenced with sharp albespyne; + Pretty maids hid in the nest; and yet + Yours is one death, and one hour! + Priest and peasant and lord + By the swift, soft stroke of the air, + By a silent invisible sword, + In plough-field or banquet, fall: + The watchers are flat on the wall:-- + Through city and village and valley + The sweet-voiced herald of prayer + Is dumb in the towers; the throng + To the shrine pace barefoot; and where + Blazed out from the choir a glory of song, + God's altar is lightless and bare. + Is there no pity in earth or sky? + The burden of England, who shall say? + Half the giant oak is riven away, + And the green leaves yearn for the leaves that die. + Will the whole world drink of the dragon's breath? +It is the cup, men cry, the cup of God's fury that cometh! + 'Tis the Black Death, Lord help us! + The black black Death. + + In England is heard a moan, + A bitter lament and a sore, + Rachel lamenting her dead, + And will not be comforted + For the little faces for ever gone, + The feet from the silent floor. + And a cry goes up from the land, + Take from us in mercy, O God, + Take from us the weight of Thy hand, + The cup and the wormwood of woe! + 'Neath the terrible barbs of Thy bow + This England, this once Thy beloved, + Is water'd with life-blood for rain; + The bones of her children are white, + As flints on the Golgotha plain; + Not slain as warriors by warriors in fight, + By the arrows of Heaven slain. + We have sinn'd: we lift up our souls to Thee, + O Lord God eternal on high: + Thou who gavest Thyself to die, + Saviour, save! to Thy feet we flee:-- + Snatch from the hell and the Enemy's breath, +From the Prince of the Air, from the terror by night that cometh:-- + From the Black Death, Christ save us! + The black black Death! + +_That foul monster_; The Lernaean Hydra of Greek legend. + +_From the marshes_; The drought which preceded the plague in England, and +may have predisposed to its reception, was followed by mist, in which the +people fancied they saw the disease palpably advancing. + +_From Cathaya_; The plague was heard of in Central Asia in 1333; it +reached Constantinople in 1347. + +_The City of Flowers_; Florence, where the ravages of the plague were +immortalized in the _Decamerone_ of Boccaccio. + +_The pest boil_; Seems to have been the enlarged and discharging gland by +which the specific blood-poison of the plague relieved itself. A 'muddy +glistening' of the eye is noticed as one of the symptoms. + +_The common bed_; More than 50,000 are said to have been buried on the +site of the Charter House. + +_Albespyne_; Hawthorn. + +_Half the giant oak_; 'Of the three or four millions who then formed the +population of England, more than one-half were swept away': (_Green_, B. +IV: ch. iii). + + + +THE PILGRIM AND THE PLOUGHMAN + + +1382 + +It is a dream, I know:--Yet on the past +Of this dear England if in thought we gaze, +About her seems a constant sunshine cast; +In summer calm we see and golden haze +The little London of Plantagenet days; +Quaint labyrinthine knot of toppling lanes, +And thorny spires aflame with starlike vanes. + +Our silver Thames all yet unspoil'd and clear; +The many-buttress'd bridge that stems the tide; +Black-timber'd wharves; arcaded walls, that rear +Long, golden-crested roofs of civic pride:-- +While flaunting galliots by the gardens glide, +And on Spring's frolic air the May-song swells, +Mix'd with the music of a thousand bells. + +Beyond the bridge a mazy forest swims, +Great spars and sails and flame-tongued flags on high, +Wedged round the quay, a-throng with ruddy limbs +And faces bronzed beneath another sky: +And 'mid the press sits one with aspect shy +And downcast eyes of watching, and, the while, +The deep observance of an inward smile. + +In hooded mantle gray he smiled and sate, +With ink-horn at his knees and scroll and pen. +And took the toll and register'd the freight, +'Mid noise of clattering cranes and strife of men: +And all that moved and spoke was in his ken, +With lines and hues like Nature's own design'd +Deep in the magic mirror of his mind. + +Thence oft, returning homeward, on the book,-- +His of Certaldo, or the bard whose lays +Were lost to love in Scythia,--he would look +Till his fix'd eyes the dancing letters daze: +Then forth to the near fields, and feed his gaze +On one fair flower in starry myriads spread, +And in her graciousness be comforted:-- + +Then, joyous with a poet's joy, to draw +With genial touch, and strokes of patient skill, +The very image of each thing he saw:-- +He limn'd the man all round, for good or ill, +Having both sighs and laughter at his will; +Life as it went he grasp'd in vision true, +Yet stood outside the scene his pencil drew. + +--Man's inner passions in their conscience-strife, +The conflicts of the heart against the heart, +The mother yearning o'er the infant's life, +The maiden wrong'd by wealth and lecherous art, +The leper's loathsome cell from man apart, +War's hell of lust and fire, the village-woe, +The tinsel chivalry veiling shame below,-- + +Not his to draw,--to see, perhaps:--Our eyes +Hold bias with our humour:--His, to paint +With Nature's freshness, what before him lies: +The knave, the fool; the frolicsome, the quaint: +His the broad jest, the laugh without restraint, +The ready tears, the spirit lightly moved; +Loving the world, and by the world beloved. + +So forth fared Chaucer on his pilgrimage +Through England's humours; in immortal song +Bodying the form and pressure of his age, +Tints gay as pure, and delicate as strong; +Still to the Tabard the blithe travellers throng, +Seen in his mind so vividly, that we +Know them more clearly than the men we see. + +Fair France, bright Italy, those numbers train'd; +First in his pages Nature wedding Art +Of all our sons of song; yet he remain'd +True English of the English at his heart:-- +He stood between two worlds, yet had no part +In that new order of the dawning day +Which swept the masque of chivalry away. + +O Poet of romance and courtly glee +And downcast eager glance that shuns the sky, +Above, about, are signs thou canst not see, +Portents in heaven and earth!--And one goes by +With other than thy prosperous, laughing eye, +Framing the rough web of his rueful lays, +The sorrow and the sin--with bitter gaze + +As down the Strand he stalks, a sable shade +Of death, while, jingling like the elfin train, +In silver samite knight and dame and maid +Ride to the tourney on the barrier'd plain; +And he must bow in humble mute disdain, +And that worst woe of baffled souls endure, +To see the evil that they may not cure. + +For on sweet Malvern Hill one morn he lay, +Drowsed by the music of the constant stream:-- +Loud sang the cuckoo, cuckoo!--for the May +Breathed summer: summer floating like a dream +From the far fields of childhood, with a gleam +Of alien freshness on her forehead fair, +And Heaven itself within the common air. + +Then on the mead in vision Langland saw +A pilgrim-throng; not missal-bright as those +Whom Chaucer's hand surpass'd itself to draw, +Gay as the lark, and brilliant as the rose;-- +But such as dungeon foul or spital shows, +Or the serf's fever-den, or field of fight, +When festering sunbeams on the wounded smite. + +No sainted shrine the motley wanderers seek, +Pilgrims of life upon the field of scorn, +Mocking and mock'd; with plague and hunger weak, +And haggard faces bleach'd as those who mourn, +And footsteps redden'd with the trodden thorn; +Blind stretching hands that grope for truth in vain, +Across a twilight demon-haunted plain. + +A land whose children toil and rot like beasts, +Robbers and robb'd by turns, the dreamer sees:-- +Land of poor-grinding lords and faithless priests, +Where wisdom starves and folly thrones at ease +'Mid lavishness and lusts and knaveries; +Times out of joint, a universe of lies, +Till Love divine appear in Ploughman's guise + +To burn the gilded tares and save the land, +Risen from the grave and walking earth again:-- +--And as he dream'd and kiss'd the nail-pierced hand, +A hundred towers their Easter voices rain +In silver showers o'er hill and vale and plain, +And the air throbb'd with sweetness, and he woke +And all the dream in light and music broke. + +--He look'd around, and saw the world he left +When to that visionary realm of song +His spirit fled from bonds of flesh bereft; +And on the vision he lay musing long, +As o'er his soul rude minstrel-echoes throng, +Old measures half-disused; and grasp'd his pen, +And drew his cottage-Christ for homely men. + +Thus Langland also took his pilgrimage; +Rough lone knight-errant on uncourtly ways, +And wrong and woe were charter'd on his page, +With some horizon-glimpse of sweeter days. +And on the land the message of his lays +Smote like the strong North-wind, and cleansed the sky +With wholesome blast and bitter clarion-cry, + +Summoning the people in the Ploughman's name. +--So fought his fight, and pass'd unknown away; +Seeking no other praise, no sculptured fame +Nor laureate honours for his artless lay, +Nor in the Minster laid with high array;-- +But where the May-thorn gleams, the grasses wave, +And the wind sighs o'er a forgotten grave. + +Langland, whom I have put here in contrast with Chaucer, is said to have +lived between 1332 and 1400. His _Vision of Piers the Plowman_ (who is +partially identified with our blessed Saviour), with some added poems, +forms an allegory on life in England, in Church and State, as it appeared +to him during the dislocated and corrupt age which followed the +superficial glories of Edward the Third's earlier years. + +_Took the toll_; Amongst other official employments, Chaucer was +Comptroller of the Customs in the Port of London. See his _House of +Fame_; and the beautiful picture of his walks at dawning in the daisy- +meadows: Prologue to the _Legend of Good Women_. + +_His of Certaldo, . . . in Scythia_; Boccaccio:--and Ovid, who died in +exile at Tomi:--to both of whom Chaucer is greatly indebted for the +substance of his tales. + +_Picture-like_; 'It is chiefly as a comic poet, and a minute observer of +manners and circumstances, that Chaucer excels. In serious and moral +poetry he is frequently languid and diffuse, but he springs like Antaeus +from the earth when his subject changes to coarse satire or merry +narrative' (Hallam, _Mid. Ages_: Ch. IX: Pt. iii). + +_The Tabard_; Inn in Southwark whence the pilgrims to Canterbury start. + +_Down the Strand_; It is thus that Langland describes himself and his +feelings of dissatisfaction with the world. + +_That worst woe_; Literature, even ancient literature, has no phrase more +deeply felt and pathetic than the words which the Persian nobleman at the +feast in Thebes before Plataea addressed to Thersander of +Orchomenus:--[Greek text]: (_Herodotus_, IX: xvi). + +_One morn he lay_; The _Vision_ opens with a picture of the poet asleep +on Malvern Hill: the last of the added poems closing as he wakes with the +Easter chimes. + +_Old measures_; Langland's metre 'is more uncouth than that of his +predecessors' (Hallam, _Mid. Ag_. Ch. IX: Pt. iii). + +_In the Minster_; Chaucer was buried at the entrance of S. Benet's Chapel +in Westminster Abbey. + + + +JEANNE D'ARC + + +1424 + +So many stars in heaven,-- +Flowers in the meadow that shine; +--This little one of Domremy, +What special grace is thine? +By the fairy beech and the fountain +What but a child with thy brothers? +Among the maids of the valley +Art more than one among others? + +Chosen darling of Heaven, +Yet at heart wast only a child! +And for thee the wild things of Nature +Sot aside their nature wild:-- +The brown-eyed fawn of the forest +Came silently glancing upon thee; +The squirrel slipp'd down from the fir, +And nestled his gentleness on thee. + +_Angelus_ bell and _Ave_, +Like voices they follow the maid +As she follows her sheep in the valley +From the dawn to the folding shade:-- +For the world that we cannot see +Is the world of her earthly seeing; +From the air of the hills of God +She draws her breath and her being. + +Dances by beech tree and fountain, +They know her no longer:--apart +Sitting with thought and with vision +In the silent shrine of the heart. +And a voice henceforth and for ever +Within, without her, is sighing +'Pity for France, O pity, +France the beloved, the dying!' + +--Now between church-wall and cottage +What comes in the blinding light, +--Rainbow plumes and armour, +Face as the sun in his height . . . +'Angel that pierced the red dragon, +Pity for France, O pity! +Holy one, thou shalt save her, +Vineyard and village and city!' + +Poor sweet child of Domremy, +In thine innocence only strong, +Thou seest not the treason before thee, +The gibe and the curse of the throng,-- +The furnace-pile in the market +That licks out its flames to take thee;-- +For He who loves thee in heaven +On earth will not forsake thee! + +Poor sweet maid of Domremy, +In thine innocence secure, +Heed not what men say of thee, +The buffoon and his jest impure! +Nor care if thy name, young martyr, +Be the star of thy country's story:-- +Mid the white-robed host of the heavens +Thou hast more than glory! + +_Angel that pierced_; 'She _had pity_, to use the phrase for ever on her +lip, _on the fair realm of France_. She saw visions; St. Michael +appeared to her in a flood of blinding light': (_Green_, B. IV: ch. vi). + +_The buffoon_; Voltaire. + + + +TOWTON FIELD + + +Palm Sunday: 1461 + +Love, Who from the throne above +Cam'st to teach the law of love, +Who Thy peaceful triumph hast +Led o'er palms before Thee cast, +E'en in highest heaven Thine eyes +Turn from this day's sacrifice! +Slaughter whence no victor host +Can the palms of triumph boast; +Blood on blood in rivers spilt,-- +English blood by English guilt! + + From the gracious Minster-towers + Of York the priests behold afar + The field of Towton shimmer like a star + With light of lance and helm; while both the powers + Misnamed from the fair rose, with one fell blow, + --In snow-dazed, blinding air + Mass'd on the burnside bare,-- +Each army, as one man, drove at the opposing foe. + + Ne'er since then, and ne'er before, + On England's fields with English hands + Have met for death such myriad myriad bands, + Such wolf-like fury, and such greed of gore:-- + No natural kindly touch, no check of shame: + And no such bestial rage + Blots our long story's page; +Such lewd remorseless swords, such selfishness of aim + + --Gracious Prince of Peace! Yet Thou + May'st look and bless with lenient eyes + When trodden races 'gainst their tyrant rise, + And the bent back no more will deign to bow: + Or when they crush some old anarchic feud, + And found the throne anew + On Law to Freedom true, +Cleansing the land they love from guilt of blood by blood. + + Nor did Heaven unmoved behold + When Hellas, for her birthright free + Dappling with gore the dark Saronian sea, + The Persian wave back, past Abydos, roll'd:-- + But in this murderous match of chief 'gainst chief + No chivalry had part, + No impulse of the heart; +Nor any sigh for Right triumphant breathes relief. + + --Midday comes: and no release, + No carnage-pause to blow on blow! + While through the choir the palm-wreathed children go, + And gay hosannas hail the Prince of Peace:-- + And evening falls, and from the Minster height + They see the wan Ouse stream + Blood-dark with slaughter gleam, +And hear the demon-struggle shrieking through the night. + +Love, o'er palms in triumph strown +Passing, through the crowd alone,-- +Silent 'mid the exulting cry,-- +At Jerusalem to die: +Thou, foreknowing all, didst know +How Thy blood in vain would flow! +How our madness oft would prove +Recreant to the law of love: +Wrongs that men from men endure +Doing Thee to death once more! + +'On the 29th of March 1461 the two armies encountered one another at +Towton Field, near Tadcaster. In the numbers engaged, as well as in the +terrible obstinacy of the struggle, no such battle had been seen in +England since the field of Senlac. The two armies together numbered +nearly 120,000 men': (_Green_, B. IV: ch. vi). + +_Saronian sea_; Scene of the battle of Salamis, B.C. 480. + +_They see the wan Ouse stream_; Mr. R. Wilton, of Londesborough, has +kindly pointed out to me that _Wharfe_, which from a brook received the +bloodshed of Towton, does not discharge into _Ouse_ until about ten miles +south of York. The _gleam_ is, therefore, visionary: (1889). + + + +GROCYN AT OXFORD + + +_THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE_ + +1491 + + As she who in some village-child unknown, + With rustic grace and fantasy bedeck'd + And in her simple loveliness alone, + A sister finds;--and the long years' neglect + Effaces with warm love and nursing care, + And takes her heart to heart, +And in her treasured treasures bids her freely share, + + And robes with radiance new, new strength and grace:-- + Hellas and England! thus it was with ye! + Though distanced far by centuries and by space, + Sisters in soul by Nature's own decree. + And if on Athens in her glory-day + The younger might not look, +Her living soul came back, and reinfused our clay. + + --It was not wholly lost, that better light, + Not in the darkest darkness of our day; + From cell to cell, e'en through the Danish night, + The torch ran on its firefly fitful way; + And blazed anew with him who in the vale + Of fair Aosta saw +The careless reaper-bands, and pass'd the heavens' high pale, + + And supp'd with God, in vision! Or with him, + Earliest and greatest of his name, who gave + His life to Nature, in her caverns dim + Tracking her soul, through poverty to the grave, + And left his Great Work to the barbarous age + That, in its folly-love, +With wizard-fame defamed his and sweet Vergil's page. + + But systems have their day, and die, or change + Transform'd to new: Not now from cloister-cell + And desk-bow'd priest, breathes out that impulse strange + 'Neath which the world of feudal Europe fell:-- + Throes of new birth, new life; while men despair'd + Or triumph'd in their pride, +As in their eyes the torch of learning fiercely flared. + + For now the cry of Homer's clarion first + And Plato's golden tongue on English ears + And souls aflame for that new doctrine burst, + As Grocyn taught, when, after studious years, + He came from Arno to the liberal walls + That welcomed me in youth, +And nursed in Grecian lore, long native to her halls. + + O voice that spann'd the gulf of vanish'd years, + Evoking shapes of old from night to light, + Lo at thy spell a long-lost world appears, + Where Rome and Hellas break upon our sight:-- + The Gothic gloom divides; a glory burns + Behind the clouds of Time, +And all that wonder-past in beauty's glow returns. + + --For when the Northern floods that lash'd and curl'd + Around the granite fragments of great Rome + Outspread Colossus-like athwart the world, + Foam'd down, and the new nations found their home, + That earlier Europe, law and arts and arms, + Fell into far-off shade, +Or lay like some fair maid sleep-sunk in magic charms. + + And as in lands once flourishing, now forlorn, + And desolate capitals, the traveller sees + Wild tribes, in ruins from the ruins torn + Hutted like beasts 'mid marble palaces, + Unknowing what those relics mean, and whose + The goblets gold-enchased +And images of the gods the broken vaults disclose; + + So in the Mid-age from the Past of Man + The Present was disparted; and they stood + As on some island, sever'd from the plan + Of the great world, and the sea's twilight flood + Around them, and the monsters of the unknown; + Blind fancy mix'd with fact; +Faith in the things unseen sustaining them alone. + + Age of extremes and contrasts!--where the good + Was more than human in its tenderness + Of chivalry;--Beauty's self the prize of blood, + And evil raging round with wild excess + Of more than brutal:--A disjointed time! + Doubt with Hypocrisy pair'd, +And purest Faith by folly, childlike, led to crime. + + O Florentine, O Master, who alone + From thy loved Vergil till our Shakespeare came + Didst climb the long steps to the imperial throne, + With what immortal dyes of angry flame + Hast blazon'd out the vileness of the day! + What tints of perfect love +Rosier than summer rose, etherealize thy lay! + + --Now, as in some new land when night is deep + The pilgrim halts, nor knows what round him lies + And wakes with dawn, and finds him on the steep, + While plains beneath and unguess'd summits rise, + And stately rivers widening to the sea, + Cities of men and towers, +Abash'd for very joy, and gazing fearfully;-- + + New worlds, new wisdom, a new birth of things + On Europe shine, and men know where they stand: + The sea his western portal open flings, + And bold Sebastian strikes the flowery land: + Soon, heaven its secret yields; the golden sun + Enthrones him in the midst, +And round his throne man and the planets humbly run. + + New learning all! yet fresh from fountains old, + Hellenic inspiration, pure and deep: + Strange treasures of Byzantine hoards unroll'd, + And mouldering volumes from monastic sleep, + Reclad with life by more than magic art: + Till that old world renew'd +His youth, and in the past the present own'd its part. + + --O vision that ye saw, and hardly saw, + Ye who in Alfred's path at Oxford trod, + Or in our London train'd by studious law + The little-ones of Christ to Him and God, + Colet and Grocyn!--Though the world forget + The labours of your love, +In loving hearts your names live in their fragrance yet. + + O vision that our happier eyes have seen! + For not till peace came with Elizabeth + Did those fair maids of holy Hippocrene + Cross the wan waves and draw a northern breath: + Though some far-echoed strain on Tuscan lyres + Our Chaucer caught, and sang +Like her who sings ere dawn has lit his Eastern fires;-- + + Herald of that first splendour, when the sky + Was topaz-clear with hope, and life-blood-red + With thoughts of mighty poets, lavishly + Round all the fifty years' horizon shed:-- + Now in our glades the Aglaian Graces gleam, + Around our fountains throng, +And change Ilissus' banks for Thames and Avon stream. + + Daughters of Zeus and bright Eurynome, + She whose blue waters pave the Aegaean plain, + Children of all surrounding sky and sea, + A larger ocean claims you, not in vain! + Ye who to Helicon from Thessalia wide + Wander'd when earth was young, +Come from Libethrion, come; our love, our joy, our pride! + + Ah! since your gray Pierian ilex-groves + Felt the despoiling tread of barbarous feet, + This land, o'er all, the Delian leader loves; + Here is your favourite home, your genuine seat:-- + In these green western isles renew the throne + Where Grace by Wisdom shines; +--We welcome with full hearts, and claim you for our own! + +If, looking at England, one point may be singled out in that long +movement, generalized under the name of the Renaissance, as critical, it +is the introduction of the Greek and Latin literature:--which has +remained ever since conspicuously the most powerful and enlarging +element, the most effectively educational, among all blanches of human +study. + +_In the vale Of fair Aosta_; See Anselm's youthful vision of the gleaners +and the palace of heaven (Green: _History_, B. II: ch. ii). + +_His Great Work_; Roger Bacon's so-named _Opus Majus_: 'At once,' says +Whewell, 'the Encyclopaedia and the Novum Organum of the thirteenth +century.' Like Vergil, Bacon passed at one time for a magician. + +_That new doctrine_; Grocyn was perhaps the first Englishman who studied +Greek under Chalcondylas the Byzantine at Florence; certainly the first +who lectured on Greek in England. This was in the Hall of Exeter +College, Oxford, in 1491. To him Erasmus (1499) came to study the +language.--See the brilliant account of the revival of learning in Green, +_Hist_. B. V: ch. ii. + +_Master, who alone_; See _The Poet's Euthanasia_. + +_Sebastian_; Cabot, who, in 1497, sailed from Bristol, and reached +Florida. + +_The golden sun_; Refers to Copernicus; whose solar system was, however, +not published till 1543. + +_The little-ones_; Colet, Dean of S. Paul's, founded the school in 1510. +'The bent of its founder's mind was shown by the image of the Child Jesus +over the master's chair, with the words _Hear ye Him_ graven beneath it' +(Green: B. V: ch. iv). + +_Fifty years_; Between 1570 and 1620 lies almost all the glorious +production of our so-called Elizabethan period. + +_From Libethrion_;--_Nymphae, noster amor, Libethrides_! . . . What a +music is there in the least little fragment of Vergil's exquisite art! + + + +MARGARET TUDOR + + +_PROTHALAMION_ + +1503 + +Love who art above us all, +Guard the treasure on her way, +Flower of England, fair and tall, +Maiden-wise and maiden-gay, +As her northward path she goes; +Daughter of the double rose. + +Look with twofold grace on her +Who from twofold root has grown, +Flower of York and Lancaster, +Now to grace another throne, +Rose in Scotland's garden set,-- +Britain's only Margaret. + +Exile-child from childhood's bower, +Pledge and bond of Henry's faith, +James, take home our English flower, +Guard from touch of scorn and skaith; +Bearing, in her slender hands, +Palms of peace to hostile lands. + +Safe by southern smiling shires, +Many a city, many a shrine; +By the newly kindled fires +Of the black Northumbrian mine; +Border clans in ambush set; +Carry thou fair Margaret. + +--Land of heath and hill and linn, +Land of mountain-freedom wild, +She in heart to thee is kin, +Tudor's daughter, Gwynedd's child! +In her lively lifeblood share +Gwenllian and Angharad fair. + +East and West, from Dee to Yare, +Now in equal bonds are wed: +Peace her new-found flower shall wear, +Rose that dapples white with red; +North and South, dissever'd yet, +Join in this fair Margaret! + +Ocean round our Britain roll'd, +Sapphire ring without a flaw, +When wilt thou one realm enfold, +One in freedom, one in law? +Will that ancient feud be sped, +Brothers' blood by brothers shed? + +--Land with freedom's struggle sore, +Land to whom thy children cling +With a lover's love and more, +Take the gentle gift we bring! +Pearl in thy crown royal set; +Scotland's other Margaret. + +Margaret Tudor, daughter to Henry VII, married in 1502 to James IV, and +afterwards to Lord Angus, was thus great-grandmother on both sides to +James I of England. + +_Gwynedd's child_; The Tudors intermarried with the old royal family of +North Wales, in whose pedigree occur the girl-names Gwenllian and +Angharad. + +_Other Margaret_; Sister to Edgar the Etheling, and wife to Malcolm. Her +life and character are in contrast to the unhappy and unsatisfactory +career of Margaret Tudor, whom I have here only treated as at once +representing and uniting England, Scotland, and Wales. + + + +LONDON BRIDGE + + +July 6: 1535 + +The midnight moaning stream +Draws down its glassy surface through the bridge +That o'er the current casts a tower'd ridge, +Dark sky-line forms fantastic as a dream; +And cresset watch-lights on the bridge-gate gleam, +Where 'neath the star-lit dome gaunt masts upbuoy +No flag of festive joy, +But blanching spectral heads;--their heads, who died +Victims to tyrant-pride, +Martyrs of Faith and Freedom in the day +Of shame and flame and brutal selfish sway. + +And one in black array +Veiling her Rizpah-misery, to the gate +Comes, and with gold and moving speech sedate +Buys down the thing aloft, and bears away +Snatch'd from the withering wind and ravens' prey: +And as a mother's eyes, joy-soften'd, shed +Tears o'er her young child's head, +Golden and sweet, from evil saved; so she +O'er this, sad-smilingly, +Mangled and gray, unwarm'd by human breath, +Clasping death's relic with love passing death. + +So clasping now! and so +When death clasps her in turn! e'en in the grave +Nursing the precious head she could not save, +Tho' through each drop her life-blood yearn'd to flow +If but for him she might to scaffold go:-- +And O! as from that Hall, with innocent gore +Sacred from roof to floor, +To that grim other place of blood he went-- +What cry of agony rent +The twilight,--cry as of an Angel's pain,-- +_My father, O my father_! . . . and in vain! + +Then, as on those who lie +Cast out from bliss, the days of joy come back, +And all the soul with wormwood sweetness rack, +So in that trance of dreadful ecstasy +The vision of her girlhood glinted by:-- +And how the father through their garden stray'd, +And, child with children, play'd, +And teased the rabbit-hutch, and fed the dove +Before him from above +Alighting,--in his visitation sweet, +Led on by little hands, and eager feet. + +Hence among those he stands, +Elect ones, ever in whose ears the word +_He that offends these little ones_ . . . is heard, +With love and kisses smiling-out commands, +And all the tender hearts within his hands; +Seeing, in every child that goes, a flower +From Eden's nursery bower, +A little stray from Heaven, for reverence here +Sent down, and comfort dear: +All care well paid-for by one pure caress, +And life made happy in their happiness. + +He too, in deeper lore +Than woman's in those early days, or yet,-- +Train'd step by step his youthful Margaret; +The wonders of that amaranthine store +Which Hellas and Hesperia evermore +Lavish, to strengthen and refine the race:-- +For, in his large embrace, +The light of faith with that new light combined +To purify the mind:-- +A crystal soul, a heart without disguise, +All wisdom's lover, and through love, all-wise. + +--O face she ne'er will see,-- +Gray eyes, and careless hair, and mobile lips +From which the shaft of kindly satire slips +Healing its wound with human sympathy; +The heart-deep smile; the tear-concealing glee! +O well-known furrows of the reverend brow! +Familiar voice, that now +She will not hear nor answer any more,-- +Till on the better shore +Where love completes the love in life begun, +And smooths and knits our ravell'd skein in one! + +Blest soul, who through life's course +Didst keep the young child's heart unstain'd and whole, +To find again the cradle at the goal, +Like some fair stream returning to its source;-- +Ill fall'n on days of falsehood, greed, and force! +Base days, that win the plaudits of the base, +Writ to their own disgrace, +With casuist sneer o'erglossing works of blood, +Miscalling evil, good; +Before some despot-hero falsely named +Grovelling in shameful worship unashamed. + +--But they of the great race +Look equably, not caring much, on foe +And fame and misesteem of man below; +And with forgiving radiance on their face, +And eyes that aim beyond the bourn of space, +Seeing the invisible, glory-clad, go up +And drink the absinthine cup, +Fill'd nectar-deep by the dear love of Him +Slain at Jerusalem +To free them from a tyrant worse than this, +Changing brief anguish for the heart of bliss. + +_Envoy_ + +--O moaning stream of Time, +Heavy with hate and sin and wrong and woe +As ocean-ward dost go, +Thou also hast thy treasures!--Life, sublime +In its own sweet simplicity:--life for love: +Heroic martyr-death:-- +Man sees them not: but they are seen above. + +_One in black array_; Sir T. More's daughter, Margaret Roper. + +_That Hall_; Westminster, where More was tried: _That other place_; Tower +Hill. + +_The vision of her girlhood_; More taught his own children, and was like +a child with them. He 'would take grave scholars and statesmen into the +garden to see his girls' rabbit-hutches. . . . _I have given you kisses +enough_, he wrote to his little ones, _but stripes hardly ever_': (Green, +B. V: ch. ii). + +_The wonders_; See first note to _Grocyn at Oxford_. + +_In his large embrace_; More may be said to have represented the highest +aim and effort of the 'new learning' in England. He is the flower of our +Renaissance in genius, wisdom, and beauty of nature. 'When ever,' says +Erasmus in a famous passage, 'did Nature mould a character more gentle, +endearing, and happy, than Thomas More's?' + + + +AT FOUNTAINS + + +1539-1862 + +Blest hour, as on green happy slopes I lie, + Gray walls around and high, +While long-ranged arches lessen on the view, + And one high gracious curve +Of shaftless window frames the limpid blue. + +--God's altar erst, where wind-set rowan now + Waves its green-finger'd bough, +And the brown tiny creeper mounts the bole + With curious eye alert, +And beak that tries each insect-haunted hole, + +And lives her gentle life from nest to nest, + And dies undispossess'd: +Whilst all the air is quick with noise of birds + Where once the chant went up; +Now musical with a song more sweet than words. + +Sky-roof'd and bare and deep in dewy sod, + Still 'tis the house of God! +Beauty by desolation unsubdued:-- + And all the past is here, +Thronging with thought this holy solitude. + +I see the taper-stars, the altars gay; + And those who crouch and pray; +The white-robed crowd in close monastic stole, + Who hither fled the world +To find the world again within the soul. + +Yet here the pang of Love's defeat, the pride + Of life unsatisfied, +Might win repose or anodyne; here the weak, + Armour'd against themselves, +Exchange true guiding for obedience meek. + +Through day, through night, here, in the fragrant air, + Their hours are struck by prayer; +Freed from the bonds of freedom, the distress + Of choice, on life's storm-sea +They gaze unharm'd, and know their happiness. + +Till o'er this rock of refuge, deem'd secure, + --This palace of the poor, +Ascetic luxury, wealth too frankly shown,-- + The royal robber swept +His lustful eye, and seized the prey his own. + +--Ah, calm of Nature! Now thou hold'st again + Thy sweet and silent reign! +And, as our feverish years their orbit roll, + This pure and cloister'd peace +In its old healing virtue bathes the soul. + +1539 is the year when the greater monasteries, amongst which Fountains in +Yorkshire held a prominent place, were confiscated and ruined by Henry +VIII. + +_The tiny creeper_; Certhia Familiaris; the smallest of our birds after +the wren. It belongs to a class nearly related to the woodpecker. + +_White-robed_; The colour of the Cistercian order, to which Fountains +belonged. + + + +SIR HUGH WILLOUGHBY + + +1553-4 + + Two ships upon the steel-blue Arctic seas + When day was long and night itself was day, + Forged heavily before the South West breeze + As to the steadfast star they curved their way; + Two specks of man, two only signs of life, +Where with all breathing things white Death keeps endless strife. + + The Northern Cape is sunk: and to the crew + This zone of sea, with ice-floes wedged and rough, + Domed by its own pure height of tender blue, + Seems like a world from the great world cut off: + While, round the horizon clasp'd, a ring of white, +Snow-blink from snows unseen, walls them with angry light. + + Now that long day compact of many days + Breaks up and wanes; and equal night beholds + Their hapless driftage past uncharted bays, + And in her chilling, killing arms enfolds: + While the near stars a thousand arrowy darts +Bend from their diamond eyes, as the low sun departs. + + Or the weird Northern Dawn in idle play + Mocks their sad souls, now trickling down the sky + In many-quivering lines of golden spray, + Then blazing out, an Iris-arch on high, + With fiery lances fill'd and feathery bars, +And sheeny veils that hide or half-reveal the stars. + + A silent spectacle! Yet sounds, 'tis said, + On their forlornness broke; a hissing cry + Of mockery and wild laugh, as, overhead, + Those blight fantastic squadrons flaunted by:-- + And that false dawn, long nickering, died away, +And the Sun came not forth, and Heaven withheld the day. + + O King Hyperion, o'er the Delphic dale + Reigning meanwhile in glory, Ocean know + Thine absence, and outstretch'd an icy veil, + A marble pavement, o'er his waters blue; + Past the Varangian fiord and Zembla hoar, +And from Petsora north to dark Arzina's shore:-- + + An iron ridge o'erhung with toppling snow + And giant beards of icicled cascade:-- + Where, frost-imprison'd as the long mouths go, + The _Good Hope_ and her mate-ship lay embay'd; + And those brave crews knew that all hope was gone; +England be seen no more; no more the living sun. + + A store that daily lessens 'neath their eyes; + A little dole of light and fire and food:-- + While Night upon them like a vampyre lies + Bleaching the frame and thinning out the blood; + And through the ships the frost-bit timbers groan, +And the Guloine prowls round, with dull heart-curdling moan. + + Then sometimes on the soul, far off, how far! + Came back the shouting crowds, the cannon-roar, + The latticed palace glittering like a star, + The buoyant Thames, the green, sweet English shore, + The heartful prayers, the fireside blaze and bliss, +The little faces bright, and woman's last, last kiss. + + --O yet, for all their misery, happy souls! + Happy in faith and love and fortitude:-- + For you, one thought of England dear controls + All shrinking of the flesh at death so rude! + Though long at rest in that far Arctic grave, +True sailor hero hearts, van of our bravest brave. + + And one by one the North King's searching lance + Touch'd, and they stiffen'd at their task, and died; + And their stout leader glanced a farewell glance; + 'God is as close by sea as land,' he cried, + 'In His own light not nearer than this gloom,'-- +And look'd as one who o'er the mountains sees his home. + + Home!--happy sound of vanish'd happiness! + --But when the unwilling sun crept up again, + And loosed the sea from winter and duresse, + The seal-wrapt race that roams the Lapland main + Saw in Arzina, wondering, fearing more, +The tatter'd ships, in snows entomb'd and vaulted o'er: + + And clomb the decks, and found the gallant crew, + As forms congeal'd to stone, where frozen fate + Took each man in his turn, and gently slew:-- + Nor knew the heroic chieftain, as he sate, + English through every fibre, in his place, +The smile of duty done upon the steadfast face. + +Sir Hugh Willoughby, in the _Bona Esperanza_, with two other vessels, +sailed May 10, 1553, saluting the palace of Greenwich is they passed. By +September 18 he, with one consort, reached the harbour of Arzina, where +all perished early in 1554. His will, dated in January of that year, was +found when the ships were discovered by the Russians soon after. + +Willoughby has been taken here as the representative of the great age of +British naval adventure and exploration. + +_Arzina_ is placed near the western headland of the White Sea, east of +the Waranger Fiord, and west of Nova Zembla and the mouth of the +Petchora. + + + +CROSSING SOLWAY + + +May 16: 1568 + +Blow from the North, thou bitter North wind, +Blow over the western bay, +Where Nith and Eden and Esk run in +And fight with the salt sea spray, +And the sun shines high through the sailing sky +In the freshness of blue Mid-may. + +Blow North-North-West, and hollow the sails +Of a Queen who slips over the sea +As a hare from the hounds; and her covert afar; +And now she can only flee; +And death before and the sisterly shore +That smiles perfidiously. + +O Mid-may freshness about her cheek +And piercing her poor attire, +The sting of defeat thou canst not allay, +The fever of heart and the fire, +The death-despair for the days that were, +And famine of vain desire! + +--On Holyrood stairs an iron-heel'd clank +Came up in the gloaming hour: +And iron fingers have bursten the bar +Of the palace innermost bower: +And fiend-like on her the Douglas and Ker +And spectral Ruthven glower. + +She hears the shriek as the Morton horde +Hurry the victim beneath; +And she feels their dead man's grasp on her skirt +In the frenzy-terror of death; +And the dastard King at her bosom cling +With a serpent's poison-breath. + +O fair girl Queen, well weep for the friend +To his faith too faithful and thee; +For a brother's hypocrite tears; for the flight +To the Castle set by the sea;-- +Where thy father's tomb lay and gaped in the gloom +'Twere better for thee to be! + +O better at rest where the crooning dove +May sing requiem o'er thy bed, +Sweet Robin aflame with love's sign on his breast +With quick light footstep tread; +While over the sod the Birds of God +Their guardian feathers outspread! + +Too womanly sweet, too womanly frail, +Alone in thy faith and thy need; +In the homeless home, in the poisonous air +Of spite and libel and greed; +Mid perfidy's net thy pathway is set, +And thy feet in the pitfalls bleed. + +--O lightnings, not lightnings of Heaven, that flare +Through the desolate House in the Field! +Craft that the Fiend had envied in vain; +Till the terrible Day unreveal'd,-- +Till the Angels rejoice at the Verdict-voice, +And Mary's pardon is seal'd! + +As a bird from the mesh of the fowler freed +With wild wing shatters the air, +From shelter to shelter, betray'd, she flees, +Or lured to some treacherous lair, +And the vulture-cry of the enemy nigh, +And the heavens dark with despair! + +Bright lily of France, by the storm stricken low, +A sunbeam thou seest through the shade +Where Order and Peace are throned 'neath the smile +Of a royal sisterly Maid:-- +For hope in the breast of the girl has her nest, +Ever trusting, and ever betray'd. + +Brave womanly heart that, beholding the shore, +Beholds her own grave unaware,-- +Though the days to come their shame should unveil +Yet onward she still would dare! +Though the meadows smile with statesmanly guile, +And the cuckoo's call is a snare! + +Turn aside, O Queen, from the cruel land, +From the greedy shore turn away; +From shame upon shame:--But most shame for those +On their passionate captive who play +With a subtle net, hope enwoven with threat, +Hung out to tempt her astray! + +Poor scape-goat of crimes, where,--her part what it may,-- +So tortured, so hunted to die, +Foul age of deceit and of hate,--on her head +Least stains of gore-guiltiness lie; +To the hearts of the just her blood from the dust +Not in vain for mercy will cry. + +Poor scape-goat of nations and faiths in their strife +So cruel,--and thou so fair! +Poor girl!--so, best, in her misery named,-- +Discrown'd of two kingdoms, and bare; +Not first nor last on this one was cast +The burden that others should share. + +--When the race is convened at the great assize +And the last long trumpet-call, +If Woman 'gainst Man, in her just appeal, +At the feet of the Judge should fall, +O the cause were secure;--the sentence sure! +--But she will forgive him all!-- + +O keen heart-hunger for days that were; +Last look at a vanishing shore! +In two short words all bitterness summ'd, +That _Has been_ and _Nevermore_! +Nor with one caress will Mary bless, +Nor look on the babe she bore! + +Blow, bitter wind, with a cry of death, +Blow over the western bay: +The sunshine is gone from the desolate girl, +And before is the doomster-day, +And the saw-dust red with the heart's-blood shed +In the shambles of Fotheringay. + +Mary of Scotland is one of the five or six figures in our history who +rouse an undying personal interest. Volumes have been and will be +written on her:--yet if we put aside the distorting mists of national and +political and theological partisanship, the common laws of human nature +will give an easy clue to her conduct and that of her enemies. + +Her flight from Scotland, as the turning-point in Mary's unhappy and +pathetic career, has been here chosen for the moment whence to survey it. + +_On Holyrood stairs_; Riccio was murdered on March 9, 1566. Mary's +exclamation when she heard of his death next day, _No more tears_; _I +will think upon a revenge_, is the sufficient explanation,--in a great +degree should be the sufficient justification, with those who still hold +her an accomplice in the death of Darnley and the marriage with +Bothwell,--(considering the then lawless state of Scotland, the +complicity of the leading nobles, the hopelessness of justice)--of her +later conduct whilst Queen. + +_The friend_; In Riccio's murder the main determinant was his efficiency +in aiding Mary towards a Roman Catholic reaction, which might have +deprived a large body of powerful nobles of the church lands. The death +of Riccio (Mary's most faithful friend) prevented this: the death of +Darnley became necessary to secure the position gained. + +_A brother's hypocrite tears_; Murray, in whose interest Riccio was +murdered, and whose privity to the murder (as afterwards to that of +Darnley) is reasonably, though indirectly, proved, affected to shed tears +on seeing his sister. Next day she learned the details of the plot, and +her half-brother's share in it. + +_The flight_; Mary then fled by a secret passage from Holyrood Palace +through the Abbey Church, the royal tombs which had been broken open by +the revolutionary mob of 1559. + +_The Castle_; Dunbar. + +_Till the terrible Day unreveal'd_; See _Appendix_ A. + + + +SIDNEY AT ZUTPHEN + + +October 2: 1586 + +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. + + + +ELIZABETH AT TILBURY + + +September: 1588 + + Let them come, come never so proudly, + O'er the green waves as giants ride; + Silver clarions menacing loudly, + 'All the Spains' on their banners wide; + High on deck of the gilded galleys + Our light sailers they scorn below:-- + We will scatter them, plague, and shatter them, + Till their flag hauls down to their foe! + For our oath we swear + By the name we bear, +By England's Queen, and England free and fair,-- +Her's ever and her's still, come life, come death:-- + God save Elizabeth! + + Sidonia, Recalde, and Leyva + Watch from their Castles in swarthy scorn, + Lords and Princes by Philip's favour;-- + We by birthright are noble born! + Freemen born of the blood of freemen, + Sons of Crecy and Flodden are we! + We shall sunder them, fire, and plunder them,-- + English boats on an English sea! + And our oath we swear, + By the name we bear, +By England's Queen, and England free and fair,-- +Her's ever and her's still, come life, come death! + God save Elizabeth! + + Drake and Frobisher, Hawkins, and Howard, + Raleigh, Cavendish, Cecil, and Brooke, + Hang like wasps by the flagships tower'd, + Sting their way through the thrice-piled oak:-- + Let them range their seven-mile crescent, + Giant galleons, canvas wide! + Ours will harry them, board, and carry them, + Plucking the plumes of the Spanish pride. + For our oath we swear + By the name we bear, +By England's Queen, and England free and fair,-- +Her's ever and her's still, come life, come death! + God save Elizabeth! + + --Hath God risen in wrath and scatter'd? + Have His tempests smote them in scorn? + Past the Orcades, dumb and tatter'd, + 'Mong sea-beasts do they drift forlorn? + We were as lions hungry for battle; + God has made our battle His own! + God has scatter'd them, sunk, and shatter'd them: + Give the glory to Him alone! + While our oath we swear, + By the name we bear, +By England's Queen, and England free and fair,-- +Her's ever and her's still, come life, come death! + God save Elizabeth! + + + +AT BEMERTON + + +1630-1633 + +Sick with the strife of tongues, the blustering hate +Of frantic Party raving o'er the realm, +Sonorous insincerities of debate, +And jealous factions snatching at the helm, +And Out o'er-bidding In with graceless strife, +Selling the State for votes:--O happy fields, +I cried, where Herbert, by the world misprized, + Found in his day the life +That no unrest or disappointment yields, +Vergilian vision here best realized! + +His memory is Peace: and peace is here;-- +The eternal lullaby of the level brook, +With bird-like chirpings mingled, glassy-clear; +The narrow pathway to the yew-clipp'd nook; +Trim lawn, familiar to the pensive feet; +The long gray walls he raised:--A household nest +Where Hope and firm-eyed Faith and heavenly Love + Made human love more sweet; +While,--earth's rare visitant from the choirs above,-- +Urania's holy steps the cottage blest. + +Peace there:--and peace upon the house of God, +The little road-side church that room-like stands +Crouching entrench'd in slopes of daisy sod, +And duly deck'd by Herbert-honouring hands:-- +Cell of detachment! Shrine to which the heart +Withdraws, and all the roar of life is still; +Then sinks into herself, and finds a shrine + Within the shrine apart: +Alone with God, as on the Arabian hill +Man knelt in vision to the All-divine! + +--Thrice happy they,--and know their happiness,-- +Who read the soul's star-orbit Heaven-ward clear; +Not roving comet-like through doubt and guess, +But 'neath their feet tread nescient pride and fear; +Scan the unseen with sober certainty, +God's hill above Himalah;--Love green earth +With deeper, truer love, because the blue + Of Heaven around they see;-- +Who in the death-gasp hail man's second birth, +And yield their loved ones with a brief adieu! + +--Thee, too, esteem I happy in thy death, +Poet! while yet peace was, and thou might'st live +Unvex'd in thy sweet reasonable faith, +The gracious creed that knows how to forgive:-- +Not narrowing God to self,--the common bane +Of sects, each man his own small oracle; +Not losing innerness in external rite; + A worship pure and plain, +Yet liberal to man's heaven-imbreathed delight +In all that sound can hint, or beauty tell. + +A golden moderation!--which the wise +Then highest rate, when fury-factions roar, +And folly's choicest fools the most despise:-- +--O happy Poet! laid in peace before +Rival intolerants each 'gainst other flamed, +And flames were slaked in blood, and all the grace +Of life before that sad illiterate gloom + Puritan, fled ashamed: +While, as the red moon lifts her turbid face, +Titanic features on the horizon loom! + +George Herbert's brief career as a parish priest was passed at Bemerton, +a pretty village near Salisbury in the vale of the Avon. His parsonage, +with its garden running down to the stream, and the little church across +the road in which he lies buried, remain comparatively unchanged (March +26, 1880) since he lived and mused and wrote his Poems within these +precincts. The justly-famous _Temple_ was published shortly after his +death by his friend Nicholas Ferrar. + +_Arabian hill_; Mount Sinai. + +_Titanic features_; See _A Churchyard in Oxfordshire_, st. iii. + + + +PRINCESS ANNE + + +November 5: 1640 + +Harsh words have been utter'd and written on her, Henrietta the Queen: +She was young in a difficult part, on a cruel and difficult scene:-- +Was it strange she should fail? that the King overmuch should bow down to +her will? +--So of old with the women, God bless them!--it was, so will ever be +still! +Rash in counsel and rash in courage, she aided and marr'd +The shifting tides of the fight, the star of the Stuarts ill-starr'd. +In her the false Florentine blood,--in him the bad strain of the Guise; +Suspicion against her and hate, all that malice can forge and devise;-- +As a bird by the fowlers o'ernetted, she shuffles and changes her ground; +No wile unlawful in war, and the foe unscrupulous round! +Woman-like overbelieving Herself and the Cause and the Man, +Fights with two-edged intrigue, suicidal, plan upon plan; +Till the law of this world had its way, and she fled,--like a frigate +unsail'd, +Unmasted, unflagg'd,--to her land; and the strength of the stronger +prevail'd. + + But it was not thus, not thus, in the years of thy springtide, O +Queen, +When thy children came in their beauty, and all their future unseen: +When the kingdom had wealth and peace, one smile o'er the face of the +land: +England, too happy, if thou could'st thy happiness understand! +As those over Etna who slumber, and under them rankles the fire. +At her side was the gallant King, her first-love, her girlhood's desire, +And around her, best jewels and dearest to brighten the steps of the +throne, +Three golden heads, three fair little maids, in their nursery shone. +'As the mother, so be the daughters,' they say:--nor could mother wish +more +For her own, than men saw in the Queen's, ere the rosebud-dawning was +o'er, +Heart-wise and head-wise, a joy to behold, as they knelt for her kiss,-- +Best crown of a woman's life, her true vocation and bliss!-- +But the flowers were pale and frail, and the mother watch'd them with +dread, +As the sunbeams play'd round the room on each gay, glistening head. + + Anne in that garden of childhood grew nearest Elizabeth: she +Tenderly tended and loved her, a babe with a babe on her knee: +Slight and white from the cradle was Anne; a floweret born +Rathe, out of season, a rose that peep'd out when the hedge was in thorn. +'Why should it be so with us?' thought Elizabeth oft; for in her +The soul 'gainst the body protesting, was but more keenly astir: +'As saplings stunted by forest around o'ershading, we two: +What work for our life, my mother,' she said, 'is left us to do? +Or is't from the evil to come, the days without pleasure, that God +In mercy would spare us, over our childhood outstretching the rod?' +--So she, from her innocent heart; in all things seeing the best +With the wholesome spirit of childhood; to God submitting the rest: +Not seeing the desolate years, the dungeon of Carisbrook drear; +Eyes dry-glazed with fever, and none to lend even a tear! +Now, all her heart to the little one goes; for, day upon day, +As a rosebud in canker, she pales and pines, and the cough has its way. +And the gardens of Richmond on Thames, the fine blythe air of the vale +Stay not the waning pulse, and the masters of science fail. +Then the little footsteps are faint, and a child may take her with ease; +As the flowers a babe flings down she is spread on Elizabeth's knees, +Slipping back to the cradle-life, in her wasting weakness and pain: +And the sister prays and smiles and watches the sister in vain. + + So she watch'd by the bed all night, and the lights were yellow and +low, +And a cold blue blink shimmer'd up from the park that was sheeted in +snow: +And the frost of the passing hour, when souls from the body divide, +The Sarsar-wind of the dawn, crept into the palace, and sigh'd. +And the child just turn'd her head towards Elizabeth there as she lay, +And her little hands came together in haste, as though she would pray; +And the words wrestled in her for speech that the fever-dry mouth cannot +frame, +And the strife of the soul on the delicate brow was written in flame: +And Elizabeth call'd 'O Father, why does she look at me so? +Will it soon be better for Anne? her face is all in a glow':-- +But with womanly speed and heed is the mother beside her, and slips +Her arm 'neath the failing head, and moistens the rose of the lips, +Pale and sweet as the wild rose of June, and whispers to pray +To the Father in heaven, 'the one she likes best, my baby, to say': +And the soul hover'd yet o'er the lips, as a dove when her pinions are +spread, +And the light of the after-life came again in her eyes, and she said; +'For my long prayer it is not time; for my short one I think I have +breath; +_Lighten mine eyes, O Lord, that I sleep not the sleep of death_.' +--O! into life, fair child, as she pray'd, her innocence slept! +'It is better for her,' they said:--and knelt, and kiss'd her, and wept. + +_In her_; Henrietta's mother was by birth Mary de' Medici; the +great-grandmother of Charles was Mary of Guise. + +'With Charles I,' says Ranke, 'nothing was more seductive than secrecy. +The contradictions in his conduct entangled him in embarrassments, in +which his declarations, if always true in the sense he privately gave +them, were only a hair's-breadth removed from actual, and even from +intentional, untruth.'--Whether traceable to descent, or to the evil +influence of Buckingham and the intriguing atmosphere of the Spanish +marriage-negotiations, this defect in political honesty is, +unquestionably, the one serious blot on the character of Charles I.--Yet, +whilst noting it, candid students will regretfully confess that the +career of Elizabeth and her counsellors is defaced by shades of bad +faith, darker and more numerous. + +_When the kingdom_; See Clarendon's description of England during this +period, 'enjoying the greatest calm and the fullest measure of felicity +that any people in any age for so long time together have been blessed +with.' + +_Three golden heads_; Mary, the second child of Charles and Henrietta, +was born Nov. 4, 1631: Elizabeth, Dec. 28, 1635: Anne, Mar. 17, 1637. The +last two were feeble from infancy. Consumption soon showed itself in +Anne, and her short life, passed at Richmond, closed in November, 1640. +For her last words, we are indebted to Fuller, who adds: 'This done, the +little lamb gave up the ghost.' + +The affection and care of the royal parents is well attested. 'Their +arrival,' when visiting the nursery, 'was the signal of a general +rejoicing.' + +In the latter portion of this piece I have ventured, it will be seen, on +an ideal treatment. The main facts, and the words of the dear child, are +historical:--for the details I appeal to any mother who has suffered +similar loss whether they could have been much otherwise. + +_Not seeing_; See the _Captive Child_. + +_The frost_; It is noticed that death, the _Sarsar-wind_ of Southey's +_Thalaba_, often occurs at the turn between night and day, when the +atmosphere is wont to be at the coldest. + + + +AFTER CHALGROVE FIGHT + + +June 18: 1643 + + Flags crape-smother'd and arms reversed, + With one sad volley lay him to rest: + Lay him to rest where he may not see + This England he loved like a lover accursed + By lawlessness masking as liberty, + By the despot in Freedom's panoply drest:-- +Bury him, ere he be made duplicity's tool and slave, +Where he cannot see the land that he could not save! + Bury him, bury him, bury him + With his face downward! + + Chalgrove! Name of patriot pain! + O'er thy fresh fields that summer pass'd + The brand of war's red furnace blast, + Till heaven's soft tears wash'd out the blackening stain;-- + Wash'd out and wept;--But could not so restore + England's gallant son: + Ere the fray was done +The stately head bow'd down; shatter'd; his warfare o'er. + + Bending to the saddle-bow + With leaden arm that idle hangs, + Faint with the lancing torture-pangs, + He drops the rein; he lets the battle go:-- + There, where the wife of his first love he woo'd + Turning for retreat;-- + Memories bitter-sweet +Through death's fast-rising mist in youth's own light renew'd. + + Then, as those who drown, perchance, + And all their years, a waking dream, + Flash pictured by in lightning gleam, + His childhood home appears, the mother's glance, + The hearth-side smile; the fragrance of the fields: + --Now, war's iron knell + Wakes the hounds of hell, +Whilst o'er the realm her scourge the rushing Fury wields! + + Doth he now the day lament + When those who stemm'd despotic might + O'erstrode the bounds of law and right, + And through the land the torch of ruin sent? + Or that great rival statesman as he stood + Lion-faced and grim, + Hath he sight of him, +Strafford--the meteor-axe--the fateful Hill of Blood? + + --Heroes both! by passion led, + In days perplex'd 'tween new and old, + Each at his will the realm to mould; + This, basing sovereignty on the single head, + This, on the many voices of the Hall:-- + Each for his own creed + Prompt to die at need: +His side of England's shield each saw, and took for all. + + Heroes both! For Order one + And one for Freedom dying!--We + May judge more justly both, than ye + Could, each, his brother, ere the strife was done! + --O Goddess of that even scale and weight, + In whose awful eyes + Truest mercy lies, +This hero-dirge to thee I vow and dedicate! + + --Slanting now,--the foe is by,-- + Through Hazeley mead the warrior goes, + And hardly fords the brook that flows + Bearing to Thame its cool, sweet, summer-cry. + Here take thy rest; here bind the broken heart! + By death's mercy-doom + Hid from ills to come, +Great soul, and greatly vex'd, Hampden!--in peace depart! + +In the heart of the fields he loved and the hills, + Look your last, and lay him to rest, + With the faded flower, the wither'd grass; + Where the blood-face of war and the myriad ills + Of England dear like phantoms pass + And touch not the soul that is with the Blest. +Bury him in the night and peace of the holy grave, +Where he cannot see the land that he could not save! + Bury him, bury him, bury him + With his face downward! + +John Hampden met his death at Chalgrove in an attempt to check the raids +which Prince Rupert was making from Oxford. Struck at the onset in the +shoulder by two carabine balls, he rode off before the action was ended +by Hazeley towards Thame, finding it impossible to reach Pyrton, the home +of his father-in-law. The body was carried to his own house amid the +woods and hills of the Chiltern country, and buried in the church close +by. + +_With his face downward_; This was the dying request of some high-minded +Spaniard of old, unwilling, even in the grave, as it were, to look on the +misfortunes of his country. + +_O'erstrode the bounds_; 'After every allowance has been made,' says +Hallam, speaking of the Long Parliament from a date so early as August, +1641, 'he must bring very heated passions to the records of those times, +who does not perceive in the conduct of that body a series of glaring +violations, not only of positive and constitutional, but of those higher +principles which are paramount to all immediate policy': (_Const. Hist_. +ch. ix). + +_The axe_; A clear and impartial sketch of Stafford's trial will be found +in Ranke (B. viii): who deals dispassionately and historically with an +event much obscured by declamation in popular narratives. Even in +Hallam's hand the balance seems here to waver a little. + +_Heroes both_;--_Each his side_; See _Appendix_ B. + + + +A CHURCHYARD IN OXFORDSHIRE + + +September: 1643 + +Sweet air and fresh; glades yet unsear'd by hand +Of Midas-finger'd Autumn, massy-green; +Bird-haunted nooks between, +Where feathery ferns, a fairy palmglove, stand, +An English-Eastern band:-- +While e'en the stealthy squirrel o'er the grass +Beside me to the beech-clump dares to pass:-- +In this still precinct of the happy dead, +The sanctuary of silence,--Blessed they! +I cried, who 'neath the gray +Peace of God's house, each in his mounded bed +Sleep safe, nor reck how the great world runs on; +Peasant with noble here alike unknown. + +Unknown, unnamed beneath one turf they sleep, +Beneath one sky, one heaven-uplifted sign +Of love assured, divine: +While o'er each mound the quiet mosses creep, +The silent dew-pearls weep: +--Fit haven-home for thee, O gentlest heart +Of Falkland! all unmeet to find thy part +In those tempestuous times of canker'd hate +When Wisdom's finest touch, and, by her side, +Forbearance generous-eyed +To fix the delicate balance of the State +Were needed;--King or Nation, which should hold +Supreme supremacy o'er the kingdoms old. + +--God's heroes, who? . . . Not most, or likeliest, he +Whom iron will cramps to one narrow road, +Driving him like a goad +Till all his heart decrees seem God's decree; +That worst hypocrisy +When self cheats self, and conscience at the wheel +Herself is steer'd by passion's blindfold zeal; +A nether-world archangel! Through whose eyes +Flame the red mandates of remorseless might; +A gloom of lurid light +That holds no commerce with the crystal skies; +Like those rank fires that o'er the fen-land flee, +Or on the mast-head sign the wrath to be. + +As o'er that ancient weird Arlesian plain +Where Zeus hail'd boulder-stones on the giant crew, +And changed to stone, or slew, +No bud may burgeon in Spring's gracious rain, +No blade of grass or grain: +--So bare, so scourged, a prey to chaos cast +The wisest despot leaves his realm at last! +Though for the land he toil'd with iron will, +Earnest to reach persuasion's goal through power, +The fruit without the flower! +And pray'd and wrestled to charm good from ill; +Waking perchance, or not, in death,--to find +Man fights a losing fight who fights mankind! + +And as who in the Theban avenue, +Sphinx ranged by Sphinx, goes awestruck, nor may read +That ancient awful creed +Closed in their granite calm:--so dim the clue, +So tangled, tracking through +That labyrinthine soul which, day by day +Changing, yet kept one long imperious way: +Strong in his weakness; confident, yet forlorn; +Waning and waxing; diamond-keen, or dull, +As that star Wonderful, +Mira, for ever, dying and reborn:-- +Blissful or baleful, yet a Power throughout, +Throned in dim altitude o'er the common rout. + +Alas, great Chief! The pity of it!--For he +Lay on his unlamented bier; his life +Wreck'd on that futile strife +To wed things alien by heaven's decree, +Sword-sway with liberty:-- +Coercing, not protecting;--for the Cause +Smiting with iron heel on England's laws: +--Intolerant tolerance! Soul that could not trust +Its finer instincts; self-compell'd to run +The blood-path once begun, +And murder mercy with a sad 'I must!' +Great lion-heart by guile and coarseness marr'd; +By his own heat a hero warp'd and scarr'd. + +Despot despite himself!--And when the cry +Moan'd up from England, dungeon'd in that drear +Sectarian atmosphere, +With glory he gilt her chains; in Spanish sky +Flaunting the Red Cross high;-- +Wars, just or unjust, ill or well design'd, +Urged with the will that masters weak mankind. +--God's hammer Thou!--not hero!--Forged to break +The land,--salve wounds with wounds, heal force by force; +Sword-surgeon keen and coarse:-- +To all who worship power for power's own sake,-- +Strength for itself,--Success, the vulgar test,-- +Fit idol of bent knee, and servile breast! + +--O in the party plaudits of the crowd +Glorious, if this be glory!--o'er that shout +A small still voice breathes out +With subtle sweetness silencing the loud +Hoarse vaunting of the proud,-- +A song of exaltation for the vale, +And how the mountain from his height shall fail! +How God's true heroes, since this earth began, +Go sackcloth-clad through scourge and sword and scorn, +Crown'd with the bleeding thorn, +Down-trampled by man's heel as foes to man, +And whispering _Eli_, _Eli_! as they die,-- +Martyrs of truth and Saint Humility. + +These conquer in their fall: Persuasion flies +Wing'd, from their grave: The hearts of men are turn'd +To worship what they burn'd: +Owning the sway of Love's long-suffering eyes, +Love's sweet self-sacrifice; +The might of gentleness; the subduing force +Of wisdom on her mid-way measured course +Gliding;--not torrent-like with fury spilt, +Impetuous, o'er Himalah's rifted side, +To ravage blind and wide, +And leave a lifeless wreck of parching silt;-- +Gliding by thorpe and tower and grange and lea +In tranquil transit to the eternal sea. + +--Children of Light!--If, in the slow-paced course +Of vital change, your work seem incomplete, +Your conquest-hour defeat, +Won by mild compromise, by the invisible force +That owns no earthly source; +Yet to all time your gifts to man endure, +God being with you, and the victory sure! +For though o'er Gods the Giants in the course +May lord it, Strength o'er Beauty; yet the Soul +Immortal, clasps the goal; +Fair Wisdom triumphs by her inborn force: +--Thus far on earth! . . . But, ah!--from mortal sight +The crowning glory veils itself in light! + +_Envoy_ + +--Seal'd of that holy band, +Rest here, beneath the foot-fall hushing sod, +Wrapt in the peace of God, +While summer burns above thee; while the land +Disrobes; till pitying snow +Cover her bareness; till fresh Spring-winds blow, +And the sun-circle rounds itself again:-- +Whilst England cries in vain +For thy wise temperance, Lucius!--But thine ear +The violent-impotent fever-restless cry, +The faction-yells of triumph, will not hear: +--Only the thrush on high +And wood-dove's moaning sweetness make reply. + +Lucius Cary, second Viscount Falkland, may perhaps be defined as at once +the most poetically chivalrous and the most philosophically moderate +amongst all who took part in the pre-restoration struggles. He was +killed in the royal army at the first battle of Newbury, Sep. 20, 1643, +aged but 33 years, and buried, without mark or memorial, in the church of +Great Tew (North Oxfordshire), the manor of which he owned. + +_English Eastern_; The common brake-fern and its allies seem to betray +tropical sympathies by their late appearance and sensitiveness to +autumnal frost. + +_That Arlesian plain_; Now named the _Crau_. It lies between Aries and +the sea--a bare and malarious tract of great size covered with shingle +and boulders. Aeschylus describes it as a 'snow-shower of round stones,' +which Zeus rained down in aid of Heracles, who was contending with the +Ligurians. + +_Mira_; A star in the _Whale_, conspicuous for its singular and rapid +changes of apparent size. + +_The Cause_; After passing through several phases this word, in +Cromwell's mouth, with the common logic of tyranny, became simply a +synonym for personal rule. + +_Smiting with iron heel_; The terrorism of the Protector's government, +and the almost universal hatred which it inspired, are powerfully painted +by Hallam. 'To govern according to law may sometimes be an usurper's +wish, but can seldom be in his power. The protector abandoned all +thought of it. . . . All illusion was now (1655) gone, as to the +pretended benefits of the civil war. It had ended in a despotism, +compared to which all the illegal practices of former kings, all that had +cost Charles his life and crown, appeared as dust in the balance.' + +_The blood-path_; The trials under which Gerard and Vowel were executed +in 1654, Slingsby and Hewit in 1658, are the most flagrant instances of +Cromwell's perversion of justice, and contempt for the old liberties of +England. But they do not stand alone. + +_Guile and coarseness_; 'A certain coarse good nature and affability that +covered the want of conscience, honour, and humanity: quick in passion, +but not vindictive, and averse to unnecessary crimes,' is the deliberate +summing-up of Hallam,--in the love of liberty inferior to none of our +historians, and eminent above all for courageous +impartiality,--_iustissimus unus_. + +_With glory he gilt_; See _Appendix_ C. + +_Success, the vulgar test_; See Matthew Arnold's finely discriminative +_Essay_ on Falkland. + + + +MARSTON MOOR + + +July 2: 1644 + +O, summer-high that day the sun +His chariot drove o'er Marston wold: +A rippling sea of amber wheat +That floods the moorland vale with gold. + +With harvest light the valley laughs, +The sheaves in mellow sunshine sleep; +--Too rathe the crop, too red the swathes +Ere night the scythe of Death shall reap! + +Then thick and fast o'er all the moor +The crimson'd sabre-lightnings fly; +And thick and fast the death-bolts dash, +And thunder-peals to peals reply. + +Where Evening arched her fiery dome +Went up the roar of mortal foes:-- +Then o'er a deathly peace the moon +In silver silence sailing rose. + +Sweet hour, when heaven is nearest home, +And children's kisses close the day! +O disaccord with nature's calm, +Unholy requiem of the fray! + +White maiden Queen that sail'st above, +Thy dew-tears on the fallen fling,-- +The blighted wreaths of civil strife, +The war that can no triumph bring! + +--O pale with that deep pain of those +Who cannot save, yet must foresee,-- +Surveying all the ills to flow +From that too-victor victory; + +When 'gainst the unwisely guided King +The dark self-centred Captain stood, +And law and right and peace went down +In that red sea of brothers' blood;-- + +O long, long, long the years, fair Maid, +Before thy patient eye shall view +The shrine of England's law restored, +Her homes their native peace renew! + +_That day_; The actual fight lay between 7 and 9 p.m. + +_Too-victor victory_; At Naseby, says Hallam,--and the remark, (though +Charles was not personally present), is equally true of Marston +Moor--'Fairfax and Cromwell triumphed, not only over the king and the +monarchy, but over the parliament and the nation.' + +_Unwisely guided_; 'Never would it have been wiser, in Rupert,' remarks +Ranke, 'to avoid a decisive battle than at that moment. But he held that +the king's letter not only empowered, but instructed him to fight.' + +_Red sea_; 'The slaughter was deadly, for Cromwell had forbidden quarter +being given': (Ranke, ix: 3). + + + +THE FUGITIVE KING + + +August 7: 1645 + +Cold blue cloud on the hill-tops, +Cold buffets of hill-side rain:-- +As a bird that they hunt on the mountains, +The king, he turns from Rhos lane: +A writing of doom on his forehead, +His eyes wan-wistful and dim; +For his comrades seeking a shelter: +But earth has no shelter for him! + +Gray silvery gleam of armour, +White ghost of a wandering king! +No sound but the iron-shod footfall +And the bridle-chains as they ring: +Save where the tears of heaven, +Shed thick o'er the loyal hills, +Rush down in the hoarse-tongued torrent, +A roar of approaching ills. + +But now with a sweeping curtain, +In solid wall comes the rain, +And the troop draw bridle and hide them +In the bush by the stream-side plain. +King Charles smiled sadly and gently; +''Tis the Beggar's Bush,' said he; +'For I of England am beggar'd, +And her poorest may pity me.' + +--O safe in the fadeless fir-tree +The squirrel may nestle and hide; +And in God's own dwelling the sparrow +Safe with her nestlings abide:-- +But he goes homeless and friendless, +And manlike abides his doom; +For he knows a king has no refuge +Betwixt the throne and the tomb. + +And the purple-robed braes of Alban, +The glory of stream and of plain, +The Holyrood halls of his birthright +Charles ne'er will look on again:-- +And the land he loved well, not wisely, +Will almost grudge him a grave: +Then weep, too late, in her folly, +The dark Dictator's slave! + +This incident occurred during the attempt made by Charles, in the dark +final days of his struggle, to march from South Wales with the hope of +joining Montrose in Scotland. He appears to have halted for the night of +Aug. 6, 1645, at Old Radnor and 'the name of _Rails Yat_, (Royal gate) +still points out the spot where, on the following morning, he left the +Rhos Lane for the road which brought him to shelter at Beggar's Bush': a +name which is reported to be still preserved. + + + +THE CAPTIVE CHILD + + +September 8: 1650 + +Child in girlhood's early grace, +Pale white rose of royal race, +Flower of France, and England's flower, +What dost here at twilight hour +Captive bird in castle-hold, +Picture-fair and calm and cold, +Cold and still as marble stone +In gray Carisbrook alone? +--Fold thy limbs and take thy rest, +Nestling of the silent nest! + +Ah fair girl! So still and meek, +One wan hand beneath her cheek, +One on the holy texts that tell +Of God's love ineffable;-- +Last dear gift her father gave +When, before to-morrow's grave, +By no unmanly grief unmann'd, +To his little orphan band +In that stress of anguish sore +He bade farewell evermore. + +Doom'd, unhappy King! Had he +Known the pangs in store for thee, +Known the coarse fanatic rage +That,--despite her flower-soft age, +Maidenhood's first blooming fair,-- +Fever-struck in the imprison'd air +As rosebud on the dust-hill thrown +Cast a child to die alone,-- +He had shed, with his last breath, +Bitterer tears than tears of death! + +As in her infant hour she took +In her hand the pictured book +Where Christ beneath the scourger bow'd, +Crying 'O poor man!' aloud, +And in baby tender pain +Kiss'd the page, and kiss'd again, +While the happy father smiled +On his sweet warm-hearted child; +--So now to him, in Carisbrook lone, +All her tenderness has flown. + +Oft with a child's faithful heart +She has seen him act his part; +Nothing in his life so well +Gracing him as when he fell; +Seen him greet his bitter doom +As the mercy-message Home; +Seen the scaffold and the shame, +The red shower that fell like flame; +Till the whole heart within her died, +Dying in fancy by his side. + +--Statue-still and statue-fair +Now the low wind may lift her hair, +Motionless in lip and limb; +E'en the fearful mouse may skim +O'er the window-sill, nor stir +From the crumb at sight of her; +Through the lattice unheard float +Summer blackbird's evening note;-- +E'en the sullen foe would bless +That pale utter gentleness. + +--Eyes of heaven, that pass and peep, +Do not question, if she sleep! +She has no abiding here, +She is past the starry sphere; +Kneeling with the children sweet +At the palm-wreathed altar's feet; +--Innocents who died like thee, +Heaven-ward through man's cruelty, +To the love-smiles of their Lord +Borne through pain and fire and sword. + +Elizabeth, second daughter of Charles I. and Henrietta Maria, was born on +Innocents' Day, 1635. The incident accounted in Stanza iv occurred in +1637. She had been taken on a visit to Hampton Court to her mother, who +wished her to be present at her own vesper-service, when Elizabeth, not +yet two years old, became very restless. To quiet her a book of devotion +was shown to her.' The King, when the Queen drew his attention, said, +'She begins young!' + +This tale is told by Mrs. Green, in her excellent _Princesses of +England_, (London, 1853),--a book deserving to be better known,--on the +authority of the Envoy Con. + +The first grief of a very happy and promising childhood may have been the +loss of her sister Anne in 1640. But by 1642, the evils of the time +began to press upon Princess Elizabeth; her mother's departure from +England, followed by her own capture by order of the Parliament; her +confinement under conditions of varying severity; and the final farewell +to her father, Jan. 29, 1649. + +From that time her life was overshadowed by the sadness of her father's +death, her own isolation, and her increasing feebleness of health. She +seems to have been a singularly winning and intelligent girl, and she +hence found or inspired affection in several of the guardians +successively appointed to take charge of her. But if she had not been +thus marked by beauty of nature, our indignant disgust would hardly be +less at the brutal treatment inflicted by the Puritan-Independent +authorities upon this child:--at the refusal of her prayer to be sent to +her elder sister Mary, in Holland; at the captivity in Carisbrook; at the +isolation in which she was left to die.--Yet it is not she who most +merits pity! + +In this poem, written before the plan of the book had been formed, I find +that some slight deviation from the best authorities has been made. +Elizabeth's young brother Henry, Duke of Gloster, shared her prison: and +although her own physician, Mayerne, had been dismissed, yet some medical +attendance was supplied.--Henry Vaughan has described the patience of the +young sufferer in two lovely lines: + + Thou didst not murmur, nor revile, + And drank'st thy wormwood with a smile. + + --_Olor Iscanus_; 1651. + + + +THE WRECK OF THE ADMIRAL + + +_A TALE OF PRINCE RUPERT_ + +September 30: 1651 + +Seventy league from Terceira they lay + In the mid Atlantic straining; +And inch upon inch as she settles they know + The leak on the Admiral gaining. + +Below them 'tis death rushes greedily in; + But their signal unheeded is waving, +For the shouts by their billow-toss'd consort unheard + Are lost in the tempest's wild raving. + +For Maurice in vain o'er the bulwark leant forth, + While Rupert to rescue was crying; +And the voice of farewell on his face is flung back + With the scud on the billow-top flying! + +But no time was for tears, save for duty no thought, + When brother is parting from brother; +For Rupert the brave and his high-hearted crew, + They must die, as they lived, by each other. + +Unregarded the boat, for none care from their post + To steal off while the Prince is beside them, +All, all, side by side with his comrades to share + Till the death-plunge at last shall divide them. + +Ah, sharp in his bosom meanwhile is the smart, + He alone for his king is contending! +And the brightness and blaze of his youth in its prime + Must here in mid-waves have their ending! + +--The seas they break over, the seas they press in + From fo'csle to binnacle streaming; +And a ripple runs over the Admiral's deck, + With blue cold witch-fire gleaming. + +O then in a noble rebellion they rise; + They may die, but the Prince shall o'erlive them! +With a loving rough force to the boat he is thrust, + And he must be saved and forgive them! + +Now their flame-pikes they lift, the last signal for life, + Flaring wild in the wild rack above them:-- +And each breast has one prayer for the Mercy on high, + And one for the far-off who love them. + +O high-beating hearts that are still'd in the deep + Unknown treasure-caverns of Ocean! +There, where storms cannot vex, the three hundred are laid + In their silent heroic devotion. + +Rupert, nephew to Charles through his sister Elizabeth, wife to the +Elector Palatine, after the ruin of his uncle's cause, carried on the +struggle at sea. The incident here treated occurred on one of his last +voyages, when cruising in the Atlantic near the Canaries: it is told at +full length in E. Warburton's narrative of Rupert's life. + +_Brother is parting from brother_; Maurice, a year younger than +himself,--then in the companion ship _Swallow_, in which Rupert, by the +devoted determination of his comrades, was ultimately saved. Maurice was +not long after drowned in the West Indies. + +_Flame-pikes_; Two 'fire-pikes,' it is stated, were burned as a signal +just before the flag-ship sank. Three hundred and thirty-three was the +estimate of the number drowned. + + + +THE RETURN OF LAW + + +1660 + +At last the long darkness of anarchy lifts, and the dawn o'er the gray +In rosy pulsation floods; the tremulous amber of day: +In the golden umbrage of spring-tide, the dewy delight of the sward, +The liquid voices awake, the new morn with music reward. +Peace in her car goes up; a rainbow curves for her road; +Law and fair Order before her, the reinless coursers of God;-- +Round her the gracious maids in circling majesty shine; +They are rich in blossoms and blessings, the Hours, the white, the +divine! + +Hands in sisterly hands they unite, eye calling on eye; +Smiles more speaking than words, as the pageant sweeps o'er the sky. +Plenty is with them, and Commerce; all gifts of all lands from her horn +Raining on England profuse; and, clad in the beams of the morn, +Her warrior-guardian of old the red standard rears in its might; +And the Love-star trembles above, and passes, light into light. + +Many the marvels of earth, the more marvellous wonders on high, +Worlds past number on worlds, blank lightless abysses of sky; +But thou art the wonder of wonders, O Man! Thy impalpable soul, +Atom of consciousness, measuring the Infinite, grasping the whole: +Then, on the trivialest transiencies fix'd, or plucking for fruit +Dead-sea apples and ashes of sin, more brute than the brute. +Yet in thy deepest depths, filth-wallowing orgies of night, +Lust remorseless of blood, yet, allow'd an inlet for light: +As where, a thousand fathom beneath us, midnight afar +Glooms in some gulph, and we gaze, and, behold! one flash of one star! +For, ever, the golden gates stand open, the transit is free +For the human to mix with divine; from himself to the Highest to flee. +Lo on its knees by the bedside the babe:--and the song that we hear +Has been heard already in Heaven! the low-lisp'd music is clear:-- +For, fresh from the hand of the Maker, the child still breathes the light +air +Of the House Angelic, the meadow where souls yet unbodied repair, +Lucid with love, translucent with bliss, and know not the doom +In the Marah valley of life laid up for the sons of the womb. +--I speak not of grovelling hearts, souls blind and begrimed from the +birth, +But the spirits of nobler strain, the elect of the children of earth:-- +For the needle swerves from the pole; they cannot do what they would; +In their truest aim is falsehood, and ill out-balancing good. +Faith's first felicities fade; the world-mists thicken and roll, +'Neath the heavens arching their heaven; o'er-hazing the eye of the soul. +Then the vision is pure no longer; refracted above us arise +The phantasmal figures of passion; earth's mirage exhaled to the skies. +And they go as the castled clouds o'er the verge when the tempest is +laid, +Towering Ambition, and Glory, and Self as Duty array'd:-- +Idols no less than that idol whom lustful Ammon of yore +With the death-scream of children, a furnace of blood, was fain to adore! +So these, in the shrine of the soul, for a Moloch sacrifice cry, +The conscience of candid childhood, the pure directness of eye:-- +Till the man yields himself to himself, accepting his will as his fate, +And the light from above within him is darkness; the darkness how great! + + O Land whom the Gods,--loving most,--most sorely in wisdom have tried, +England! since Time was Time, thrice swept by the conqueror tide, +Why on thyself thrice turn, thrice crimson thy greenness in gore, +With the slain of thy children, as sheep, thy meadows whitening-o'er? +Race impatiently patient; tenacious of foe as of friend; +Slow to take flame; but, enflamed, that burns thyself out to the end: +Slow to return to the balance, once moved; not easily sway'd +From the centre, and, star-like, retracing thy orbit through sunlight and +shade! +--Without hate, without party affection, we now look back on the fray, +Through the mellowing magic of time the phantoms emerging to day! +Grasping too much for self, unjust to his rival in strife, +Each foe with good conscience and honour advances; war to the knife! +Lo, where with feebler hand the Stuart essays him to guide +The disdainful coursers of Henry, the Tudor car in its pride! +For he saw not the past was past; nor the swirl and inrush of the tide, +A nation arising in manhood; its will would no more be denied. +They would share in the labour and peril of State; they must perish or +win; +'Tis the instinct of Freedom that cries; a voice of Nature within! +Narrow the cry and sectarian oft: true sons of their age; +Justice avenged unjustly; yet more in sorrow than rage; +Till they drank the poison of power, the Circe-cup of command, +And the face of Liberty fail'd, and the sword was snatch'd from her hand. +Now Law 'neath the scaffold cowers, and,--shame engendering shame,-- +The hell-pack of war is laid close on the land for ruin and flame. +For as things most holy are worst, from holiness when they decline, +So Law, in the name of law once outraged, demon-divine, +Swoops back as Anarchy arm'd, and maddens her lovers of yore, +Changed from their former selves, and clothed in the chrisom of gore. +Then Falkland and Hampden are gone; and darker counsels arise; +Vane with his tortuous soul, through over-wisdom unwise; +Pym, deep stately designer, the subtle in simple disguised, +Artist in plots, projector of panics he used, and despised! +--But as, in the mountain world, where the giants each lift up their horn +To the skies defiant and pale, and our littleness measure and scorn, +Frowning-out from their far-off summits: and eye and mind may not know +Which is hugest, where all are huge: But, as from the region we go +Receding, the Titan of Titans comes forth, and above him the sky +Is deepest: and lo!--'tis the White One, the Monarch!--He mounts, as we +fly! +Or as over the sea the gay ships and the dolphins glisten and flit, +And then that Leviathan comes, and takes his pastime in it; +And wherever he ploughs his dark road, they must sink or follow him +still, +For his is the bulkiest strength, the proud and paramount will! +--Thou wast great, O King! (for we grudge not the style thou didst yearn- +for in vain, +But a river of blood was between and an ineffaceable stain), +Great with an earth-born greatness; a Titan of awe, not of love; +'Twas strength and subtlety balanced; the wisdom not from above. +For he leant o'er his own deep soul, oracular; over the pit +As the Pythia throned her of old, where the rock in Delphi was split; +And the vapour and echo within he mis-held for divine; and the land +Heard and obey'd, unwillingly willing, the voice of command. +--Soaring enormous soul, that to height o'er the highest aspires; +All that the man can seize being nought to what he desires! +And as, in a palace nurtured, the child to courtesy grows, +Becoming at last what it acts; so man on himself can impose, +Drill and accustom himself to humility, till, like an art, +The lesson the fingers have learn'd appears the command of the heart; +Whilst pride, as the snake at the charmer's command, coils low in its +place, +And he wears to himself and his fellows the mask that is almost a face. +Truest of hypocrites, he!--in himself entangled, he thinks +Earth uprising to Heaven, while earth-ward the heavenly sinks: +Conscience, we grant it, his guide; but conscience drugg'd and deceived; +Conscience which all that his self-belief whisper'd as duty believed. +And though he sought earnest for God, in life-long wrestle and prayer, +Yet the sky by a veil was darken'd, a phantom flitting in air; +For a cloud from that seething cavernous heart fumed out in his youth, +And whatever he will'd in the strength of the soul was imaged as truth:-- +Grew with his growth: And now 'tis Ambition, disguised in success; +And he walks with the step assured, that cares not its issue to guess, +Clear in immediate purpose: and moulding his party at will, +He thrones it o'er obstinate sects, his ideal constrain'd to fulfil. +Cool in his very heat, self-master, he masters the realm: +God and His glory the flag; but King Oliver lord of the helm! +As he needs, steers crooked or straight: with his eye controlling the +proud, +While blandness runs from his tongue, as the candidate fawns on the +crowd; +Sagest of Titans, he stands; dark, ponderous, muddy-profound, +Greatness untemper'd, untuned; no song, but a chaos of sound:-- +Yet the key-note is ever beneath: 'Mere humble instruments! See! +Poor weak saints, at the best: but who has triumph'd as we?' +Thanks the Lord for each massacre-mercy, His glory, for His is the Cause: +Catlike he bridles, and purrs about God: but within are the claws, +The lion-strength is within!--Vane, Ludlow, Hutchinson, knew, +When the bauble of Law disappear'd, and the sulky senate withdrew: +When the tyrannous Ten sword-silenced the land, and the necks of the +strong +By the heel of their great Dictator were bruised, wrong trampling on +wrong. +Least willing of despots! and fain the fair temple of Law to restore, +Sheathing the sword in the sceptre: But lo! as in legends of yore, +Once drawn, once redden'd, it may not return to the scabbard!--and +straight +On that iron-track'd path he had framed to the end he is goaded by Fate. +And yet, as a temperate man, to flavour some exquisite dish, +Without stint pours forth the red wine, thus only can compass his wish; +Upon Erin the death-mark he brands, the Party and Cause to secure; +Not bloodthirsty by birth; just, liquor 'twas needful to pour; +Only the wine of man's blood! . . . But the horrible sacrament thrill'd +Right through the heart of a nation; nor yet is the memory still'd; +E'en yet the dim spectre returns, the ghost of the murderous years, +Blood flushing out in hatred; or blood transmuted to tears! +--Ah strange drama of Fate! what motley pageantries rise +On the stage of this make-shift world! what irony silenced in sighs! +For as when the Switzer looks down on the dell, from the pass and the +snow, +Sees the peace of the fields, the white farms, the clear equable +streamlet below, +And before him the world unknown, the blaze of the shadowless Line, +Riches ill-purchased in exile, the toiling plantation and mine; +And the horn floats up the faint music of youth from his forefathers' +fold, +And he sighs for the patient life, the peace more golden than gold:-- +So He now looks back on the years, and groans 'neath the load he must +bear, +Loving this England that loathed him, and none the burden to share! +Gagging not gaining souls: to the close he wonders in vain +Why he cannot win hearts: why 'tis only the will that resigns to his +reign. +As that great image in Dura, the land perforce must obey, +Unloved, unlovely,--and not the feet only of iron and clay,-- +Atlas of this wide realm! in himself he summ'd up the whole; +Its children the Cause had devour'd: the sword was childless and sole. + + --Ah strange drama of Fate! what motley pageantries rise +On the stage of this make-shift world! what irony silenced in sighs! +In the strait beneath Etna for as the waves ebb, and Scylla betrays +The monster below, foul scales of the serpent and slime,--could we gaze +On Tyranny stript of her tinsel, what vision of dool and dismay! +Terror in confidence clothed, and anarchy biding her day: +Selfishness hero-mask'd; stage-tricks of the shabby-sublime; +Impotent gaspings at good; and the deluge after her time! + + --Is it war that thunders o'er England, and bursts the millennial oak +From his base like a castle uprooted, and shears with impalpable stroke +The sails from the ocean, the houses of men, while the Conqueror lay +On the morn of his crowning mercy, and life flicker'd down with the day? +Is it war on the earth, or war in the skies, or Nature who tolls +Her passing-bell as from earth they go up, her imperial souls? +--He rests:--'Tis a lion-sleep: and the sternness of Truth is reproved: +The sleep of a leader of men; unhuman, to watch him unmoved! +In the stillness of pity and awe we remember his troublesome years, +For man is the magnet to man, and mortal failure has tears. +--He rests:--On the massive brows, as a rock by the sunrise is crown'd, +His passionate love for the land, in a glory-coronal bound! +And Mercy dawns fast o'er the dead, from the bier as we turn and depart, +England for England's sake clasp'd firm as a child to his heart. +--He rests:--And the storm-clouds have fled, and the sunshine of Nature +repress'd +Breaks o'er the realm in smiles, and the land again has her rest. +He rests: the great spirit is hid where from heaven the veil is unroll'd, +And justice merges in love, and the dross is purged from the gold. + +The general point of view from which this subject is here approached is +given in the following passages:--'The whole nation,' says Macaulay +(1659), 'was sick of government by the sword, and pined for government by +the law.' Hence, when Charles landed, 'the cliffs of Dover were covered +by thousands of gazers, among whom scarcely one could be found who was +not weeping with delight . . . Every where flags were flying, bells and +music sounding, wine and ale flowing in rivers to the health of him whose +return was the return of peace, of law, and of freedom.' Nor was this +astonishing: the name of the Commonwealth, a greater than Macaulay +remarks, 'was grown infinitely odious: it was associated with the tyranny +of ten years, the selfish rapacity of the Rump, the hypocritical +despotism of Cromwell, the arbitrary sequestrations of committee-men, the +iniquitous decimations of military prefects, the sale of British citizens +for slavery in the West Indies, the blood of some shed on the scaffold +without legal trial, . . . the persecution of the Anglican Church, the +bacchanalian rant of sectaries, the morose preciseness of puritans . . . +It is universally acknowledged that no measure was ever more national, or +has ever produced more testimonies of public approbation, than the +restoration of Charles II. . . . For the late government, whether under +the parliament or the protector, had never obtained the sanction of +popular consent, nor could have subsisted for a day without the support +of the army. The King's return seemed to the people the harbinger of a +real liberty, instead of that bastard Commonwealth which had insulted +them with its name' (Hallam: _Const. Hist_. ch. x and xi). + +_Peace in her car_; It will be seen that the Rospigliosi _Aurora_, +Guido's one inspired work, has been here before the writer's memory. + +_On thyself thrice turn_; The civil wars of the Barons, the Roses, and +the Commonwealth. + +_He saw not_; Ranke's dispassionate summary of the attempted 'arrest of +five members,' which has been always held one of the King's most +arbitrary steps, as it was, perhaps, the most fatal, illustrates the view +here taken: 'The prerogative of the Crown, _in the sense of the early +kings_' (unconditional right of arrest, in cases of treason), 'and the +privilege of Parliament, _in the sense of coming times_, were directly +contradictory to each other': (viii: 10). + +_Till they drank the poison_; A sentence weighty with his judicial force +may be here quoted from Hallam:--'The desire of obtaining or retaining +power, if it be ever sought as a means, is soon converted into an end.' +The career of the Long Parliament supports this judgment: of it 'it may +be said, I think, with not greater severity than truth, that scarce two +or three public acts of justice, humanity, or generosity, and very few of +political wisdom and courage, are recorded of them from their quarrel +with the King to their expulsion by Cromwell': (_Const. Hist_. ch. x: +Part i). + +_The chrisom_; Name for the white cloth in which babes were veiled +immediately after Baptism. + +_Artist in plots_; See Ranke (viii: 5) for Pym's skilful use of a +supposed plot, (the main element in which was known by himself to be +untrue), in older to terrify the House and ensure the destruction of +Stafford; and Hallam (ch. ix).--Admiration of Pym may be taken as a proof +that a historian is ignorant of, or faithless to, the fundamental +principles of the Constitution:--as the worship of Cromwell is decisive +against any man's love of liberty, whatever his professions. + +_O King_; 'Cromwell, like so many other usurpers, felt his position too +precarious, or his vanity ungratified, without the name which mankind +have agreed to worship.' The conversations recorded by Whitelock are +conclusive on this point: 'and, though compelled to decline the crown, he +undoubtedly did not lose sight of the object for the short remainder of +his life' (_Hallam_). + +_The sky by a veil_; See _Appendix_ D. + +_And he walks_; 'He said on one occasion, _He goes furthest who knows not +whither he is going_': (Ranke: xii: 1). + +_Purrs about God_; Examples, (the tone of which justifies this phrase, +and might deserve a severer), may be found by the curious in the +frailties of poor human nature, _passim_, in Cromwell's 'Letters and +Speeches,' for which, (although not always edited with precise accuracy), +we are indebted to Mr. T. Carlyle. But the view which he takes of his +'hero,' whether in regard of many particular facts alleged or neglected, +or of the general estimate of Cromwell as a man,--as it appears to the +author plainly untenable in face of proved historical facts, is here +rejected. + +The familiar figure of the Tyrant, too long known to the world,--with the +iron, the clay, and the little gold often interfused also in the +statue,--has been always easily recognisable by unbiassed eyes in Oliver +Cromwell. His tyranny was substantially that of his kind, before his +time and since, in its actions, its spirit, its result. Fanaticism and +Paradox may come with their apparatus of rhetoric to blur, as they +whitewash, the lineaments of their idol. Such eulogists may 'paint an +inch thick': yet despots,--political, military, ecclesiastical,--will +never be permanently acknowledged by the common sense of mankind as +worthy the great name of Hero. + +_The tyrannous Ten_; The Major-Generals, originally ten, (but the number +varied), amongst whom, in 1655, the Commonwealth was divided. They +displayed 'a rapacity and oppression beyond their master's' (Hallam): a +phrase amply supported by the hardly-impeachable evidence of Ludlow. + +_The horrible sacrament_; See _Appendix_ D. + +_Why he cannot win hearts_; 'In the ascent of this bold usurper to +greatness . . . he had encouraged the levellers and persecuted them; he +had flattered the Long Parliament and betrayed it; he had made use of the +sectaries to crush the Commonwealth; he had spurned the sectaries in his +last advance to power. These, with the Royalists and Presbyterians, +forming in effect the whole people . . . were the perpetual, +irreconcilable enemies of his administration' (Hallam ch. x). + +_Stage-tricks_; See the curious regal imitations and adaptations of the +Protector during his later years, in matters regarding his own and his +family's titles and state, or the marriage of his daughters. + +_Mortal failure_; See _Appendix_ D. + + + +THE POET'S EUTHANASIA + + +November: 1674 + +Cloked in gray threadbare poverty, and blind, +Age-weak, and desolate, and beloved of God; +High-heartedness to long repulse resign'd, +Yet bating not one jot of hope, he trod +The sunless skyless streets he could not see; +By those faint feet made sacrosanct to me. + +Yet on that laureate brow the sign he wore +Of Phoebus' wrath; who,--for his favourite child, +When war and faction raised their rancorous roar, +Leagued with fanatic frenzy, blood-defiled, +To the sweet Muses and himself untrue,-- +Around the head he loved thick darkness threw. + +--He goes:--But with him glides the Pleiad throng +Of that imperial line, whom Phoebus owns +His ownest: for, since his, no later song +Has soar'd, as wide-wing'd, to the diadem'd thrones +That, in their inmost heaven, the Muses high +Set for the sons of immortality. + +Most loved, most lovely, near him as he went, +Vergil: and He, supremest for all time, +In hoary blindness:--But the sweet lament +Of Lesbian love, the Parian song sublime, +Follow'd:--and that stern Florentine apart +Cowl'd himself dark in thought, within his heart + +Nursing the dream of Church and Caesar's State, +Empire and Faith:--while Fancy's favourite child, +The myriad-minded, moving up sedate +Beckon'd his countryman, and inly smiled:-- +Then that august Theophany paled from view, +To higher stars drawn up, and kingdoms new. + +The last ten years of Milton's life were passed at his house situate in +the (then) 'Artillery Walk,' Bunhill, near Aldersgate. He is described +as a spare figure, of middle stature or a little less, who walked, +generally clothed in a gray camblet overcoat, in the streets between +Bunhill and Little Britain. + +_Vergil_; placed first as most like Milton in consummate art and +permanent exquisiteness of phrase. It is to him, also, (if to any one), +that Milton is metrically indebted.--The other poets classed as +'Imperial' are Homer, Sappho, Archilochus, Dante, Shakespeare. The +supremacy in rank which the writer has here ventured to limit to these +seven poets, (though with a strong feeling of diffidence in view of +certain other Hellenic and Roman claims), is assigned to Sappho and +Archilochus, less on account of the scanty fragments, though they be +'more golden than gold,' which have reached us, than in confidence that +the place collateral with Homer, given them by their countrymen (who +criticized as admirably as they created), was, in fact, justified by +their poetry. + +_The dream_; Dante's political wishes and speculations, wholly opposed to +Milton's, are, however, like his in their impracticable originality. + +_Theophany_; Vision of the Gods. + + + +WHITEHALL GALLERY + + +February 11: 1655 + + As when the King of old + 'Mid Babylonian gold, +And picture-woven walls, and lamps that gleam'd + Unholy radiance, sate, + And with some smooth slave-mate +Toy'd, and the wine laugh'd round, and music stream'd +Voluptuous undulation, o'er the hall,-- + Till on the palace-wall + + Forth came a hand divine + And wrote the judgment-sign, +And Babylon fell!--So now, in that his place + Of Tudor-Stuart pride, + The golden gallery wide, +'Mid venal beauty's lavish-arm'd embrace, +And hills of gambler-gold, a godless King + Moved through the revelling + + With quick brown falcon-eye + And lips of gay reply; +Wise in the wisdom not from Heaven!--as one + Who from his exile-days + Had learn'd to scorn the praise +Of truth, the crown by martyr-virtue won: +Below ambition:--Grant him regal ease! + The rest, as fate may please! + + --O royal heir, restored + Not by the bitter sword, +But when the heart of these great realms in free, + Full, triple, unison beat + The Martyr's son to greet, +Her ancient law and faith and flag with thee +Rethroned,--not thus!--in this inglorious hall + Of harem-festival, + + Not thus!--For even now, + The blaze is on thy brow +Scored by the shadowy hand of him whose wing + Knows neither haste nor rest; + Who from the board each guest +In season calling,--knight and kerne and king,-- +Where Arthur lies, and Alfred, signs the way;-- + --We know him, and obey. + +Lord Macaulay's lively description of this scene (_Hist_. Ch iv) should +be referred to. 'Even then,' he says, 'the King had complained that he +did not feel well.' + +_Tudor-Stuart_; This famous Gallery was of sixteenth-century date. + +_When the heart_; The weariness of England under the triple yoke of +Puritanism, the Independents, and the Protector, has been already +noticed: (Note on p. 125). + +'The Restoration,' says Professor Seeley, in an able essay on current +perversions of seventeenth-century-history, 'was not a return to +servitude, but the precise contrary. It was a great emancipation, an +exodus out of servitude into liberty . . . As to the later Stuarts, I +regard them as pupils of Cromwell: . . . it was their great ambition to +appropriate his methods,' (and, we may add, to follow his foreign policy +in regard to France and Holland), for the benefit of the old monarchy. +They failed where their model had succeeded, and the distinction of +having enslaved England remained peculiar to Cromwell.' + + + +THE BALLAD OF KING MONMOUTH + + +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. + + + +WILLELMUS VAN NASSAU + + +Yes! we confess it! 'mong the sons of Fate, + Earth's great ones, thou art great! +As that tall peak which from her silver cone + Of maiden snow unstain'd +All but the bravest scares, and reigns alone + +In glacier isolation: Thus wert thou, + With that pale steadfast brow, +Gaunt aquiline: Thy whole life one labouring breath, + Yet the strong soul untamed; +France bridled, England saved, thy task ere death! + +--O day of triumph, when thy bloodless host + From Devon's russet coast +Through the fair capital of the garden-West, + And that, whose gracious spire +Like childhood's prayer springs heaven-ward unrepress'd, + +To Thames march'd legion-like, and at their tread + The sullen despot fled, +And Law and Freedom fair,--so late restored, + And to so-perilous life, +While Stuart craft replaced the Usurper's sword,-- + +Broke forth, as sunshine from the breaking sky, + When vernal storm-wings fly! +That day was thine, great Chief, from sea to sea: + The whole land's welcome seem'd +The welcome of one man! a realm by thee + +Deliver'd!--But the crowning hour of fame, + The zenith of a name +Is ours once only: and he, too just, too stern, + Too little Englishman, +A nation's gratitude did not care to earn, + +On wider aims, not worthier, set:--A soul + Immured in self-control; +Saving the thankless in their own despite:-- + Then turning with a gasp +Of joy, to his own land by native right; + +Changing the Hall of Rufus and the Keep + Of Windsor's terraced steep +For Guelderland horizons, silvery-blue; + The green deer-twinkling glades, +And long, long, avenues of the stately Loo. + +'William,' says his all too zealous panegyrist, 'never became an +Englishman. He served England, it is true; but he never loved her, and +he never obtained her love. To him she was always a land of exile, +visited with reluctance and quitted with delight. . . . Her welfare was +not his chief object. Whatever patriotic feeling he had was for Holland. +. . . In the gallery of Whitehall he pined for the familiar House in the +Wood at the Hague, and never was so happy as when he could quit the +magnificence of Windsor for his humbler seat at Loo:' (Macaulay: _Hist_. +ch. vii) + +_One labouring breath_; William throughout life was tortured by asthma. + +_Demon's russet coast_; Torbay.--_Capital of the garden-West_; +Exeter.--_Gracious spire_; Salisbury.--_Hall of Rufus_; The one +originally built by William II at Westminster. + + + +THE CHILDLESS MOTHER + + +1700-1702 + +Oft in midnight visions + Ghostly by my bed +Stands a Father's image, + Pale discrowned head:-- +--I forsook thee, Father! + Was no child to thee! +Child-forsaken Mother, + Now 'tis so with me. + +Oft I see the brother, + Baby born to woe, +Crouching by the church-wall + From the bloodhound-foe. +Evil crown'd of evil, + Heritage of strife! +Mine, an heirless sceptre: + His, an exile life! + +--O my vanish'd darlings, + From the cradle torn! +Dewdrop lives, that never + Saw their second morn! +Buds that fell untimely,-- + Till one blossom grew; +As I watch'd its beauty, + Fading whilst it blew. + +Thou wert more to me, Love, + More than words can tell: +All my remnant sunshine + Died in one farewell. +Midnight-mirk before me + Now my life goes by, +For the baby faces + As in vain I cry. + +O the little footsteps + On the nursery floor! +Lispings light and laughter + I shall hear no more! +Eyes that gleam'd at waking + Through their silken bars; +Starlike eyes of children, + Now beyond the stars! + +Where the murder'd Mary + Waits the rising sign, +They are laid in darkness, + Little lambs of mine. +Only this can comfort: + Safe from earthly harms +Christ the Saviour holds them + In His loving arms:-- + +Spring eternal round Him, + Roses ever fair:-- +Will His mercy set them + All beside me there? +Will their Angels guide me + Through the golden gate? +--Wait a little, children! + Mother, too, must wait! + +_I forsook thee_; Marlborough, desirous to widen the breach between Anne +and William III, influenced her to write to her Father, 'supplicating his +forgiveness, and professing repentance for the part she had taken.' + +_Now 'tis so_; Anne 'was said to attribute the death of her children to +the part she had taken in dethroning her father:' (Lecky, _History of the +Eighteenth Century_). + +_The brother_; The infant son of James, known afterwards as the 'Old +Pretender,' or as James III. He was carried as an infant from the Palace +(Dec. 1688) to Lambeth, where he was in great peril of discovery. The +story is picturesquely told by Macaulay. + +_One blossom_; The Duke of Gloucester, who grew up to eleven years, dying +in July 1700. After his death Anne signed, in private letters, 'your +unfortunate' friend. + +Anne's character, says the candid Lecky, 'though somewhat peevish and +very obstinate, was pure, generous, simple, and affectionate; and she +displayed, under bereavements far more numerous than fall to the share of +most, a touching piety that endeared her to her people.' + +_Where the murder'd Mary_; 'Above and around, in every direction,' says +Dean Stanley, describing the vault beneath the monument of Mary of +Scotland in Henry the Seventh's Chapel,--'crushing by the accumulated +weight of their small coffins the receptacles of the illustrious dust +beneath, lie the eighteen children of Queen Anne, dying in infancy or +stillborn, ending with William Duke of Gloucester, the last hope of the +race:' (_Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey_, ch. iii). + + + +BLENHEIM + + +August 13: 1704 + + Oft hast thou acted thy part, + My country, worthily thee! + Lifted up often thy load + Atlantean, enormous, with glee:-- + For on thee the burden is laid to uphold + World-justice; to keep the balance of states; + On thee the long cry of the tyrant-oppress'd, + The oppress'd in the name of liberty, waits:-- + Ready, aye ready, the blade + In its day to draw forth, unafraid; + Thou dost not blench from thy fate! +By thy high heart, only, secure; by thy magnanimity, great. + + E'en so it was on the morn + When France with Spain, in one realm + Welded, one thunderbolt, stood, + With one stroke the world to o'erwhelm. + --They have pass'd the great stream, they have stretch'd their white +camp + Above the protecting morass and the dell, + Blenheim to Lutzingen, where the long wood + In summer-thick leafage rounds o'er the fell: + --England! in nine-fold advance + Cast thy red flood upon France; + Over marsh over beck ye must go, +Wholly together! or, Danube to Rhine, all slides to the foe! + + As the lava thrusts onward its wall, + One mass down the valley they tramp; + Fascine-fill the marsh and the stream; + Like hornets they swarm up the ramp, + Lancing a breach through the long palisade, + Where the rival swarms of the stubborn foe, + While the sun goes high and goes down o'er the fight, + Sting them back, blow answering blow:-- + O life-blood lavish as rain + On war's red Aceldama plain! + While the volleying death-rattle rings, +And the peasant pays for the pride and the fury-ambition of kings! + + And as those of Achaia and Troia + By the camp on the sand, so they + In the aether-amber of evening + Kept even score in the fray; + Rank against rank, man match'd with man, + In backward, forward, struggle enlaced, + Grappled and moor'd to the ground where they stood + As wrestlers wrestling, as lovers embraced:-- + And the lightnings insatiable fly, + As the lull of the tempest is nigh, + And each host in its agony reels, +And the musket falls hot from the hand, enflamed by the death that it +deals. + + But, as when through the vale the rain-clouds + Darker and heavier flow, + Above them the dominant summit + Stands clad in calmness and snow; + So thou, great Chief, awaiting the turn + Of the purple tide:--And the moment has come! + And the signal-word flies out with a smile, + And they charge the foe in his fastness, home:-- + As one long wave when the wind + Urges an ocean behind, + One line, they sweep on the foe, +And France from our battle recoils, and Victory edges the blow. + + As a rock by blue lightning divided + Down the hillside scatters its course, + So in twain their army is parted + By the sabres sabring in force: + They have striven enough for honour! . . . and now + Crumble and shatter, and sheer o'er the bank + Where torrent Danube hisses and swirls + Slant and hurry in rankless rank:-- + There are sixty thousand the morn + 'Gainst the Lions marching in scorn; + But twenty, when even is here, +Broken and brave and at bay, the Lilied banner uprear. + + --So be it!--All honour to him + Who snatch'd the world, in his day, + From an overmastering King, + A colossal imperial sway! + Calm adamantine endurant chief, + Fit forerunner of him, whose crowning stroke, + Rousing his Guards on the Flandrian plain, + Unvassall'd Europe from despot yoke! + He who from Ganges to Rhine + Traced o'er the world his red line + Irresistible; while in the breast +Reign'd devotedness utter, and self for England suppress'd! + + O names that enhearten the soul, + Blenheim and Waterloo! + In no vain worship of glory + The poet turns him to you! + O sung by worthier song than mine, + If the day of a nation's weakness rise, + Of the little counsels that dare not dare, + Of a land that no more on herself relies,-- + O breath of our great ones that were, + Burn out this taint in the air! + The old heart of England restore, +Till the blood of the heroes awake, and shout in her bosom once more! + + --Morning is fresh on the field + Where the war-sick champions lie, + By the wreckage of stiffening dead, + The anguish that yearns but to die. + Ah note of human agony heard + The paean of victory over and through! + Ah voice of duty and justice stern + That, at e'en this price, commands them to do! + And a vision of Glory goes by, + Veil'd head and remorseful eye, + A triumph of Death!--And they cried +'Only less dark than defeat is the morning of conquest';--and sigh'd. + +Blenheim is fully described in Lord Stanhope's _Reign of Queen Anne_. Its +importance as a critical battle in European history lies in the fact that +the work of liberating the Great Alliance against the paramount power of +France under Lewis XIV, (which England had unwisely fostered from +Cromwell to James II), was secured by this victory. 'The loss of France +could not be measured by men or fortresses. A hundred victories since +Rocroi had taught the world to regard the armies of Lewis as all but +invincible, when Blenheim and the surrender of the flower of the French +soldiery broke the spell': (Green: _History of the English People_: B. +VIII: ch. iii). + +'The French and Bavarians, who numbered, like their opponents, some fifty +thousand men, lay behind a little stream which ran through swampy ground +to the Danube . . . It was not till midday that Eugene, who commanded on +the right, succeeded in crossing the stream. The English foot at once +forded it on the left.' They were repelled for the time. But, in the +centre, Marlborough, 'by making an artificial road across the morass +which covered it,' in two desperate charges turned the day. + +A map of 1705 in the _Annals of Queen Anne's Reign_, shows vast hillsides +to the right of the Allies covered with wood. This map also specifies +the advance of the English in nine columns. + +_Only less_; 'Marlborough,' says Lord Stanhope, 'was a humane and +compassionate man. Even in the eagerness to pursue fresh conquests he +did not ever neglect the care of the wounded.' + + + +AT HURSLEY IN MARDEN + + +1712 + + We count him wise, +Timoleon, who in Syracuse laid down + That gleaming bait of all men's eyes, +And for his cottage changed the invidious crown; +Moving serenely through his grayhair'd day + 'Mid vines and olives gray. + + He also, whom +The load of double empire, half the world + His own, within a living tomb +Press'd down at Yuste,--Spain's great banner furl'd +His winding-sheet around him,--while he strove + The impalpable Above + + Though mortal yet, +To breathe, is blazon'd on the sages' roll:-- + High soaring hearts, who could forget +The sceptre, to the hermitage of the soul +Retired, sweet solitudes of the musing eye, + And let the world go by! + + There, if the cup +Of Time, that brims ere we can reach repose, + Fill'd slow, the soul might summon up +The strenuous heat of youth, the silenced foes; +The deeds of fame, star-bright above the throne; + The better deeds unknown. + + There, when the cloud +Eased its dark breast in thunder, and the light + Ran forth, their hearts recall the loud +Hoarse onset roar, the flashing of the fight; +Those other clouds piled-up in white array + Whence deadlier lightnings play. + + There, when the seas +Murmur at midnight, and the dome is clear, + And from their seats in heaven the breeze +Loosens the stars, to blaze and disappear, +_And such as Glory_! . . . with a sigh suppress'd + They smile, and turn to rest. + + --But he, who here +Unglorious hides, untrain'd, unwilling Lord, + The phantom king of half a year, +From England's throne push'd by the bloodless sword, +Unheirlike heir to that colossal fame;-- + How should men name his name, + + How rate his worth +With those heroic ones who, life's labour done, + Mark'd out their six-foot couch of earth, +The laurell'd rest of manhood's battle won? +--Not so with him! . . . Yet, ere we turn away, + A still small voice will say, + + By other rule +Than man's coarse glory-test does God bestow + His crowns: exalting oft the fool, +So deem'd, and the world-hero levelling low. +--And he, who from the palace pass'd obscure, + And honourably poor, + + Spurning a throne +Held by blood-tenure, 'gainst a nation's will; + Lived on his narrow fields alone, +Content life's common service to fulfil; +Not careful of a carnage-bought renown, + Or that precarious crown:-- + + Him count we wise, +Him also! though the chorus of the throng + Be silent: though no pillar rise +In slavish adulation of the strong:-- +But here, from blame of tongues and fame aloof, + 'Neath a low chancel roof, + + --The peace of God,-- +He sleeps: unconscious hero! Lowly grave + By village-footsteps daily trod +Unconscious: or while silence holds the nave, +And the bold robin comes, when day is dim, + And pipes his heedless hymn. + +_Timoleon_; was invited from Corinth by the Syracusans (B.C. 344) to be +their leader in throwing off the tyranny of the second Dionysius. Having +effected this, defeated the Carthaginian invaders, and reduced all the +minor despotisms within Sicily, he voluntarily resigned his paramount +power and died in honoured retirement. + +_He also_; In 1556 the Emperor Charles V gave up all his dominions, +withdrawing in 1557 to Yuste;--a monastery situated in a region of +singular natural beauty, between Xarandilla and Plasencia in Estremadura. +He died there, Sep. 21, 1558. + +_Loosens the stars_; So Vergil, _Georg_. I., 365: + + Saepe etiam stellas vento inpendente videbis + Praecipites caelo labi . . . + +_The phantom king_; Richard Cromwell was Protector from Sep. 3, 1658 to +May 25, 1659. After 1660 his life was that of a simple country +gentleman, till his death in 1712, when he was buried at Hursley near +Winchester. + +_Unheirlike heir_; See _Appendix_ E. + + + +CHARLES EDWARD AT ROME + + +1785 + +1 + + O sunset, of the rise + Unworthy!--that, so brave, so clear, so gay; + This, prison'd in low-hanging earth-mists gray, + And ever-darken'd skies:-- + Sad sunset of a royal race in gloom, +Accomplishing to the end the dolorous Stuart doom! + +2 + + Ghost of a king, he sate + In Rome, the city of ghosts and thrones outworn, + Drowsing his thoughts in wine;--a life forlorn; + Pageant of faded state; + Aged before old age, and all that Past, +Like a forgotten thing of shame, behind him cast. + +3 + + Yet if by chance the cry + Of the sharp pibroch through the palace thrill'd, + He felt the pang of high hope unfulfill'd:-- + And once, when one came by + With the dear name of Scotland on his lips, +The heart broke forth behind that forty-years' eclipse, + +4 + + Triumphant in its pain:-- + Then the old days of Holyrood halls return'd + The leaden lethargy from his soul he spurn'd, + And was the Prince again:-- + All Scotland waking in him; all her bold +Chieftains and clans:--and all their tale, and his, he told: + +5 + + --Told how, o'er the boisterous seas + From faithless France he danced his way + Where Alban's thousand islands lay, + The kelp-strown ridge of the lone Hebrides:-- + How down each strath they stream'd as springtide rills, + When he to Finnan vale + Came from Glenaladale, +And that snow-handful grew an avalanche of the hills. + +6 + + There Lochiel, Glengarry there, + Macdonald, Cameron: souls untried + In war, but stout in mountain-pride + All odds against all worlds to laugh and dare: + Unpurchaseable faith of chief and clan! + Enough! Their Prince has thrown + Himself upon his own! +By hearts not heads they count, and manhood measures man! + +7 + + --Torrent from Lochaber sprung, + Through Badenoch bare and Athole turn'd, + The fettering Forth o'erpast and spurn'd, + Then on the smiling South in fury flung; + Now gather head with all thine affluent force, + Draw forth the wild mellay! + At Gladsmuir is the fray; +Scotland 'gainst England match'd: White Rose against White Horse! + +8 + + Cluster'd down the slope they go, + Red clumps of ragged valour, down, + While morn-mists yet the hill-top crown:-- + Clan Colla! on!--the Camerons touch the foe! + One touch!--the battle breaks, the fight is fought, + As summit-boulders glide + Riddling the forest-side, +And in one moment's crash an army melts to nought! + +9 + + --Ah gay nights of Holyrood! + Star-eyes of Scotland's fairest fair, + Sun-glintings of the golden hair, + Life's tide at full in that brief interlude! + Then as a bark slips from her natural coast + Deep into seas unknown, + Scotland went forth alone, +Unfriended, unallied; a handful 'gainst a host. + +10 + + By the Bolder moorlands bare, + By faithless Solway's glistening sands, + And where Caer Luel's dungeon stands, + Huge keep of ancient Urien, huge, foursquare:-- + Preston, and loyal Lancashire; . . . and then + From central Derby down, + To strike the royal town, +And to his German realm the usurper thrust again! + +11 + + --O the lithesome mountaineers, + Wild hearts with kingly boyhood high, + And victory in each forward eye, + While stainless honour his white banner rears! + Then all the air with mountain-music thrill'd, + The bonnets o'er the brow,-- + My gallant clans! . . . and now +The voices closed in earth, in death the pibroch still'd! + +12 + + --As beneath Ben Aille's crest + The west wind weaves its roof of gray, + And all the glory of the day + Blooms off from loch and copse and green hill-breast; + So, when that craven council spoke retreat, + The fateful shameful word + They heard,--and scarcely heard! +At Scotland's name how should the blood refuse to beat? + +13 + + --O soul-piercing stroke of shame! + O last, last, chance,--and wasted so! + Work wanting but the final blow,-- + And, then, the hopeless hope, the crownless name, + The heart's desire defeated!--What boots now + That ice-brook-temper'd will, + Indomitable still +As on through snow and storm their path the dalesmen plough? + +14 + + --Yet again the tartans hail + One smile of Scotland's ancient face; + One favour waits the faithful race,-- + One triumph more at Falkirk crowns the Gael! + And O! what drop of Scottish blood that runs + Could aught, save do or die, + And Bannockburn so nigh? +What cause to higher height could animate her sons? + +15 + + Up the gorse-embattled brae, + With equal eager feet they dash, + And on the moorland summit clash, + Friend mix'd with foe in stormy disarray: + Once more the Northern charge asserts its right, + As with the driving rain + They drive them down the plain: +That star alone before Drummossie gilds the night. + +16 + + --Ah! No more!--let others tell + The agony of the mortal moor; + Death's silent sheepfold dotted o'er + With Scotland's best, sleet-shrouded as they fell! + There on the hearts, once mine, the snow-wreaths drift; + Night's winter dews at will + In bitter tears distil, +And o'er the field the stars their squadrons coldly shift. + +17 + + Faithful in a faithless age! + Yet happier, in that death-dew drench'd, + In each rude hand the claymore clench'd, + Than who, to soothe a nation's craven rage, + To the red scaffold went with steady eye, + And the red martyr-grave, + For one, who could not save! +Who only lives to weep the weight of life, and die! + +18 + + --He ended, with such grief + As fits and honours manhood:--Then, once more + Weaving that long romantic lay, told o'er + The names of clan and chief + Who perill'd all for him, and died;--and how +In islets, caves, and clefts, and bare high mountain-brow + + 19 + + The wanderer hid, and all + His Odyssey of woes!--Then, agonized + Not by the wrongs he suffer'd and despised, + But for the Cause's fall,-- + The faces, loved and lost, that for his sake +Were raven-torn and blanch'd, high on the traitor's stake, + +20 + + As on Drummossie drear + They fell,--as a dead body falls,--so he; + Swoon-senseless at that killing memory + Seen across year on year: + O human tears! O honourable pain! +Pity unchill'd by age, and wounds that bleed again! + +21 + + --Ah, much enduring heart! + Ah soul, miscounsell'd oft and lured astray, + In that long life-despair, from wisdom's way + And thy young hero-part!-- + --And yet--DILEXIT MULTUM!--In that cry +Love's gentler judgment pleads; thine epitaph a sigh! + +The sad old age of Prince Charles is described by Lord Mahon [Stanhope] +in his able _History_: ch. xxx: and some additional details will be found +in Chambers' narrative of the expedition. During later life, an almost +entire silence seems to have been maintained by the Prince upon his +earlier days and his royal claims. But the bagpipe was occasionally +heard in the Roman Palace, and a casual visit, which Lord Mahon fixes in +1785, drew forth the recital which is the subject of this poem. The +prince fainted as he recalled what his Highland followers had gone +through, and his daughter rushing in exclaimed to the visitor, 'Sir! what +is this! You must have been speaking to my father about Scotland and the +Highlanders! No one dares to mention these subjects in his presence:' +(Mahon: ch. xxvi). + +St. 2 _Drowsing His thoughts_; The habit of intemperance, common in that +century to many who had not Charles Edward's excuses, appear to have been +learned during the long privations which accompanied his wanderings, +between Culloden and his escape to France. + +St. 5 _Hebrides_; Charles landed at Erisca, an islet between Barra and +South Uist, in July 1745. + +St. 7 _Fettering Forth_; 'Forth,' according to the proverb, 'bridles the +wild Highlandman.'--Charles passed it at the Ford of Frew, about eight +miles above Stirling.--_At Gladsmuir_; or Preston Pans; Sep. 21, +1745.--_White Horse_; The armorial bearing of Hanover. + +St. 8 _Clan Colla_; general name for the sept of the Macdonalds. + +St. 10 _Caer Luel_; Urien ap Urbgen is an early hero of Strathclyde or +Alcluith, the British kingdom lying between Dumbarton and Carlisle, then +Caer Luel. + +St. 12 _Ben Aille_; a mountain over Loch Ericht in the central Highlands. + +St. 13 _Ice-brook-temper'd_; 'It is a sword of Spain, the ice-brook's +temper': (_Othello_: A. 5: S. 2). + +St. 14 _At Falkirk_; Jan 17, 1746. 'On the eve after his victory Charles +again encamped on Bannockburn.' + +St. 16 _The mortal moor_; named Culloden and Drummossie: Ap. 16, 1746. +The cold at that time was very severe. + +St. 17 A _nation's craven rage_; See _Appendix_ F. + +St. 21 _Love's gentler judgment_; We may perhaps quote on his behalf +Vergil's beautiful words + + . . . utcumque ferent ea facta minores, + Vincet amor patriae laudumque inmensa cupido. + +--It is also pleasant to record that over the coffin of Charles in S. +Peter's, Rome, a monument was placed by George the Fourth, upon which, by +a graceful and gallant 'act of oblivion,' are inscribed the names of +James the Third, Charles the Third, and Henry the Ninth, 'Kings of +England.' + +On the simple monument set up by his brother Henry in S. Pietro, +Frascati, it may be worth notice that Charles is only described as +_Paterni iuris et regiae_ | _dignitatis successor et heres_:--the title, +King, (given to his Father in the inscription), not being assigned to +Charles, or assumed by the Cardinal. + + + +TRAFALGAR + + +October 21: 1805 + +Heard ye the thunder of battle + Low in the South and afar? +Saw ye the flash of the death-cloud + Crimson o'er Trafalgar? +Such another day never + England will look on again, +When the battle fought was the hottest, + And the hero of heroes was slain! + +For the fleet of France and the force of Spain were gather'd for fight, +A greater than Philip their lord, a new Armada in might:-- +And the sails were aloft once more in the deep Gaditanian bay, +Where _Redoubtable_ and _Bucentaure_ and great _Trinidada_ lay; +Eager-reluctant to close; for across the bloodshed to be +Two navies beheld one prize in its glory,--the throne of the sea! +Which were bravest, who should tell? for both were gallant and true; +But the greatest seaman was ours, of all that sail'd o'er the blue. + + From Cadiz the enemy sallied: they knew not Nelson was there; +His name a navy to us, but to them a flag of despair. +'Twixt Algeziras and Ayamonte he guarded the coast, +Till he bore from Tavira south; and they now must fight, or be lost;-- +Vainly they steer'd for the Rock and the Midland sheltering sea, +For he headed the Admirals round, constraining them under his lee, +Villeneuve of France, and Gravina of Spain: so they shifted their ground, +They could choose,--they were more than we;--and they faced at Trafalgar +round; +Rampart-like ranged in line, a sea-fortress angrily tower'd! +In the midst, four-storied with guns, the dark _Trinidada_ lower'd. + + So with those.--But meanwhile, as against some dyke that men massively +rear, +From on high the torrent surges, to drive through the dyke as a spear, +Eagled-eyed e'en in his blindness, our chief sets his double array, +Making the fleet two spears, to thrust at the foe, any way, . . . +'Anyhow!--without orders, each captain his Frenchman may grapple +perforce: +Collingwood first' (yet the _Victory_ ne'er a whit slacken'd her course) +'Signal for action! Farewell! we shall win, but we meet not again!' +--Then a low thunder of readiness ran from the decks o'er the main, +And on,--as the message from masthead to masthead flew out like a flame, +ENGLAND EXPECTS EVERY MAN WILL DO HIS DUTY,--they came. + + --Silent they come:--While the thirty black forts of the foeman's +array +Clothe them in billowy snow, tier speaking o'er tier as they lay; +Flashes that thrust and drew in, as swords when the battle is rife;-- +But ours stood frowningly smiling, and ready for death as for life. +--O in that interval grim, ere the furies of slaughter embrace, +Thrills o'er each man some far echo of England; some glance of some face! +--Faces gazing seaward through tears from the ocean-girt shore; +Faces that ne'er can be gazed on again till the death-pang is o'er. . . . +Lone in his cabin the Admiral kneeling, and all his great heart +As a child's to the mother, goes forth to the loved one, who bade him +depart +. . . O not for death, but glory! her smile would welcome him home! +--Louder and thicker the thunderbolts fall:--and silent they come. + + As when beyond Dongola the lion, whom hunters attack, +Plagued by their darts from afar, leaps in, dividing them back; +So between Spaniard and Frenchman the _Victory_ wedged with a shout, +Gun against gun; a cloud from her decks and lightning went out; +Iron hailing of pitiless death from the sulphury smoke; +Voices hoarse and parch'd, and blood from invisible stroke. +Each man stood to his work, though his mates fell smitten around, +As an oak of the wood, while his fellow, flame-shatter'd, besplinters the +ground:-- +Gluttons of danger for England, but sparing the foe as he lay; +For the spirit of Nelson was on them, and each was Nelson that day. + + 'She has struck!'--he shouted--'She burns, the _Redoubtable_! Save +whom we can, +Silence our guns':--for in him the woman was great in the man, +In that heroic heart each drop girl-gentle and pure, +Dying by those he spared;--and now Death's triumph was sure! +From the deck the smoke-wreath clear'd, and the foe set his rifle in +rest, +Dastardly aiming, where Nelson stood forth, with the stars on his +breast,-- +'In honour I gain'd them, in honour I die with them' . . . Then, in his +place, +Fell . . . 'Hardy! 'tis over; but let them not know': and he cover'd his +face. +Silent, the whole fleet's darling they bore to the twilight below: +And above the war-thunder came shouting, as foe struck his flag after +foe. + + To his heart death rose: and for Hardy, the faithful, he cried in his +pain,-- +'How goes the day with us, Hardy?' . . . ''Tis ours':--Then he knew, not +in vain +Not in vain for his comrades and England he bled: how he left her secure, +Queen of her own blue seas, while his name and example endure. +O, like a lover he loved her! for her as water he pours +Life-blood and life and love, lavish'd all for her sake, and for ours! +--'Kiss me, Hardy!--Thank God!--I have done my duty!'--And then +Fled that heroic soul, and left not his like among men. + +Hear ye the heart of a nation + Groan, for her saviour is gone; +Gallant and true and tender, + Child and chieftain in one? +Such another day never + England will weep for again, +When the triumph darken'd the triumph, + And the hero of heroes was slain. + + + +TORRES VEDRAS + + +1810 + +As who, while erst the Achaians wall'd the shore, + Stood Atlas-like before, +A granite face against the Trojan sea + Of foes who seethed and foam'd, +From that stern rock refused incessantly; + +So He, in his colossal lines, astride + From sea to river-side, +Alhandra past Aruda to the Towers, + Our one true man of men +Frown'd back bold France and all the Imperial powers. + +For when that Eagle, towering in his might + Beyond the bounds of Right, +O'ercanopied Europe with his rushing wings, + And all the world was prone +Before him as a God, a King of Kings; + +When Freedom to one isle, her ancient shrine, + O'er the free favouring brine +Fled, as a girl by lustful war and shame + Discloister'd from her home, +Barefoot, with glowing eyes, and cheeks on flame, + +And call'd aloud, and bade the realm awake + To arms for Freedom's sake: +--Yet,--for the land had rusted long in rest, + The nerves of war unstrung, +Faint thoughts or rash alternate in her breast, + +While purblind party-strife with venomous spite + Made plausible wrong seem right,-- +O then for that unselfish hero-chief + Tender and true, and lost +At Trafalgar,--or him, whose patriot grief + +Died with the prayer for England, as he died, + In vain we might have cried! +But this one pillar rose, and bore the war + Upon himself alone; +Supreme o'er Fortune and her idle star. + +For not by might but mind, by skill, not chance, + He headed stubborn France +From Tagus back by Douro to Garonne; + And on the last, worst, field, +The crown of all his hundred victories won, + +World-calming Waterloo!--Then, laying by + War's fearful enginery, +In each state-tempest mann'd the wearying helm; + E'en through life's winter-years +Serving with all his strength the ungrateful realm. + +O firm and foursquare mind! O solid will + Fix'd, inexpugnable +By crowns or censures! only bent to do + The day's work in the day;-- +Fame with her idiot yelp might come, or go! + +O breast that dared with Nature's patience wait + Till the slow wheels of Fate +Struck the consummate hour; in leash the while + Reining his eager bands, +The prey in view,--with that foreseeing smile! + +And when for blood on Salamanca ridge + Morn broke, or Orthez' bridge, +He read the ground, and his stern squadrons moved + And placed with artist-skill, +Red counters in the perilous game they loved, + +Impassive, iron, he and they!--and then + With eagle-keener ken +Glanced through the field, the crisis-instant knew, + And through the gap of war +His thundering legions on their victory threw. + +Not iron, he, but adamant! Diamond-strong, + And diamond-clear of wrong: +For truth he struck right out, whate'er befall! + Above the fear of fear: +Duty for duty's sake his all-in-all. + +Among the many wonders of Wellington's Peninsular campaign, from Vimiera +(1808) to Toulouse (1814), the magnificent unity of scheme preserved +throughout is, perhaps, the most wonderful: the dramatic coherence, +development, and final catastrophe of triumph. For this, however, +readers must be referred to Napier's _History_; Enough here to add that +one of the most decisive steps was the formation of the lines in defence +of Lisbon, of which the most northerly ran from Alhandra on the Tagus by +Aruda and Zibreira to Torres Vedras near the sea-coast at the mouth of +the Zizandre. + +_When Freedom_; the unwise and uncertain management of the campaign by +the English home Government has been set forth by Napier with so much +emphasis as, in some degree, to impair the reader's full conviction. Yet +the amazing superiority in energy and wisdom with which Wellington +towered over his contemporaries, (the field being, however, cleared by +the recent deaths of Nelson and Pitt), is so patent, that this attempt to +do justice to his greatness is offered with hesitation and apology. + +_Orthez' Bridge_; crosses the river named Gave de Pau;--and covered +Soult's forces then lying north of it. + + + +THE SOLDIERS' BATTLE + + +November 5: 1854 + + In the solid sombre mist + And the drizzling dazzling shower + They may mass them as they list, + The gray-coat Russian power; +They are fifties 'gainst our tens, they, and more! + And from the fortress-town + In silent squadrons down + O'er the craggy mountain-crown + Unseen, they pour. + + On the meagre British line + That northern ocean press'd; + But we never knew how few + Were we who held the crest! +While within the curtain-mist dark shadows loom + Making the gray more gray, + Till the volley-flames betray + With one flash the long array: + And then, the gloom. + + For our narrow line too wide + On the narrow crest we stood, + And in pride we named it _Home_, + As we sign'd it with our blood. +And we held-on all the morning, and the tide + Of foes on that low dyke + Surged up, and fear'd to strike, + Or on the bayonet-spike + Flung them, and died. + + It was no covert, that, + 'Gainst the shrieking cannon-ball! + But the stout hearts of our men + Were the bastion and the wall:-- +And their chiefs hardly needed give command; + For they tore through copse and gray + Mist that before them lay, + And each man fought, that day, + For his own hand! + + Yet should we not forget + 'Gainst that dun sea of foes + How Egerton bank'd his line, + Till in front a cloud uprose +From the level rifle-mouths; and they dived + With bayonet-thrust beneath; + Clench'd teeth and sharp-drawn breath, + Plunging to certain death,-- + And yet survived! + + Nor the gallant chief who led + Those others, how he fell; + When our men the captive guns + Set free they loved so well, +And embraced them as live things, by loss endear'd:-- + Nor, when the crucial stroke + On their last asylum broke, + And e'en those hearts of oak + Might well have fear'd,-- + + How Stanley to the fore + The citadel rush'd to guard, + With that old Albuera cry + _Fifty-seventh_! _Die hard_! +Yet saw not how his lads clear the crest, + And, each one confronting five, + The stubborn squadrons rive, + And backward, downward, drive,-- + --Death-call'd to rest! + + --O proud and sad for thee! + And proud and sad for those + Who on that stern foreign field + Not seeking, found repose, +As for England dear their life they gladly shed! + Yet in death bethought them where, + Not on these hillsides bare, + But within sweet English air + Their own home-dead + + In a green and sure repose + Beside God's house are laid:-- + Then faced the charging foes + Unmoved, unhelp'd, unafraid:-- +For they knew that God would rate each shatter'd limb + Death-torn for England's sake, + And in Christ's own mercy take + On the day when souls shall wake, + Their souls to Him! + +The battle of Inkermann was mainly fought on a ridge of rock which +projects from the south-eastern angle of Sebastapol: the English centre +of operations being the ill-fortified line named the 'Home Ridge.' The +numbers engaged in field-operations, roughly speaking, were 4,000 English +against 40,000 Russians. + +_The curtain-mist_; The battle began about 6 A.M. under heavy mist and +drizzling rain, which lasted for several hours. Through this curtain the +Russian forces coming down from the hill were seen only when near enough +to darken the mist by their masses. + +_Egerton_; He commanded four companies of the 77th, and charged early in +the battle with brilliant success;--his men, about 250, scattering 1500 +Russians. + +_The gallant chief_; General Soimonoff, killed just after Egerton's +charge. + +_With that old Albuera cry_; Prominent in the defence of the English main +base of operations, the Home Ridge, against a weighty Russian advance, +was Captain Stanley, commanding the 57th. This regiment, it was said, at +the battle of Albuera had been encouraged by its colonel with the words, +'Fifty-seventh, die hard':--and Stanley, having less than 400 against +2000, thought the time had come to remind his 'Die-hards' of their +traditional gallantry;--after which he himself at once fell mortally +wounded. + + + +AFTER CAWNPORE + + +June: 1857 + + Fourteen, all told, no more, + Pack'd close within the door + Of that old idol-shrine: + And at them, as they stand, + And from that English band, +The leaden shower went out, and Death proclaim'd them + _Mine_! + Fourteen against an army; they, no more, + Had 'scaped Cawnpore. + + With each quick volley-flash + The bullets ping and plash: + Yet, though the tropic noon + With furnace-fury broke + The sulphur-curling smoke, +Scarr'd, sear'd, thirst-silenced, hunger-faint, they stood: + And soon + A dusky wall,--death sheltering life,--uprose + Against their foes. + + Behind them now is cast + The horror of the past; + The fort that was no fort, + The deep dark-heaving flood + Of foes that broke in blood +On our devoted camp, victims of fiendish sport; + From that last huddling refuge lured to fly, + --And help so nigh! + + Down toward the reedy shore + That fated remnant pour, + Had Fear and Death beside; + And other spectres yet + Of darker vision flit,-- +Old unforgotten wrongs, the harshness and the pride + Of that imperial race which sway'd the land + By sheer command! + + O little hands that strain + A mother's hand in vain + With terror vague and vast:-- + Parch'd eyes that cannot shed + One tear upon the head, +A young child's head, too bright for such fell death to blast! + Ah! sadder captive train ne'er filed to doom + Through vengeful Rome! + + From Ganges' reedy shore + The death-boats they unmoor, + Stack'd high with hopeless hearts; + A slowly-drifting freight + Through the red jaws of Fate, +Death-blazing banks between, and flame-wing'd arrow-darts:-- + Till down the holy stream those cargoes pour + Their flame and gore. + + In feral order slow + The slaughter-barges go, + Martyrs of heathen scorn: + While, saved from flood and fire + To glut the tyrant's ire, +The quick and dead in one, from their red shambles borne, + Maiden and child, in that dark grave they throw, + Our well of woe! + + Ah spot on which we gaze + Through Time's all-softening haze, + In peace, on them at peace + And taken home to God! + --O whether 'neath the sod, +Or sea, or desert sand, what care,--if that release + From this dim shadow-land, through pathways dim, + Bear us to Him! + + But those fourteen, the while, + Wrapt in the present, smile + On their grim baffled foe; + Till o'er the wall he heaps + The fuel-pile, and steeps +With all that burns and blasts;--and now, perforce, they go + Hack'd down and thinn'd, beyond that temple-door + But Seven,--no more. + + O Elements at strife + With this poor human life, + Stern laws of Nature fair! + By flame constrain'd to fly + The treacherous stream they try,-- +And those dark Ganges waves suck down the souls they bear!-- + Ah, crowning anguish! Dawn of hope in sight; + Then, final night! + + And now, Four heads, no more, + Life's flotsam flung ashore, + They lie:--But not as they + Who o'er a dreadful past + The heart's-ease sigh may cast! +Too worn! too tried!--their lives but given them as a prey! + Whilst all seems now a dream, a nought of nought, + For which they fought! + + --O stout Fourteen, who bled + O'erwhelm'd, not vanquished! + In those dark days of blood + How many dared, and died, + And others at their side +Fresh heroes, sprang,--a race that cannot be subdued! + --Like them who pass'd Death's vale, and lived;--the Four + Saved from Cawnpore! + +The English garrison at Cawnpore, with a large number of sick, women, and +children, were besieged in their hastily made and weak earthworks by Nana +Sahib from June 6 to June 25, 1857. Compelled to surrender, under +promise of safe convoy down the Ganges, on the 27th they were massacred +by musketry from the banks; the thatch of the river-boats being also +fired. The survivors were murdered and thrown into the well upon +Havelock's approach on July 15. + +One boat managed to escape unburnt on June 27. It was chased through the +28th and 29th, by which time the crowd on board was reduced to fourteen +men, one of whom, Mowbray-Thomson, has left a narrative equally striking +from its vividness and its modesty. Seven escaped from the small temple +in which they defended themselves; four only finally survived to tell the +story. + +_A dusky wall_; 'After a little time they stood behind a rampart of black +and bloody corpses, and fired, with comparative security, over this +bulwark:' (Kaye: _Sepoy War_: B. V: ch. ii). + + + +MOUNT VERNON + + +October 5: 1860 + +Before the hero's grave he stood, +--A simple stone of rest, and bare +To all the blessing of the air,-- +And Peace came down in sunny flood +From the blue haunts of heaven, and smiled +Upon the household reconciled. + +--A hundred years have hardly flown +Since in this hermitage of the West +'Mid happy toil and happy rest, +Loving and loved among his own, +His days fulfill'd their fruitful round, +Seeking no move than what they found. + +Sweet byways of the life withdrawn! +Yet here his country's voice,--the cry +Of man for natural liberty,-- +That great Republic in her dawn, +The immeasurable Future,--broke; +And to his fate the Leader woke. + +Not eager, yet, the blade to bare +Before the Father-country's eyes,-- +--E'en if a parent's rights, unwise, +With that bold Son he grudged to share, +In manhood strong beyond the sea, +And ripe to wed with Liberty! + +--Yet O! when once the die was thrown, +With what unselfish patient skill, +Clear-piercing flame of changeless will, +The one high heart that moved alone +Sedate through the chaotic strife,-- +He taught mankind the hero-life! + +As when the God whom Pheidias moulds, +Clothed in marmoreal calm divine, +Veils all that strength 'neath beauty's line, +All energy in repose enfolds;-- +So He, in self-effacement great, +Magnanimous to endure and wait. + +O Fabius of a wider world! +Master of Fate through self-control +And utter stainlessness of soul! +And when war's weary sign was furl'd, +Prompt with both hands to welcome in +The white-wing'd Peace he warr'd to win! + +Then, to that so long wish'd repose! +The liberal leisure of the farm, +The garden joy, the wild-wood charm; +Life ebbing to its perfect close +Like some white altar-lamp that pales +And self-consumed its light exhales. + +No wrathful tempest smote its wing +Against life's tender flickering flame; +No tropic gloom in terror came; +Slow waning as a summer-spring +The soul breathed out herself, and slept, +And to the end her beauty kept. + +Then, as a mother's love and fears +Throng round the child, unseen but felt, +So by his couch his nation knelt, +Loving and worshipping with her tears:-- +Tears!--late amends for all that debt +Due to the Liberator yet! + +For though the years their golden round +O'er all the lavish region roll, +And realm on realm, from pole to pole, +In one beneath thy stars be bound: +The far-off centuries as they flow, +No whiter name than this shall know! + +--O larger England o'er the wave, +Larger, not greater, yet!--With joy +Of generous hearts ye hail'd the Boy +Who bow'd before the sacred grave, +With Love's fair freight across the sea +Sped from the Fatherland to thee! + +And Freedom on that Empire-throne +Blest in his Mother's rule revered, +On popular love a kingdom rear'd, +And rooted in the years unknown,-- +Land rich in old Experience' store +And holy legacies of yore, + +And youth eternal, ever-new,-- +From the high heaven look'd out:--and saw +This other later realm of Law, +Of that old household first-born true, +And lord of half a world!--and smiled +Upon the nations reconciled. + +The date prefixed is that of the visit which the Prince of Wales paid to +the tomb of Washington: carrying home thence, as one of the most +distinguished of his hosts said, 'an unwritten treaty of amity and +alliance.' + +Mount Vernon on the Potomac, named after the Admiral, was the family seat +of Augustine, father to George Washington, and the residence of the +latter from 1752. But all his early years also had been spent in that +neighbourhood, in those country pursuits which formed his ideal of life: +and thither, on resigning his commission as Commander-in-Chief, he +retired in 1785; devoting himself to farming and gardening with all the +strenuousness and devoted passion of a Roman of Vergil's type. And there +(Dec. 1799) was he buried. + +_Not eager_; When the ill-feeling between England and America deepened +after 1765, Washington 'was less eager than some others in declaring or +declaiming against the mother country;' (Mahon: _Hist_. ch. lii). + +_Ripe to wed with Liberty_; See _Appendix_ G. + +_And to the end_; See Petrarch's beautiful lines: _Trionfo della Morte_, +cap. I. + +_Due to the Liberator_; Compare the epitaph by Ennius on Scipio: + + Hic est ille situs, cui nemo civi' neque hostis + Quivit pro factis reddere opis pretium. + +History, it may be said with reasonable confidence, records no hero more +unselfish, no one less stained with human error and frailty, than George +Washington. + +_The years unknown_; It is to Odin, whatever date be thereby signified, +that our royal genealogy runs back. + + + +SANDRINGHAM + + +1871 + + In the drear November gloom + And the long December night, + There were omens of affright, + And prophecies of doom; +And the golden lamp of life burn'd spectre-dim, + Till Love could hardly mark + The little sapphire spark + That only made the dark + More dark and grim. + + There not around alone + Watch'd sister, brother, wife, + And she who gave him life, + White as if wrought in stone +Unheard, invisible, by the bed of death + Stood eager millions by; + And as the hour drew nigh, + Dreading to see him die, + Held their breath. + + Where'er in world-wide skies + The Lion-Banner burns, + A common impulse turns + All hearts to where he lies:-- +For as a babe the heir of that great throne + Is weak and motionless; + And they feel the deep distress + On wife and mother press, + As 'twere their own. + + O! not the thought of race + From Asian Odin drawn + In History's mythic dawn, + Nor what we downward trace, +--Plantagenet, York, Edward, Elizabeth,-- + Heroic names approved,-- + The blood of the people moved; + But that, 'mongst those he loved, + He fought with death. + + And if the Reason said + ''Gainst Nature's law and death + Prayer is but idle breath,'-- + Yet Faith was undismayed, +Arm'd with the deeper insight of the heart:-- + Nor can the wisest say + What other laws may sway + The world's apparent way, + Known but in part. + + Nor knew we on that life + What burdens may be cast; + What issues wide and vast + Dependent on that strife:-- +This only:--'Twas the son of those we loved! + That in his Mother's hand + Peace set her golden wand; + 'Mid heaving realms, one land + Law-ruled, unmoved. + + --He fought, and we with him! + And other Powers were by, + Courage, and Science high, + Grappling the spectre grim +On the battle-field of quiet Sandringham: + And force of perfect Love, + And the will of One above, + Chased Death's dark squadrons off, + And overcame. + + --O soul, to life restored + And love, and wider aim + Than private care can claim, + --And from Death's unsheath'd sword! +By suffering and by safety dearer made:-- + O may the life new-found + Through life be wisdom-crown'd,-- + Till in the common ground + Thou too art laid! + + + +A DORSET IDYL + + +_HARCOMBE NEAR LYME_ + +September: 1878 + + Before me with one happy heave + Of golden green the hillside curves, + Where slowly, smoothly, rounding swerves + The shadow of each perfect tree, + By slanting shafts of eve +Flame-fringed and bathed in pale transparency. + + And that long ridge that crowns the hill + Stands fir-dark 'gainst the falling rays; + Above, a waft of pearly haze + Lies on the sapphire field of air, + So radiant and so still +As though a star-cloud took its station there. + + Up wold and wild the valley goes, + 'Mid heath and mounded slopes of oak, + And light ash-thicket, where the smoke + Wreathes high in evening's air serene, + Floating in white repose +O'er the blue reek of cottage-hearths unseen. + + Another landscape at my feet + Unfolds its nearer grace the while, + Where gorses gleam with golden smile; + Where Inula lifts a russet head + The shepherd's spikenard sweet; +And closing Centaury points her rosy red. + + One light cicada's simmering cry, + Survivor of the summer heat, + Chimes faint; the robin, shrill and sweet, + Pipes from green holly; whilst from far + The rookery croaks reply, +Hoarse, deep, as veterans readying for war. + + --Grief on a happier future dwells; + The happy present haunts the past; + And those old minstrels who outlast + Our looser-textured webs of song, + Nursed in Hellenic dells, +Sicilian, or Italian, hither throng. + + Why care if Turk and Tartar fume, + Barbarian 'gainst barbarian set, + Or how our politic prophets fret, + When on this tapestry-thyme and heath, + Fresh work of Nature's loom, +Thus, thus, we can diffuse ourselves, and breathe + + Autumnal sparkling freshness?--while + The page by some bless'd miracle saved + When Goth and Frank 'gainst Hellas raved. + Paints how the wanderer-chief divine, + Snatch'd from Circaean guile, +Led by Nausicaa past Athene's shrine, + + In that delicious garden sate + Where summer link'd to summer glows, + Grapes ever ripe, and rose on rose; + And all the wonders of thy tale + --O greatest of the great-- +Whose splendour ne'er can fade, nor beauty fail! + + Or by the city of God above + In rose-red meadows, where the day + Eternal burns, the bless'd ones stray; + The harp lets loose its silver showers + From the dark incense-grove; +And happiness blooms forth with all her flowers. + + O Theban strain,--remote and pure, + Voice of the higher soul, that shames + Our downward, dry, material aims, + The bestial creed of earth-to-earth,-- + Owning with insight sure +The signs that speak of Man's celestial birth! + + Or white Colonos here through green + Green Dorset winds his holy vale, + Where the divine deep nightingale + Heaps note on note and love on love, + In ivy thick unseen, +While goddesses with Dionysos rove. + + Another music then we hear, + A cry from the Sicilian dell, + 'Here 'mid sweet grapes and laurel dwell; + Slips by from wood-girt Aetna's dome + Snow-cold the stream and clear:-- +Hither to me, come, Galataea, come!' + + --Voices and dreams long fled and gone! + And other echoes make reply, + The low Maenalian melody + ''Twas in our garth, a twelve-year child, + I saw thee, little one, +Pick the red fruit that to thy fancy smiled, + + 'Thee and thy mother: I, your guide:'-- + O sweet magician! Happy heart! + Content with that unrivall'd art,-- + The soul of grace in music shrined,-- + And notes of modest pride, +To sing the life he loved to all mankind! + + There, shading pine and torrent-song + Breathe midday slumber, sudden, sweet; + Deep meadows woo the wayward feet; + In giant elm the ring-doves moan; + There, peace secure from wrong, +The life that keeps its promise, there, alone! + + --O loftier than the wordy strife + That floats o'er capitals; the chase + Of florid pleasure; the blind race + Of gold for gold by gamblers run, + This fair Vergilian life, +Where heaven and we and nature are at one! + + On that deep soil great Rome was sown; + Our England her foundations laid:-- + Hence, while the nations, change-dismay'd, + To tyrant or to quack repair, + A healthier heart we own, +And the plant Man grows stronger than elsewhere. + + Should changeful commerce shun the shore, + And newer, mightier races meet + To push us from our empire-seat, + England will round her call her own, + And as in days of yore +The sea-girt Isle be Freedom's central throne. + + Freedom, fair daughter-wife of Law; + One bright face on the future cast, + One reverent fix'd upon the past, + And that for Hope, for Wisdom this:-- + While counsels wild and raw +Fly those keen eyes, and leave the land to bliss:-- + + Dear land, where new is one with old: + Land of green hillside and of plain, + Gray tower and grange and tree-fringed lane, + Red crag and silver streamlet sweet, + Wild wood and ruin bold, +And this repose of beauty at my feet:-- + + Fair Vale, for summer day-dreams high, + For reverie in solitude + Fashion'd in Nature's finest mood; + Or, sweeter yet, for fond excess + Of glee, and vivid cry, +Whilst happy children find more happiness + + Ranging the brambled hollows free + For purple feast;--till, light as Hope, + The little footsteps scale the slope; + And from the highest height we view + Our island-girdling sea +Bar the green valley with a wall of blue. + +The poets whose landscape-pictures are here contrasted with English +scenery, are Homer, Pindar, Sophocles, Theocritus, and Vergil. + + + +A HOME IN THE PALACE + + +1840-1861 + + Thrice fortunate he +Who, in the palace born, has early learn'd + The lore of sweet simplicity: +From smiling gold his eyes inviolate turn'd, +Turn'd unreturning:--Who the people's cause, + The sovereign-levelling laws, + + Above the throne, +--He made for them, not they for him,--has set; + Life-lavish for his land alone, +Whether she crown with gratitude, or forget:-- +He, who in courts beneath the purple weight + Of precedence moves sedate, + + By all that glare +Of needful pageantry less stirr'd than still'd, + Bringing a waft of natural air +Through halls with pomp and flattering incense fill'd; +And in the central heart's calm secret, waits + The closure of the gates, + + The music mute, +The darkling lamps, the festal tables clear:-- + Then,--glad as one who from pursuit +Breathes safe, and lets himself himself appear,-- +Turns to the fireside jest, the laughing eyes, + The love without disguise,-- + + On home alone, +The loyal partnership of man with wife, + Building a throne beyond the throne; +All happiness in that common household life +By peasant shared with prince,--when toil and health, + True parents of true wealth, + + To its fair close +Round the long day, and all are in the nest, + And care relaxes to repose, +And the blithe restless nursery lulls to rest; +Prayer at the mother's knee; and on their beds + We kiss the shining heads! + + --Thrice fortunate he +Who o'er himself thus won his masterdom, + Earning that rare felicity +E'en in the palace walls to find the Home! +Who shaped his life in calmness, firm and true, + Each day, and all day through, + + To that high goal +Where self, for England's sake, was self-effaced, + In silence reining-in his soul +On the strait difficult line by wisdom traced, +'Twixt gulf and siren, avalanche and ravine, + Guarding the golden mean. + + Hence, as the days +Went by, with insight time-enrich'd and true, + O'er Europe's policy-tangled maze +He glanced, and touch'd the central shining clue: +And when the tides of party roar'd and surged, + 'Gainst the state-bulwarks urged + + By factious aim +Masquing beneath some specious patriot cloke, + Or flaunting a time-honour'd name,-- +Athwart the flood he held an even stroke; +Between extremes on her old compass straight + Aiding to steer the state. + + With equal mind, +Hence,--sure of those he loved on earth, and then + His loved ones sure again to find,-- +For Christ's and England's cause, Goodwill to men, +To the end he strove, and put the fever by,-- + Ready to live or die. + + --And if in death +We were not so alone, who might not quit, + Smiling, this tediousness of breath, +These bubble joys that flash and burst and flit,-- +This tragicomedy of life, where scarce + We know if it be farce, + + A puppet-sight +Of nerve-pull'd dolls that o'er the world dance by, + Or Good in that unequal fight +With Ill . . . who from such theatre would not fly? +--But those dear faces round the bed disarm + Death of his natural charm! + + --O Prince, to Her +First placed, first honour'd in our love and faith, + True stay, true constant counseller, +From that first love of boyhood's prime,--to death! +O if thy soul on earth permitted gaze + In these less-fortunate days + + When, hour by hour, +The million armaments of the world are set + Skill-weapon'd with new demon-power, +Mouthing around this little isle, . . . and yet +On dream-security our fate we cast, + Of all that glory-past + + With light fool-heart +Oblivious! . . . O in spirit again restored, + Insoul us to the nobler part, +The chivalrous loyalty of thy life and word! +Thou, who in Her to whom first love was due, + Didst love her England too, + + If earthly care +In that eternal home, where thou dost wait + Renewal of the days that were, +Move thee at all,--upon the realm estate +The wisdom of thy virtue, the full store + Thy life's experience bore! + + O known when lost, +Lost, yet not fully known, in all thy grace + Of bloom by cruel early frost, +Best prized and most by Her, to whom thy face +Was love and life and counsel:--If this strain + Renew not all in vain + + The bitter cry +Of yearning for the loss we yet deplore,-- + Yet for her heart, who stood too nigh +For comfort, till God's hour thy face restore. +Man has no lenitive! He, who wrought the grief, . . . + Alone commands relief. + + --Thou, as the rose +Lies buried in her fragrance, when on earth + The summer-loosen'd blossom flows, +Art sepulchred and embalm'd in native worth: +While to thy grave, in England's anxious years, + We bring our useless tears. + +_Above the throne_; 'He knows that if Princes exist, it is for the good +of the people. . . . Well for him that he does so,' was the remark made +by an observing foreigner on Prince Albert: (Martin: _Life of H.R.H. the +Prince Consort_: ch. xi). + +_On home alone_; 'She who reigns over us,' said the then Mr. Disraeli +when seconding the Address on the death of the Duchess of Kent, (March, +1861), 'She who reigns over us has elected, amid all the splendour of +empire, to establish her life on the principle of domestic love' (Martin: +ch. cxi). + +_Firm and true_, 'Treu und Fest' is the motto of the Saxe-Coburg family. + +_Goodwill to men_; A revision of the despatch to the Cabinet of the +United States, remonstrating on the 'Trent affair,' whilst the fatal +fever was on him, was the last of Prince Albert's many services (Nov. 30, +1861) to England. To the temperate and conciliatory tone which he gave +to this message, its success in the promotion of peace between the two +countries was largely due: (Martin: ch. cxvi). + + + +ODE + + +_FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST OF JUNE_ +1887 + +. . . _Sunt hic sua praemia laudi_, +_Sunt lacrimae rerum_ . . . + + As when the snowdrop from the snowy ground + Lifting a maiden face, foretells the flowers + That lurk and listen, till the chaffinch sound + Spring's advent with the glistening willow crown'd, + Sheathed in their silken bowers:-- + E'en so the promise of her life appears + Through those white childhood-years; + --Whether in seaside happiness, and air + Rosing the fair cheek,--sand, and spade, and shell,-- + Or race with sister-feet, that flash'd and fell + Printing the beach, while the gay comrade-wind + Play'd in the soft light hair:-- + Or if with sunbeam-smile and kind + Small hand at cottage-door + Her simple alms she tender'd to the poor: +Love's healthy happy heart in all her steps was seen, + And God, in life's fresh springtime, bless'd our Queen. + + Lo! the quick months their order'd dance pursue, + And Spring's bright apple-blossoms flush to fruit; + The bay-tree thrives 'neath Heaven's own gracious dew, + And her young shoots the parent-life renew + Around the fostering root. + --The Girl from care in youth's sweet sleep withdrawn + Wakes to a crown at dawn! + But Love is at her side, strong, faithful, wise, + To share the world-wide burden of command, + The sceptre's weight in the unlesson'd hand; + To aid each nursery inmate,--each in turn + Dear pride of watchful eyes,-- + To clasp the innocent hands, and learn + The words of love and grace, + Lifting their souls to the compassionate Face:-- +While o'er the fortunate fold the Shepherd watch'd unseen; + And home, in all its beauty, bless'd a Queen. + + Ah! Happy she, who wedded finds in one + Wisest and dearest! happy, happy years! + But summer whirlwinds wait on summer's sun; + Where the Five Rivers from Himala run, + His snow where Everest rears, + Or Alma's echoing crags with war-cry wake + The wind-vext Euxine lake. + --O Death in myriad forms! O brutal roar + Of battle! throes of race, and crash of thrones! + Imploring hands, and wreck of whitening bones + In Khyber pass;--Or woman's stifled cry, + And that dark pit of gore! + --Yet night had light; for He was by, + Her heart, her strength, her shield, + Twin-star in the Throne's radiance self-conceal'd; +Love's hand laid light on hers, guiding the ship unseen-- + For God's best grace in Albert bless'd the Queen. + + But at man's side each hour with ambush'd sword + Death hurries, nor for prayer nor love delays; + In God's own time His harvest-sheaves are stored, + 'For My thoughts are not your thoughts,' saith the Lord, + 'Nor are your ways My ways.' + He Who spared not the Son His bitter cup, + The broken heart binds up + In His fit hour, All-Merciful!--And she, + The desolate faithful Mother, in the nest + By children's love soft-woven, has found rest; + Some constant to her side, if some have flown + The Angels' road, and see + The Vision of the Eternal Throne:-- + With them, 'tis well!--But thou, + Strong through submission, to His will dost bow, +Till God renew the home in that far realm unseen, + And bless with all her lost ones England's Queen. + + Yet in great Nature's changeful mystic dance + Joy circles grief, gay dawn outsmiles the night: + 'Tis meet our song should build its radiance + Like some high palace-porch, and walls that glance + With gold and marble light: + Now fifty suns 'neath one firm patriot sway + Have whirl'd their shining way. + --Lo Commerce with the golden girdling chain + That links all nations for the good of each; + While Science boasts her silent lightning speech + Swifter than thought; and how her patience rein'd + To post o'er earth and main + The panting white-breath'd Titan, chain'd + Bondslave to man:--and won + The magic spark o'erdazzling star and sun +From its dark cave: for He, the all-seeing Lord unseen + Enlightening, bless'd the years of England's Queen. + + Freedom of England! from thy sacred source + Where Alfred arm'd in Athelney, welling pure, + With hero-blood dyed in thy widening course, + --What loyaler hand than her's to guide thy force + Down ancient channels sure? + Honour of England! in what bosom stirs + Thy soul more quick than her's? + Yet in her days . . . O greater grief, than when + In years of woe, the years of happiness + Flash o'er us,--to behold,--and no redress,-- + Some deed of shame we cannot cure nor stay! + Our best, our man of men, + Martyr'd inch-meal by dull delay! + Ah, sacred, hidden grave! + Ah gallant comrade feet, love-wing'd to save, +Too late, too late!--But Thou, Whose counsels work unseen, + Spare us henceforth such pangs, spare England's Queen + + O much enduring, much revered! To thee + Bring sun-dyed millions love more sweet than fame, + And happy isles that star the purple sea + Homage;--and children at the mother's knee + With her's unite thy name; + And faithful hearts, that throb 'neath palm and pine, + From East to West, are thine. + For as some pillar-star o'er sea and storm + Whole fleets to haven guides, so from that height + One great example points the path of Right, + And purifies the home; with gracious aid + Lifting the fallen form. + See Death by finer skill delay'd; + Kind hearts to wait on woe, + And feet of Love that in Christ's footsteps go; +Wild wastes of life reclaim'd by Woman's hand unseen: + All England bless'd with England's Empress Queen. + + And now, as one who through some fruitful field + Has urged the fifty furrows of the grain,-- + Look round with joy, and know thy care will yield + A thousandfold in its due day reveal'd, + The harvest laugh again:-- + E'en now thy great crown'd ancestors on high + Watch with exultant eye + Thy hundred Englands o'er the broad earth sown, + And Arthur lives anew to hail his heir! + --O then for her and us we chant the prayer,-- + Keep Thou this sea-girt citadel of the free + Safe 'neath her ancient throne, + Love-link'd in loyal unity; + Let eve's calm after-glow + Arch all the heaven with Hope's wide roseate bow: +Till in Time's fulness Thou, Almighty Lord unseen, + With glory and life immortal crown the Queen. + +Published (June, 1887) under sanction of the Delegates of the Clarendon +Press, Oxford; and intended as an humble offering of loyalty and hearty +good-wishes on the part of the University. + + + +ENGLAND ONCE MORE + + +Old if this England be +The Ship at heart is sound, +And the fairest she and gallantest +That ever sail'd earth round! +And children's children in the years +Far off will live to see +Her silver wings fly round the world, +Free heralds of the free! + While now on Him who long has bless'd + To bless her as of yore, + Once more we cry for England, + England once more! + +They are firm and fine, the masts; +And the keel is straight and true; +Her ancient cross of glory +Rides burning through the blue:-- +And that red sign o'er all the seas +The nations fear and know, +And the strong and stubborn hero-souls +That underneath it go:-- + While now on Him who long has bless'd + To bless her as of yore, + Once more we cry for England, + England once more! + +Prophets of dread and shame, +There is no place for you, +Weak-kneed and craven-breasted, +Amongst this English crew! +Bluff hearts that cannot learn to yield, +But as the waves run high, +And they can almost touch the night, +Behind it see the sky. + While now on Him who long has bless'd + To bless her as of yore, + Once more we cry for England, + England once more! + +As Past in Present hid, +As old transfused to new, +Through change she lives unchanging, +To self and glory true; +From Alfred's and from Edward's day +Who still has kept the seas, +To him who on his death-morn spoke +Her watchword on the breeze! + While now on Him who long has bless'd + To bless her as of yore, + Once more we cry for England, + England once more! + +What blasts from East and North, +What storms that swept the land +Have borne her from her bearings +Since Caesar seized the strand! +Yet that strong loyal heart through all +Has steer'd her sage and free, +--Hope's armour'd Ark in glooming years, +And whole world's sanctuary! + While now on Him who long has bless'd + To bless her as of yore, + Once more we cry for England, + England once more! + +Old keel, old heart of oak, +Though round thee roar and chafe +All storms of life, thy helmsman +Shall make the haven safe! +Then with Honour at the head, and Faith, +And Peace along the wake, +Law blazon'd fair on Freedom's flag, +Thy stately voyage take:-- + While now on Him who long has bless'd + To bless Thee as of yore, + Once more we cry for England, + England once more! + + + + +APPENDIX + + +A: p. 87 + + +_Till the terrible Day unreveal'd_; Much of course is and will probably +remain unknown among the details of that fatal and fascinating drama, +Mary's life. But all hitherto ascertained evidence has now, mainly by +Mr. Hosack, been sifted so closely and so ably that the main turning +points in her career seem to have reached that twilight certainty beyond +which History can rarely hope to go, and are placed beyond the reach of +reasonable controversy. Such, (not to enter upon the Queen's life as +Elizabeth's captive), is the more than Macchiavellian--the almost +incredible--perfidy of the leading Scottish politicians, united with a +hypocrisy more revolting still, and enabled to do its wicked work, (with +regret we must confess), by the shortsighted bigotry of Knox:--The +gradual forgery of the letters by which the Queen's death was finally +obtained from the too-willing hands of Elizabeth's Cabinet:--The all but +legally proved innocence of Mary in regard to Darnley's death, and the +Bothwell marriage. Taking her life as a whole, it may be fairly doubted +whether any woman has ever been exposed to trials and temptations more +severe, or has suffered more shamefully from false witness and fanatical +hatred. But the prejudices which have been hence aroused are so strong, +such great interests, religious and political, are involved in their +maintenance, that they will doubtless prevail in the popular mind until +our literature receives,--what an age of research and of the scientific +spirit should at last be prepared to give us,--a tolerably truthful +history of the Elizabethan period. (1889) + + + +B: p. 102 + + +_Heroes both_;--_Each his side_;--In regard to the main issue at stake in +the Civil War, and the view taken of it throughout this book, let me here +once for all remark that no competent and impartial student of our +history can deny a fair cause to each side, whatever errors may have been +committed by Charles and by the Parliament, or however fatal for some +fifteen years to liberty and national happiness were the excesses and the +tyranny into which the victorious party gradually, and as it were +inevitably, drifted. 'No one,' says Ranke (whom I must often quote, +because to this distinguished foreigner we owe the single, though too +brief, narrative of this period in which history has been hitherto, +treated historically, that is, without judging of the events by the light +either of their remote results, or of modern political party), 'will make +any very heavy political charge against Strafford on the score of his +government of Ireland, or of the partisan attitude which he had taken up +in the intestine struggle in England in general; for the ideas for which +he contended were as much to be found in the past history of England as +were those which he attacked:' --and Hampden's conduct may claim +analogous justification. If the Parliament could appeal to those +mediaeval precedents which admitted the right of the people through their +representatives, to control taxation and (more or less) direct national +policy, Charles, (and Strafford with him), might as lawfully affirm that +they too were standing 'on the ancient ways'; on the royal supremacy +undeniably exercised by Henry II or Edward I. by Henry VIII and by +Elizabeth. Both parties could equally put forward the prosperity of +England under these opposed modes of government: Patriotism, honour, +conscience, were watchwords which either might use with truth or abuse +with profit. If the great struggle be patiently studied, the moral +praise and censure so freely given, according to a reader's personal +bias, will be found very rarely justified. There was far, very far, less +of tyranny or of liberty involved in the contest, up to 1642, than +partisans aver. To the actual actors (nor, as retrospectively criticized +by us) it is a fair battle on both sides, not a contest 'between light +and darkness.' + +We, looking back after two centuries, are of course free to recognize, +that one effect of the Tudor despotism had been to train Englishmen +towards ruling themselves;--we may agree that the time had come for Lords +and Commons to take their part in the Kingdom. But no proof, I think it +may be said, can be shown that this great idea, in any conscious sense, +governed the Parliaments of James and Charles. It is we who,--reviewing +our history since the definite establishment of the constitutional +balance after 1688, and the many blessings the land has enjoyed,--can +perceive what in the seventeenth century was wholly hidden from +Commonwealth and from King. And even if in accordance with the common +belief, we ascribe English freedom and prosperity and good government to +the final triumph of the popular side, yet deeper consideration should +suggest that such retrospective judgments are always inevitably made +under our human entire ignorance what might have been the result had the +opposite party prevailed. Who should say how often, in case of these +long and wide extended struggles,--political and dynastic,--the effects +which we confidently claim as _propter hoc_, are only _post hoc_ in the +last reality? + +Waiving however these somewhat remote and what many will judge +over-sceptical considerations, this is certain, that unless we can purify +our judgment from reading into the history of the past the long results +of time;--from ascribing to the men of the seventeenth century prophetic +insight into the nineteenth;--unless, in short, we can free ourselves +from the chain of present or personal prepossessions;--no approach can be +made to a fair or philosophical judgment upon such periods of strife and +crisis as our Civil War preeminently offers. + + + +C: p. 108 + + +_With glory he gilt_; Yet to readers, (if such readers there be) who can +look with an undazzled eye on military success, or hear the still small +voice of truth through the tempest of rhetoric, Cromwell's foreign +policy, (excepting the isolated case of his interference with the then +comparatively feeble powers of Savoy and the Papacy on behalf of the +persecuted Waldenses), will be far from supporting the credit with which +politico-theological partisanship has invested it. + +Holland was beyond question the natural ally on political and religious +grounds of puritan England. But a mischievous war against her in 1652-3 +was caused by the arrogant restrictions of the Navigation Act of 1651. +The successful English demand in 1653 that the Orange family, as +connected closely with that of Stuart, should be excluded from the +Stadtholdership, was in a high degree to the prejudice of the United +Provinces. + +In 1654 Cromwell was negotiating with France and Spain. From the latter +he arrogantly asked wholly unreasonable terms, whilst Mazarin, on the +part of France, offered Dunkirk as a bribe. News opportunely arriving +that certain Spanish possessions in America were feebly armed, Cromwell +at once declared war: and now, supplementing unscrupulous policy by false +theology, announced 'the Spaniards to be the natural and ordained enemies +of England, whom to fight was a duty both to country and to religion:' +(Ranke: xii. 6). + +The piratical war which followed, in many ways similar to that which the +'wise Walpole' tried to avert in 1739, was hardly less impolitic than +immoral. It alienated Holland, it sanctioned French aggression on +Flanders (xii. 7), it ended by giving Mazarin and Lewis XIV that +supremacy in Western Europe for which England had to pay in the wars of +William III and Anne; whilst, as soon as it was over, France naturally +allied herself with Spain, on a basis which might have caused the union +of the two crowns (xii. 8) and which allowed Spain at once to support +Charles II. As the result of the Protector's 'spirited policy' England +thus figured as the catspaw of France, and the enemy of European liberty. + +It is satisfactory, however, to find that, in Ranke's judgment, the +common modern opinion that Cromwell's despotism was favourably regarded +in England because of his foreign enterprize, is exaggerated. Even +against the conquest of Jamaica,--his single signal gain,--unanswerable +arguments were popularly urged at the time: (xii. 4, 8)--But the +Protectorate, in the light of modern research,--like the reign of +Elizabeth,--still awaits its historian. + + + +D: p. 127 + + +_The sky by a veil_; 'A spiritual world,' says a critic of deep insight, +'over and above this invisible one, is a most important addition to our +idea of the universe; but it does not of itself touch our moral nature. . . . +Its moral effect depends entirely upon what we make that world to +be.'--Cromwell's religion, which may be profitably studied in his letters +and speeches, (much better known of, than read) reveals itself there as +the simple reflex of his personal views: it had great power to animate, +little or none to regulate or control his impulses. He had, indeed, a +most real and pervading 'natural turn for the invisible; he thought of +the invisible till he died; but the cloudy arch only canopied a field of +human aim and will.' + +_The horrible sacrament_; The summary of Cromwell's conduct at Drogheda +by a writer of so much research, impartiality, and philosophic liberality +as Mr. Lecky deserves to be well considered. + +'The sieges of Drogheda and Wexford, and the massacres that accompanied +them, deserve to rank in horror with the most atrocious exploits of Tilly +and Wallenstein, and they made the name of Cromwell eternally hated in +Ireland. It even now acts as a spell upon the Irish mind, and has a +powerful and living influence in sustaining the hatred both of England +and Protestantism. The massacre of Drogheda acquired a deeper horror and +a special significance from the saintly professions and the religious +phraseology of its perpetrators, and the town where it took place is, to +the present day, distinguished in Ireland for the vehemence of its +Catholicism:' (_Hist. of Eighteenth Cent_. ch. vi). + +_Mortal failure_; The ever-increasing unsuccess of Cromwell's career is +forcibly set forth by Ranke (xii. 8). He had 'crushed every enemy,--the +Scottish and the Presbyterian system, the peers and the king, the Long +Parliament and the Cavalier insurgents,--but to create . . . an +organization consistent with the authority which had fallen to his own +lot, was beyond his power. Even among his old' Anabaptist and +Independent 'friends, his comrades in the field, his colleagues in the +establishment of the Commonwealth, he encountered the most obstinate +resistance. . . . At no time were the prisons fuller; the number of +political prisoners was estimated at 12,000 . . . The failure of his +plans soured and distracted him.' It was, in fact, wholly 'beyond his +power to consolidate a tolerably durable political constitution.'--To the +disquiet caused by constant attempts against Cromwell's life, Ranke adds +the death of his favourite daughter, Lady Claypole, whose last words of +agony 'were of the right of the king, the blood that had been shed, the +revenge to come.' + + + +E: p. 146 + + +_Unheirlike heir_; Richard Cromwell has received double measure of that +censure which the world's judgment too readily gives to unsuccess, +finding favour neither from Royalists nor Cromwellians. Macaulay, with +more justice, remarks, 'That he was a good man he evinced by proofs more +satisfactory than deep groans or long sermons, by humility and suavity +when he was at the height of human greatness, and by cheerful resignation +under cruel wrongs and misfortunes.' . . . 'He did nothing amiss during +his short administration.' + +His fall may be traced to several causes: to the fact that the puritan +party proper, who supported him, the 'sober men' mentioned by Baxter +'that called his father no better than a traitorous hypocrite,' had not +power to resist the fanatic cabal of army chiefs: to the necessity he was +under of protecting some justly-odious confederates of Oliver: his own +want of ability or energy to govern,--a point fully recognized during +Oliver's supremacy; and to his own honourable decision not to 'have a +drop of blood shed on his poor account.' Yet there is ample evidence to +show that Richard, had he chosen, might have made a struggle to retain +the throne,--sufficient, at least, to have thus deluged the kingdom. + +Richard's life was passed in great quiet after 1660: Charles II, +according to Clarendon, with a wise and humorous lenity, not thinking it +'necessary to inquire after a man so long forgotten.' His letters reveal +a man of affectionate and honest disposition; he uses the Puritan +phraseology of the day without leaving a sense of nausea in the reader's +mind. At Hursley he was buried at a good old age in 1712. + + + +F: p. 152 + + +_A nation's craven rage_; The want of public spirit in England shown +during the war of 1745-6 is astonishing. 'England,' wrote Henry Fox, 'is +for the first comer . . . Had 5,000 [French troops] landed in any part of +this island a week ago, I verily believe the entire conquest of it would +not have cost them a battle.' And other weighty testimonies might be +added, in support of Lord Mahon's view as to the great probability of the +Prince's success, had he been allowed by his followers to march upon +London from Derby. + +This apathy and the panic which followed found their natural issue in the +sanguinary punishment of the followers of Prince Charles. 'The city and +the generality,' wrote H. Walpole in August, 1746, 'are very angry that +so many rebels have been pardoned.' The vindictive cruelty then shown +makes, in truth (if we compare the magnitude and duration of the +rebellion for which punishment was to be exacted), an unsatisfactory +contrast to the leniency of 1660. But History supplies only too numerous +proofs that a century's march in civilisation may be always undone at +once by the demons of Panic or of Party in the hour of their respective +triumphs. + + + +G: p. 169 + + +_Ripe to wed with Liberty_; Looking at the American War of Independence +without party-passion and distortion, as should now at least be possible +to Englishmen, the main cause must be acknowledged to lie simply in the +growth and geographical position of the Colonies, which had brought them +to the age of natural liberty, and had begun to fit them for its +exercise:--facts which it was equally in accordance with nature that the +Fatherland should fail to perceive. For the causes which gradually +determined American resistance we must look, (as regards us), not to the +blundering English legislation after 1760,--to the formalism of +Grenville, the subterfuges of Franklin,--but to the whole course of our +commercial policy since the Revolution: As regards the Colonies, to the +extinction of the power of France in America by the Treaty of Paris in +1763: (Lecky: ch. v; Mahon: ch. xliii). + +The Stamp Act of 1765 brought home, indeed, to a rapidly-developing +people the supremacy claimed across the Atlantic; but the obnoxious +taxation which it imposed, (despite the splendid sophistry of Chatham), +cannot be shown to differ essentially from the trade restrictions and +monopolies enacted in long series after 1688, as the result of the +predominance obtained at the Revolution by the commercial classes in this +country, and which so far as 1765 the colonies openly recognized as +legal. + +Going, however, beyond these minor motives, the true cause was +unquestionably that the time for separate life, for America to be +herself, had come. This was a crisis which home-legislation could do +little to create or to avert: a natural law, which only worked itself out +ostensibly by political manoeuvres and military operations, so +ill-managed as to be rarely creditable to either side;--and, regarded +simply as a 'struggle for existence,' is, in the eye of impartial +history, hardly within the scope of praise or censure. + +But it was a neutrally tinted background like this, which could most +effectually bring into full relief the great qualities of the one great +man who was prominent in the conflict. + +Printed by Cassell & Company, Limited. La Belle Sauvage, London. 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