The Project Gutenberg eBook of Collected Poems: Volume One

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Title: Collected Poems: Volume One

Author: Alfred Noyes

Release date: November 19, 2009 [eBook #30501]

Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

Credits: E-text prepared by Charles Aldarondo, Josephine Paolucci, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COLLECTED POEMS: VOLUME ONE ***

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Collected Poems, by Alfred Noyes

COLLECTED POEMS

BY

ALFRED NOYES

VOLUME ONE

NEW YORK

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1906, 1907, 1908, BY

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1909, 1910, 1911, BY

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1906, 1909, BY

ALFRED NOYES

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian. All dramatic and acting rights, both professional and amateur, are reserved. Application for the right of performing should be made to the publishers

October, 1913

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE LOOM OF YEARS 1

IN THE HEART OF THE WOODS 2

ART 5

TRIOLET 8

A TRIPLE BALLAD OF OLD JAPAN 8

THE SYMBOLIST 10

HAUNTED IN OLD JAPAN 11

NECROMANCY 12

THE MYSTIC 15

THE FLOWER OF OLD JAPAN 17

APES AND IVORY 48

A SONG OF SHERWOOD 49

THE WORLD'S MAY-QUEEN 50

PIRATES 53

A SONG OF ENGLAND 55

THE OLD SCEPTIC 57

THE DEATH OF CHOPIN 59

SONG 62

BUTTERFLIES 62

SONG OF THE WOODEN-LEGGED FIDDLER 66

THE FISHER-GIRL 67

A SONG OF TWO BURDENS 71

EARTH-BOUND 72

ART, THE HERALD 74

THE OPTIMIST 74

A POST-IMPRESSION 76

THE BARREL-ORGAN 80

THE LITANY OF WAR 85

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 86

THE LAST BATTLE 88

THE PARADOX 89

THE PROGRESS OF LOVE 94

THE FOREST OF WILD THYME 123

FORTY SINGING SEAMEN 171

THE EMPIRE BUILDERS 175

NELSON'S YEAR 177

IN TIME OF WAR 180

ODE FOR THE SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY OF SWINBURNE 186

IN CLOAK OF GREY 188

A RIDE FOR THE QUEEN 189

SONG 191

THE HIGHWAYMAN 192

THE HAUNTED PALACE 196

THE SCULPTOR 200

SUMMER 201

AT DAWN 204

THE SWIMMER'S RACE 206

THE VENUS OF MILO 208

THE NET OF VULCAN 209

NIOBE 209

ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE 211

FROM THE SHORE 220

THE RETURN 222

REMEMBRANCE 223

A PRAYER 224

LOVE'S GHOST 224

ON A RAILWAY PLATFORM 225

OXFORD REVISITED 226

THE THREE SHIPS 228

SLUMBER-SONGS OF THE MADONNA 230

ENCELADUS 235

IN THE COOL OF THE EVENING 241

A ROUNDHEAD'S RALLYING SONG 242

VICISTI, GALILÆE 243

DRAKE 246

COLLECTED POEMS

EARLY POEMS

DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF JAMES PAYNE

THE LOOM OF YEARS

In the light of the silent stars that shine on the struggling sea,

In the weary cry of the wind and the whisper of flower and tree,

Under the breath of laughter, deep in the tide of tears,

I hear the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.

The leaves of the winter wither and sink in the forest mould

To colour the flowers of April with purple and white and gold:

Light and scent and music die and are born again

In the heart of a grey-haired woman who wakes in a world of pain.

The hound, the fawn and the hawk, and the doves that croon and coo,

We are all one woof of the weaving and the one warp threads us through,

One flying cloud on the shuttle that carries our hopes and fears

As it goes thro' the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.

The crosiers of the fern, and the crown, the crown of the rose,

Pass with our hearts to the Silence where the wings of music close,

Pass and pass to the Timeless that never a moment mars,

Pass and pass to the Darkness that made the suns and stars.

Has the soul gone out in the Darkness? Is the dust sealed from sight?

Ah, hush, for the woof of the ages returns thro' the warp of the night!

Never that shuttle loses one thread of our hopes and fears,

As It comes thro' the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.

O, woven in one wide Loom thro' the throbbing weft of the whole,

One in spirit and flesh, one in body and soul,

The leaf on the winds of autumn, the bird in its hour to die,

The heart in its muffled anguish, the sea in its mournful cry,

One with the flower of a day, one with the withered moon,

One with the granite mountains that melt into the noon,

One with the dream that triumphs beyond the light of the spheres,

We come from the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.

IN THE HEART OF THE WOODS

I

The Heart of the woods, I hear it, beating, beating afar,

In the glamour and gloom of the night, in the light of the rosy star,

In the cold sweet voice of the bird, in the throb of the flower-soft sea!...

For the Heart of the woods is the Heart of the world and the Heart of Eternity,

Ay, and the burning passionate Heart of the heart in you and me.

Love of my heart, love of the world, linking the golden moon

With the flowery moths that flutter thro' the scented leaves of June,

And the mind of man with beauty, and youth with the dreaming night

Of stars and flowers and waters and breasts of glimmering white,

And streaming hair of fragrant dusk and flying limbs of lovely light;

Life of me, life of me, shining in sun and cloud and wind,

In the dark eyes of the fawn and the eyes of the hound behind,

In the leaves that lie in the seed unsown, and the dream of the babe unborn,

O, flaming tides of my blood, as you flow thro' flower and root and thorn,

I feel you burning the boughs of night to kindle the fires of morn.

Soul of me, soul of me, yearning wherever a lavrock sings,

Or the crimson gloom is winnowed by the whirr of wood-doves' wings,

Or the spray of the foam-bow rustles in the white dawn of the moon,

And mournful billows moan aloud, Come soon, soon, soon,

Come soon, O Death with the Heart of love and the secret of the rune.

Heart of me, heart of me, heart of me, beating, beating afar,

In the green gloom of the night, in the light of the rosy star,

In the cold sweet voice of the bird, in the throb of the flower-soft sea!...

O, the Heart of the woods is the Heart of the world and the Heart of Eternity,

Ay, and the burning passionate Heart of the heart in you and me.

II

O, Death will never find us in the heart of the wood,

The song is in my blood, night and day:

We will pluck a scented petal from the Rose upon the Rood

Where Love lies bleeding on the way.

We will listen to the linnet and watch the waters leap,

When the clouds go dreaming by,

And under the wild roses and the stars we will sleep,

And wander on together, you and I.

We shall understand the mystery that none has understood,

We shall know why the leafy gloom is green.

O, Death will never find us in the heart of the wood

When we see what the stars have seen!

We have heard the hidden song of the soft dews falling

At the end of the last dark sky,

Where all the sorrows of the world are calling,

We must wander on together, you and I.

They are calling, calling, Away, come away!

And we know not whence they call;

For the song is in our hearts, we hear it night and day,

As the deep tides rise and fall:

O, Death will never find us in the heart of the wood,

While the hours and the years roll by!

We have heard it, we have heard it, but we have not understood,

We must wander on together, you and I.

The wind may beat upon us, the rain may blind our eyes,

The leaves may fall beneath the winter's wing;

But we shall hear the music of the dream that never dies,

And we shall know the secret of the Spring.

We shall know how all the blossoms of evil and of good

Are mingled in the meadows of the sky;

And then—if Death can find us in the heart of the wood—

We shall wander on together, you and I.

ART

(IMITATED FROM DE BANVILLE AND GAUTIER)

I

Yes! Beauty still rebels!

Our dreams like clouds disperse:

She dwells

In agate, marble, verse.

No false constraint be thine!

But, for right walking, choose

The fine,

The strict cothurnus, Muse.

Vainly ye seek to escape

The toil! The yielding phrase

Ye shape

Is clay, not chrysoprase.

And all in vain ye scorn

That seeming ease which ne'er

Was born

Of aught but love and care.

Take up the sculptor's tool!

Recall the gods that die

To rule

In Parian o'er the sky.

For Beauty still rebels!

Our dreams like clouds disperse:

She dwells

In agate, marble, verse.

II

When Beauty from the sea,

With breasts of whiter rose

Than we

Behold on earth, arose.

Naked thro' Time returned

The Bliss of Heaven that day,

And burned

The dross of earth away.

Kings at her splendour quailed.

For all his triple steel

She haled

War at her chariot-wheel.

The rose and lily bowed

To cast, of odour sweet

A cloud

Before her wandering feet.

And from her radiant eyes

There shone on soul and sense

The skies'

Divine indifference.

O, mortal memory fond!

Slowly she passed away

Beyond

The curling clouds of day.

Return, we cry, return,

Till in the sadder light

We learn

That she was infinite.

The Dream that from the sea

With breasts of whiter rose

Than we

Behold on earth, arose.

III

Take up the sculptor's tool!

Becall the dreams that die

To rule

In Parian o'er the sky;

And kings that not endure

In bronze to re-ascend

Secure

Until the world shall end.

Poet, let passion sleep

Till with the cosmic rhyme

You keep

Eternal tone and time,

By rule of hour and flower,

By strength of stern restraint

And power

To fail and not to faint.

The task is hard to learn

While all the songs of Spring

Return

Along the blood and sing.

Yet hear—from her deep skies,

How Art, for all your pain,

Still cries

Ye must be born again!

Reject the wreath of rose,

Take up the crown of thorn

That shows

To-night a child is born.

The far immortal face

In chosen onyx fine

Enchase,

Delicate line by line.

Strive with Carrara, fight

With Parian, till there steal

To light

Apollo's pure profile.

Set the great lucid form

Free from its marble tomb

To storm

The heights of death and doom.

Take up the sculptor's tool!

Recall the gods that die

To rule

In Parian o'er the sky,

TRIOLET

Love, awake! Ah, let thine eyes

Open, clouded with thy dreams.

Now the shy sweet rosy skies,

Love, awake. Ah, let thine eyes

Dawn before the last star dies.

O'er thy breast the rose-light gleams:

Love, awake! Ah, let thine eyes

Open, clouded with thy dreams.

A TRIPLE BALLAD OF OLD JAPAN

In old Japan, by creek and bay,

The blue plum-blossoms blow,

Where birds with sea-blue plumage gay

Thro' sea-blue branches go:

Dragons are coiling down below

Like dragons on a fan;

And pig-tailed sailors lurching slow

Thro' streets of old Japan.

There, in the dim blue death of day

Where white tea-roses grow,

Petals and scents are strewn astray

Till night be sweet enow,

Then lovers wander whispering low

As lovers only can,

Where rosy paper lanterns glow

Thro' streets of old Japan.

From Wonderland to Yea-or-Nay

The junks of Weal-and-Woe

Dream on the purple water-way

Nor ever meet a foe;

Though still, with stiff mustachio

And crookéd ataghan,

Their pirates guard with pomp and show

The ships of old Japan.

That land is very far away,

We lost it long ago!

No fairies ride the cherry spray,

No witches mop and mow,

The violet wells have ceased to flow;

And O, how faint and wan

The dawn on Fusiyama's snow,

The peak of old Japan.

Half smilingly, our hearts delay,

Half mournfully forego

The blue fantastic twisted day

When faithful Konojo,

For small white Lily Hasu-ko

Knelt in the Butsudan,

And her tomb opened to bestrow

Lilies thro' old Japan.

There was a game they used to play

I' the San-ju-san-jen Dō,

They filled a little lacquer tray

With powders in a row,

Dry dust of flowers from Tashiro

To Mount Daimugenzan,

Dry little heaps of dust, but O

They breathed of old Japan.

Then knights in blue and gold array

Would on their thumbs bestow

A pinch from every heap and say,

With many a hum and ho,

What blossoms, nodding to and fro

For joy of maid or man,

Conceived the scents that puzzled so

The brains of old Japan.

The hundred ghosts have ceased to affray

The dust of Kyotó,

Ah yet, what phantom blooms a-sway

Murmur, a-loft, a-low,

In dells no scythe of death can mow,

No power of reason scan,

O, what Samúrai singers know

The Flower of old Japan?

Dry dust of blossoms, dim and gray,

Lost on the wind? Ah, no,

Hark, from yon clump of English may,

A cherub's mocking crow,

A sudden twang, a sweet, swift throe,

As Daisy trips by Dan,

And careless Cupid drops his bow

And laughs—from old Japan.

There, in the dim blue death of day

Where white tea-roses grow,

Petals and scents are strewn astray

Till night be sweet enow,

Then lovers wander, whispering low,

As lovers only can,

Where rosy paper lanterns glow

Thro' streets of old Japan.

THE SYMBOLIST

Help me to seek that unknown land!

I kneel before the shrine.

Help me to feel the hidden hand

That ever holdeth mine.

I kneel before the Word, I kneel

Before the Cross of flame

I cry, as thro' the gloom I steal,

The glory of the Name.

Help me to mourn, and I shall love;

What grief is like to mine?

Crown me with thorn, the stars above

Shall in the circlet shine!

The Temple opens wide: none sees

The love, the dream, the light!

O, blind and finite, are not these

Blinding and infinite?

The veil, the veil is rent: the skies

Are white with wings of fire,

Where victim souls triumphant rise

In torment of desire.

Help me to seek: I would not find,

For when I find I know

I shall have clasped the hollow wind

And built a house of snow.

HAUNTED IN OLD JAPAN

Music of the star-shine shimmering o'er the sea

Mirror me no longer in the dusk of memory:

Dim and white the rose-leaves drift along the shore.

Wind among the roses, blow no more!

All along the purple creek, lit with silver foam,

Silent, silent voices, cry no more of home!

Soft beyond the cherry-trees, o'er the dim lagoon,

Dawns the crimson lantern of the large low moon.

We that loved in April, we that turned away

Laughing ere the wood-dove crooned across the May,

Watch the withered rose-leaves drift along the shore.

Wind among the roses, blow no more!

We the Sons of Reason, we that chose to bride

Knowledge, and rejected the Dream that we denied,

We that chose the Wisdom that triumphs for an hour,

We that let the young love perish like a flower....

We that hurt the kind heart, we that went astray,

We that in the darkness idly dreamed of day....

... Ah! The dreary rose-leaves drift along the shore.

Wind among the roses, blow no more!

Lonely starry faces, wonderful and white,

Yearning with a cry across the dim sweet night,

All our dreams are blown a-drift as flowers before a fan,

All our hearts are haunted in the heart of old Japan.

Haunted, haunted, haunted—we that mocked and sinned

Hear the vanished voices wailing down the wind,

Watch the ruined rose-leaves drift along the shore.

Wind among the roses, blow no more!

All along the purple creek, lit with silver foam,

Sobbing, sobbing voices, cry no more of home!

Soft beyond the cherry-trees, o'er the dim lagoon,

Dawns the crimson lantern of the large low moon.

NECROMANCY

(AFTER THE PROSE OF BAUDELAIRE)

This necromantic palace, dim and rich,

Dim as a dream, rich as a reverie,

I knew it all of old, surely I knew

This floating twilight tinged with rose and blue,

This moon-soft carven niche

Whence the calm marble, wan as memory,

Slopes to the wine-brimmed bath of cold dark fire

Perfumed with old regret and dead desire.

There the soul, slumbering in the purple waves

Of indolence, dreams of the phantom years,

Dreams of the wild sweet flower of red young lips

Meeting and murmuring in the dark eclipse

Of joy, where pain still craves

One tear of love to mingle with their tears,

One passionate welcome ere the wild farewell,

One flash of heaven across the fires of hell.

*    *    *    *

Queen of my dreams, queen of my pitiless dreams,

Dim idol, moulded of the wild white rose,

Coiled like a panther in that silken gloom

Of scented cushions, where the rich hushed room

Breaks into soft warm gleams,

As from her slumbrous clouds Queen Venus glows,

Slowly thine arms up-lift to me, thine eyes

Meet mine, without communion or surmise.

Here, at thy feet, I watched, I watched all day

Night floating in thine eyes, then with my hands

Covered my face from that dumb cry of pain:

And when at last I dared to look again

My heart was far away,

Wrapt in the fragrant gloom of Eastern lands,

Under the flower-white stars of tropic skies

Where soft black floating flowers turned to ... thine eyes.

I breathe, I breathe the perfume of thine hair:

Bury in thy deep hair my fevered face,

Till as to men athirst in desert dreams

The savour and colour and sound of cool dark streams

Float round me everywhere,

And memories float from some forgotten place,

Fulfilling hopeless eyes with hopeless tears

And fleeting light of unforgotten years.

Dim clouds of music in the dim rich hours

Float to me thro' the twilight of thine hair,

And sails like blossoms float o'er purple seas,

And under dark green skies the soft warm breeze

Washes dark fruit, dark flowers,

Dark tropic maidens in some island lair

Couched on the warm sand nigh the creaming foam

To dream and sing their tawny lovers home.

Lost in the magic ocean of thine hair

I find the haven of the heart of song:

There tired ships rest against the pale red sky!

And yet again there comes a thin sad cry

And all the shining air

Fades, where the tall dark singing seamen throng

From many generations, many climes,

Fades, fades, as it has faded many times.

I hear the sweet cool whisper of the waves!

Drowned in the slumbrous billows of thine hair,

I dream as one that sinks thro' passionate hours

In a strange ship's wild fraughtage of dark flowers

Culled for pale poets' graves;

And opiate odours load the empurpled air

That flows and droops, a dark resplendent pall

Under the floating wreaths funereal.

Under the heavy midnight of thine hair

An altar flames with spices of the south

Burning my flesh and spirit in the flame;

Till, looking tow'rds the land from whence I came

I find no comfort there,

And all the darkness to my thirsty mouth

Is fire, but always and in every place

Blossoms the secret wonder of thy face.

*    *    *    *

The walls, the very walls are woven of dreams,

All undefined by blasphemies of art!

Here, pure from finite hues the very night

Conceives the mystic harmonies of light,

Delicious glooms and gleams;

And sorrow falls in rose-leaves on the heart,

And pain that yearns upon the passing hour

Is but a perfume haunting a dead flower.

Hark, as a hammer on a coffin falls

A knock upon the door! The colours wane,

The dreams vanish! And leave that foul white scar,

Tattoo'd with dreadful marks, the old calendar

Blotching the blistered walls!

The winter whistles thro' a shivered pane,

And scatters on the bare boards at my feet

These poor soiled manuscripts, torn, incomplete...

The scent of opium floats about my breath;

But Time resumes his dark and hideous reign;

And, with him, hideous memories troop, I know.

Hark, how the battered clock ticks, to and fro,—

Life, Death—Life, Death—Life, Death—

O fool to cry! O slave to bow to pain,

Coward to live thus tortured with desire

By demon nerves in hells of sensual fire.

THE MYSTIC

With wounds out-reddening every moon-washed rose

King Love went thro' earth's garden-close!

From that first gate of birth in the golden gloom,

I traced Him. Thorns had frayed His garment's hem,

Ay, and His flesh! I marked, I followed them

Down to that threshold of—the tomb?

And there Love vanished, yet I entered! Night

And Doubt mocked at the dwindling light:

Strange claw-like hands flung me their shadowy hate.

I clomb the dreadful stairways of desire

Between a thousand eyes and wings of fire

And knocked upon the second Gate.

The second Gate! When, like a warrior helmed,

In battle on battle overwhelmed,

My soul lay stabbed by all the swords of sense,

Blinded and stunned by stars and flowers and trees,

Did I not struggle to my bended knees

And wrestle with Omnipotence?

Did earth not flee before me, when the breath

Of worship smote her with strange death,

Withered her gilded garment, broke her sword,

Shattered her graven images and smote

All her light sorrows thro' the breast and throat

Whose death-cry crowned me God and Lord?

Yea, God and Lord! Had tears not purged my sight?

I saw the myriad gates of Light

Opening and shutting in each way-side flower,

And like a warder in the gleam of each,

Death, whispering in some strange eternal speech

To every passing hour.

The second Gate? Was I not born to pass

A million? Though the skies be brass

And the earth iron, shall I not win thro' all?

Shall I who made the infinite heavens my mark

Shrink from this first wild horror of the dark,

These formless gulfs, these glooms that crawl?

Never was mine that easy faithless hope

Which makes all life one flowery slope

To heaven! Mine be the vast assaults of doom,

Trumpets, defeats, red anguish, age-long strife,

Ten million deaths, ten million gates to life,

The insurgent heart that bursts the tomb.

Vain, vain, unutterably vain are all

The sights and sounds that sink and fall,

The words and symbols of this fleeting breath:

Shall I not drown the finite in the Whole,

Cast off this body and complete my soul

Thro' deaths beyond this gate of death?

It will not open! Through the bars I see

The glory and the mystery

Wind upward ever! The earth-dawn breaks! I bleed

With beating here for entrance. Hark, O hark,

Love, Love, return and give me the great Dark,

Which is the Light of Life indeed.

THE FLOWER OF OLD JAPAN

DEDICATED TO CAROL, A LITTLE MAIDEN Of MYAKO.

PERSONS OF THE TALE

OURSELVES

THE TALL THIN MAN

THE DWARF BEHIND THE TWISTED PEAR-TREE

CREEPING SIN

THE MAD MOONSHEE

THE NAMELESS ONE

Pirates, Mandarins, Bonzes, Priests, Jugglers, Merchants, Ghastroi, Weirdrians, etc.

PRELUDE

You that have known the wonder zone

Of islands far away;

You that have heard the dinky bird

And roamed in rich Cathay;

You that have sailed o'er unknown seas

To woods of Amfalula trees

Where craggy dragons play:

Oh, girl or woman, boy or man,

You've plucked the Flower of Old Japan!

Do you remember the blue stream;

The bridge of pale bamboo;

The path that seemed a twisted dream

Where everything came true;

The purple cherry-trees; the house

With jutting eaves below the boughs;

The mandarins in blue,

With tiny, tapping, tilted toes,

And curious curved mustachios?

The road to Old Japan! you cry,

And is it far or near?

Some never find it till they die;

Some find it everywhere;

The road where restful Time forgets

His weary thoughts and wild regrets

And calls the golden year

Back in a fairy dream to smile

On young and old a little while.

Some seek it with a blazing sword,

And some with old blue plates;

Some with a miser's golden hoard;

Some with a book of dates;

Some with a box of paints; a few

Whose loads of truth would ne'er pass through

The first, white, fairy gates;

And, oh, how shocked they are to find

That truths are false when left behind!

Do you remember all the tales

That Tusitala told,

When first we plunged thro' purple vales

In quest of buried gold?

Do you remember how he said

That if we fell and hurt our head

Our hearts must still be bold,

And we must never mind the pain

But rise up and go on again?

Do you remember? Yes; I know

You must remember still:

He left us, not so long ago,

Carolling with a will,

Because he knew that he should lie

Under the comfortable sky

Upon a lonely hill,

In Old Japan, when day was done;

"Dear Robert Louis Stevenson."

And there he knew that he should find

The hills that haunt us now;

The whaups that cried upon the wind

His heart remembered how;

And friends he loved and left, to roam

Far from the pleasant hearth of home,

Should touch his dreaming brow;

Where fishes fly and birds have fins,

And children teach the mandarins.

Ah, let us follow, follow far

Beyond the purple seas;

Beyond the rosy foaming bar,

The coral reef, the trees,

The land of parrots, and the wild

That rolls before the fearless child

Its ancient mysteries:

Onward and onward, if we can,

To Old Japan—to Old Japan.

PART I

EMBARKATION

When the firelight, red and clear,

Flutters in the black wet pane,

It is very good to hear

Howling winds and trotting rain:

It is very good indeed,

When the nights are dark and cold,

Near the friendly hearth to read

Tales of ghosts and buried gold.

So with cozy toes and hands

We were dreaming, just like you;

Till we thought of palmy lands

Coloured like a cockatoo;

All in drowsy nursery nooks

Near the clutching fire we sat,

Searching quaint old story-books

Piled upon the furry mat.

Something haunted us that night

Like a half-remembered name;

Worn old pages in that light

Seemed the same, yet not the same:

Curling in the pleasant heat

Smoothly as a shell-shaped fan,

O, they breathed and smelt so sweet

When we turned to Old Japan!

Suddenly we thought we heard

Someone tapping on the wall,

Tapping, tapping like a bird.

Then a panel seemed to fall

Quietly; and a tall thin man

Stepped into the glimmering room,

And he held a little fan,

And he waved it in the gloom.

Curious red, and golds, and greens

Danced before our startled eyes,

Birds from painted Indian screens,

Beads, and shells, and dragon-flies;

Wings, and flowers, and scent, and flame,

Fans and fish and heliotrope;

Till the magic air became

Like a dream kaleidoscope.

Then he told us of a land

Far across a fairy sea;

And he waved his thin white hand

Like a flower, melodiously;

While a red and blue macaw

Perched upon his pointed head,

And as in a dream, we saw

All the curious things he said.

Tucked in tiny palanquins,

Magically swinging there,

Flowery-kirtled mandarins

Floated through the scented air;

Wandering dogs and prowling cats

Grinned at fish in painted lakes;

Cross-legged conjurers on mats

Fluted low to listening snakes.

Fat black bonzes on the shore

Watched where singing, faint and far,

Boys in long blue garments bore

Roses in a golden jar.

While at carven dragon ships

Floating o'er that silent sea,

Squat-limbed gods with dreadful lips

Leered and smiled mysteriously.

Like an idol, shrined alone,

Watched by secret oval eyes,

Where the ruby wishing-stone

Smouldering in the darkness lies,

Anyone that wanted things

Touched the jewel and they came;

We were wealthier than kings

Could we only do the same.

Yes; we knew a hundred ways

We might use it if we could;

To be happy all our days

As an Indian in a wood;

No more daily lesson task,

No more sorrow, no more care;

So we thought that we would ask

If he'd kindly lead us there.

Ah, but then he waved his fan,

Laughed and vanished through the wall;

Yet as in a dream, we ran

Tumbling after, one and all;

Never pausing once to think,

Panting after him we sped;

Far away his robe of pink

Floated backward as he fled.

Down a secret passage deep,

Under roofs of spidery stairs,

Where the bat-winged nightmares creep,

And a sheeted phantom glares

Rushed we; ah, how strange it was

Where no human watcher stood;

Till we reached a gate of glass

Opening on a flowery wood.

Where the rose-pink robe had flown,

Borne by swifter feet than ours,

On to Wonder-Wander town,

Through the wood of monstrous flowers;

Mailed in monstrous gold and blue

Dragon-flies like peacocks fled;

Butterflies like carpets, too,

Softly fluttered overhead.

Down the valley, tip-a-toe,

Where the broad-limbed giants lie

Snoring, as when long ago

Jack on a bean-stalk scaled the sky;

On to Wonder-Wander town

Stole we past old dreams again,

Castles long since battered down,

Dungeons of forgotten pain.

Noonday brooded on the wood,

Evening caught us ere we crept

Where a twisted pear-tree stood,

And a dwarf behind it slept;

Round his scraggy throat he wore,

Knotted tight, a scarlet scarf;

Timidly we watched him snore,

For he seemed a surly dwarf.

Yet, he looked so very small,

He could hardly hurt us much;

We were nearly twice as tall,

So we woke him with a touch

Gently, and in tones polite,

Asked him to direct our path;

O, his wrinkled eyes grew bright

Green with ugly gnomish wrath.

He seemed to choke,

And gruffly spoke,

"You're lost: deny it, if you can!

You want to know

The way to go?

There's no such place as Old Japan.

"You want to seek—

No, no, don't speak!

You mean you want to steal a fan.

You want to see

The fields of tea?

They don't grow tea in Old Japan.

"In China, well

Perhaps you'd smell

The cherry bloom: that's if you ran

A million miles

And jumped the stiles,

And never dreamed of Old Japan.

"What, palanquins,

And mandarins?

And, what d'you say, a blue divan?

And what? Hee! hee!

You'll never see

A pig-tailed head in Old Japan.

"You'd take away

The ruby, hey?

I never heard of such a plan!

Upon my word

It's quite absurd

There's not a gem in Old Japan!

"Oh, dear me, no!

You'd better go

Straight home again, my little man:

Ah, well, you'll see

But don't blame me;

I don't believe in Old Japan."

Then, before we could obey,

O'er our startled heads he cast,

Spider-like, a webby grey

Net that held us prisoned fast;

How we screamed, he only grinned,

It was such a lonely place;

And he said we should be pinned

Safely in his beetle-case.

Out he dragged a monstrous box

From a cave behind the tree!

It had four-and-twenty locks,

But he could not find the key,

And his face grew very pale

When a sudden voice began

Drawing nearer through the vale,

Singing songs of Old Japan,

SONG

Satin sails in a crimson dawn

Over the silky silver sea;

Purple veils of the dark withdrawn;

Heavens of pearl and porphyry;

Purple and white in the morning light

Over the water the town we knew,

In tiny state, like a willow-plate,

Shone, and behind it the hills were blue.

There, we remembered, the shadows pass

All day long like dreams in the night;

There, in the meadows of dim blue grass,

Crimson daisies are ringed with white.

There the roses flutter their petals,

Over the meadows they take their flight,

There the moth that sleepily settles

Turns to a flower in the warm soft light.

There when the sunset colours the streets

Everyone buys at wonderful stalls

Toys and chocolates, guns and sweets,

Ivory pistols, and Persian shawls:

Everyone's pockets are crammed with gold;

Nobody's heart is worn with care,

Nobody ever grows tired and old,

And nobody calls you "Baby" there.

There with a hat like a round white dish

Upside down on each pig-tailed head,

Jugglers offer you snakes and fish,

Dreams and dragons and gingerbread;

Beautiful books with marvellous pictures,

Painted pirates and streaming gore,

And everyone reads, without any strictures,

Tales he remembers for evermore.

There when the dim blue daylight lingers

Listening, and the West grows holy,

Singers crouch with their long white fingers

Floating over the zithern slowly:

Paper lamps with a peachy bloom

Burn above on the dim blue bough,

While the zitherns gild the gloom

With curious music! I hear it now!

Now: and at that mighty word

Holding out his magic fan,

Through the waving flowers appeared,

Suddenly, the tall thin man:

And we saw the crumpled dwarf

Trying to hide behind the tree,

But his knotted scarlet scarf

Made him very plain to see.

Like a soft and smoky cloud

Passed the webby net away;

While its owner squealing loud

Down behind the pear-tree lay;

For the tall thin man came near,

And his words were dark and gruff,

And he swung the dwarf in the air

By his long and scraggy scruff.

There he kickled whimpering.

But our rescuer touched the box,

Open with a sudden spring

Clashed the four-and-twenty locks;

Then he crammed the dwarf inside,

And the locks all clattered tight:

Four-and-twenty times he tried

Whether they were fastened right.

Ah, he led us on our road,

Showed us Wonder-Wander town;

Then he fled: behind him flowed

Once again the rose-pink gown:

Down the long deserted street,

All the windows winked like eyes,

And our little trotting feet

Echoed to the starry skies.

Low and long for evermore

Where the Wonder-Wander sea

Whispers to the wistful shore

Purple songs of mystery,

Down the shadowy quay we came—

Though it hides behind the hill

You will find it just the same

And the seamen singing still.

There we chose a ship of pearl,

And her milky silken sail

Seemed by magic to unfurl,

Puffed before a fairy gale;

Shimmering o'er the purple deep,

Out across the silvery bar,

Softly as the wings of sleep

Sailed we towards the morning star.

Over us the skies were dark,

Yet we never needed light;

Softly shone our tiny bark

Gliding through the solemn night;

Softly bright our moony gleam,

Glimmered o'er the glistening waves,

Like a cold sea-maiden's dream

Globed in twilit ocean caves.

So all night our shallop passed

Many a haunt of old desire,

Blurs of savage blossom massed

Red above a pirate-fire;

Huts that gloomed and glanced among

Fruitage dipping in the blue;

Songs the sirens never sung,

Shores Ulysses never knew.

All our fairy rigging shone

Richly as a rainbow seen

Where the moonlight floats upon

Gossamers of gold and green:

All the tiny spars were bright;

Beaten gold the bowsprit was;

But our pilot was the night,

And our chart a looking-glass.

PART II

THE ARRIVAL

With rosy finger-tips the Dawn

Drew back the silver veils,

Till lilac shimmered into lawn

Above the satin sails;

And o'er the waters, white and wan,

In tiny patterned state,

We saw the streets of Old Japan

Shine, like a willow plate.

O, many a milk-white pigeon roams

The purple cherry crops,

The mottled miles of pearly domes,

And blue pagoda tops,

The river with its golden canes

And dark piratic dhows,

To where beyond the twisting vanes

The burning mountain glows.

A snow-peak in the silver skies

Beyond that magic world,

We saw the great volcano rise

With incense o'er it curled,

Whose tiny thread of rose and blue

Has risen since time began,

Before the first enchanter knew

The peak of Old Japan.

Nobody watched us quietly steer

The pinnace to the painted pier,

Except one pig-tailed mandarin,

Who sat upon a chest of tea

Pretending not to hear or see!...

His hands were very long and thin,

His face was very broad and white;

And O, it was a fearful sight

To see him sit alone and grin!

His grin was very sleek and sly:

Timidly we passed him by.

He did not seem at all to care:

So, thinking we were safely past,

We ventured to look back at last.

O, dreadful blank!—He was not there!

He must have hid behind his chest:

We did not stay to see the rest.

But, as in reckless haste we ran,

We came upon the tall thin man,

Who called to us and waved his fan,

And offered us his palanquin:

He said we must not go alone

To seek the ruby wishing-stone,

Because the white-faced mandarin

Would dog our steps for many a mile,

And sit upon each purple stile

Before we came to it, and smile

And smile; his name was Creeping Sin.

He played with children's beating hearts,

And stuck them full of poisoned darts

And long green thorns that stabbed and stung:

He'd watch until we tried to speak,

Then thrust inside his pasty cheek

His long, white, slimy tongue:

And smile at everything we said;

And sometimes pat us on the head,

And say that we were very young:

He was a cousin of the man

Who said that there was no Japan.

And night and day this Creeping Sin

Would follow the path of the palanquin;

Yet if we still were fain to touch

The ruby, we must have no fear,

Whatever we might see or hear,

And the tall thin man would take us there;

He did not fear that Sly One much,

Except perhaps on a moonless night,

Nor even then if the stars were bright.

So, in the yellow palankeen

We swung along in state between

Twinkling domes of gold and green

Through the rich bazaar,

Where the cross-legged merchants sat,

Old and almond-eyed and fat,

Each upon a gorgeous mat,

Each in a cymar;

Each in crimson samite breeches,

Watching his barbaric riches.

Cherry blossom breathing sweet

Whispered o'er the dim blue street

Where with fierce uncertain feet

Tawny pirates walk:

All in belts and baggy blouses,

Out of dreadful opium houses,

Out of dens where Death carouses,

Horribly they stalk;

Girt with ataghan and dagger,

Right across the road they swagger.

And where the cherry orchards blow,

We saw the maids of Miyako,

Swaying softly to and fro

Through the dimness of the dance:

Like sweet thoughts that shine through dreams

They glided, wreathing rosy gleams,

With stately sounds of silken streams,

And many a slim kohl-lidded glance;

Then fluttered with tiny rose-bud feet

To a soft frou-frou and a rhythmic beat

As the music shimmered, pursuit, retreat,

"Hands across, retire, advance!"

And again it changed and the glimmering throng

Faded into a distant song.

SONG

The maidens of Miyako

Dance in the sunset hours,

Deep in the sunset glow,

Under the cherry flowers.

With dreamy hands of pearl

Floating like butterflies,

Dimly the dancers whirl

As the rose-light dies;

And their floating gowns, their hair

Upbound with curious pins,

Fade thro' the darkening air

With the dancing mandarins.

And then, as we went, the tall thin man

Explained the manners of Old Japan;

If you pitied a thing, you pretended to sneer;

Yet if you were glad you ran to buy

A captive pigeon and let it fly;

And, if you were sad, you took a spear

To wound yourself, for fear your pain

Should quietly grow less again.

And, again he said, if we wished to find

The mystic City that enshrined

The stone so few on earth had found,

We must be very brave; it lay

A hundred haunted leagues away,

Past many a griffon-guarded ground,

In depths of dark and curious art,

Where passion-flowers enfold apart

The Temple of the Flaming Heart,

The City of the Secret Wound.

About the fragrant fall of day

We saw beside the twisted way

A blue-domed tea-house, bossed with gold;

Hungry and thirsty we entered in,

How should we know what Creeping Sin

Had breathed in that Emperor's ear who sold

His own dumb soul for an evil jewel

To the earth-gods, blind and ugly and cruel?

We drank sweet tea as his tale was told,

In a garden of blue chrysanthemums,

While a drowsy swarming of gongs and drums

Out of the sunset dreamily rolled.

But, as the murmur nearer drew,

A fat black bonze, in a robe of blue,

Suddenly at the gate appeared;

And close behind, with that evil grin,

Was it Creeping Sin, was it Creeping Sin?

The bonze looked quietly down and sneered.

Our guide! Was he sleeping? We could not wake him.

However we tried to pinch and shake him!

Nearer, nearer the tumult came,

Till, as a glare of sound and flame,

Blind from a terrible furnace door

Blares, or the mouth of a dragon, blazed

The seething gateway: deaf and dazed

With the clanging and the wild uproar

We stood; while a thousand oval eyes

Gapped our fear with a sick surmise.

Then, as the dead sea parted asunder,

The clamour clove with a sound of thunder

In two great billows; and all was quiet.

Gaunt and black was the palankeen

That came in dreadful state between

The frozen waves of the wild-eyed riot

Curling back from the breathless track

Of the Nameless One who is never seen:

The close drawn curtains were thick and black;

But wizen and white was the tall thin man

As he rose in his sleep:

His eyes were closed, his lips were wan,

He crouched like a leopard that dares not leap.

The bearers halted: the tall thin man,

Fearfully dreaming, waved his fan,

With wizard fingers, to and fro;

While, with a whimper of evil glee,

The Nameless Emperor's mad Moonshee

Stepped in front of us: dark and slow

Were the words of the doom that he dared not name;

But, over the ground, as he spoke there came

Tiny circles of soft blue flame;

Like ghosts of flowers they began to glow,

And flow like a moonlit brook between

Our feet and the terrible palankeen.

But the Moonshee wrinkled his long thin eyes,

And sneered, "Have you stolen the strength of the skies?

Then pour before us a stream of pearl!

Give us the pearl and the gold we know,

And our hearts will be softened and let you go;

But these are toys for a foolish girl—

These vanishing blossoms—what are they worth?

They are not so heavy as dust and earth:

Pour before us a stream of pearl!"

Then, with a wild strange laugh, our guide

Stretched his arms to the West and cried

Once, and a song came over the sea;

And all the blossoms of moon-soft fire

Woke and breathed as a wind-swept lyre,

And the garden surged into harmony;

Till it seemed that the soul of the whole world sung,

And every petal became a tongue

To tell the thoughts of Eternity.

But the Moonshee lifted his painted brows

And stared at the gold on the blue tea-house:

"Can you clothe your body with dreams?" he sneered;

"If you taught us the truths that we always know

Our heart might be softened and let you go:

Can you tell us the length of a monkey's beard,

Or the weight of the gems on the Emperor's fan,

Or the number of parrots in Old Japan?"

And again, with a wild strange laugh, our guide

Looked at him; and he shrunk aside,

Shrivelling like a flame-touched leaf;

For the red-cross blossoms of soft blue fire

Were growing and fluttering higher and higher,

Shaking their petals out, sheaf by sheaf,

Till with disks like shields and stems like towers

Burned the host of the passion-flowers

... Had the Moonshee flown like a midnight thief?

... Yet a thing like a monkey, shrivelled and black,

Chattered and danced as they forced him back.

As the coward chatters for empty pride,

In the face of a foe that he cannot but fear,

It chattered and leapt from side to side,

And its voice rang strangely upon the ear.

As the cry of a wizard that dares not own

Another's brighter and mightier throne;

As the wrath of a fool that rails aloud

On the fire that burnt him; the brazen bray

Clamoured and sang o'er the gaping crowd,

And flapped like a gabbling goose away.

THE CRY OF THE MAD MOONSHEE

If the blossoms were beans,

I should know what it means—

This blaze, which I certainly cannot endure;

It is evil, too,

For its colour is blue,

And the sense of the matter is quite obscure.

Celestial truth

Is the food of youth;

But the music was dark as a moonless night.

The facts in the song

Were all of them wrong,

And there was not a single sum done right;

Tho' a metaphysician amongst the crowd,

In a voice that was notably deep and loud,

Repeated, as fast as he was able,

The whole of the multiplication table.

So the cry flapped off as a wild goose flies,

And the stars came out in the trembling skies,

And ever the mystic glory grew

In the garden of blue chrysanthemums,

Till there came a rumble of distant drums;

And the multitude suddenly turned and flew.

... A dead ape lay where their feet had been ...

And we called for the yellow palankeen,

And the flowers divided and let us through.

The black-barred moon was large and low

When we came to the Forest of Ancient Woe;

And over our heads the stars were bright.

But through the forest the path we travelled

Its phosphorescent aisle unravelled

In one thin ribbon of dwindling light:

And twice and thrice on the fainting track

We paused to listen. The moon grew black,

But the coolies' faces glimmered white,

As the wild woods echoed in dreadful chorus

A laugh that came horribly hopping o'er us

Like monstrous frogs thro' the murky night.

Then the tall thin man as we swung along

Sang us an old enchanted song

That lightened our hearts of their fearful load.

But, e'en as the moonlit air grew sweet,

We heard the pad of stealthy feet

Dogging us down the thin white road;

And the song grew weary again and harsh,

And the black trees dripped like the fringe of a marsh,

And a laugh crept out like a shadowy toad;

And we knew it was neither ghoul nor djinn:

It was Creeping Sin! It was Creeping Sin!

But we came to a bend, and the white moon glowed

Like a gate at the end of the narrowing road

Far away; and on either hand,

As guards of a path to the heart's desire,

The strange tall blossoms of soft blue fire

Stretched away thro' that unknown land,

League on league with their dwindling lane

Down to the large low moon; and again

There shimmered around us that mystical strain,

In a tongue that it seemed we could understand.

SONG

Hold by right and rule by fear

Till the slowly broadening sphere

Melting through the skies above

Merge into the sphere of love.

Hold by might until you find

Might is powerless o'er the mind:

Hold by Truth until you see,

Though they bow before the wind,

Its towers can mock at liberty.

Time, the seneschal, is blind;

Time is blind: and what are we?

Captives of Infinity,

Claiming through Truth's prison bars

Kinship with the wandering stars.

O, who could tell the wild weird sights

We saw in all the days and nights

We travelled through those forests old.

We saw the griffons on white cliffs,

Among fantastic hieroglyphs,

Guarding enormous heaps of gold:

We saw the Ghastroi—curious men

Who dwell, like tigers, in a den,

And howl whene'er the moon is cold;

They stripe themselves with red and black

And ride upon the yellow Yak.

Their dens are always ankle-deep

With twisted knives, and in their sleep

They often cut themselves; they say

That if you wish to live in peace

The surest way is not to cease

Collecting knives; and never a day

Can pass, unless they buy a few;

And as their enemies buy them too

They all avert the impending fray,

And starve their children and their wives

To buy the necessary knives.

*    *    *    *

The forest leapt with shadowy shapes

As we came to the great black Tower of Apes:

But we gave them purple figs and grapes

In alabaster amphoras:

We gave them curious kinds of fruit

With betel nuts and orris-root,

And then they let us pass:

And when we reached the Tower of Snakes

We gave them soft white honey-cakes,

And warm sweet milk in bowls of brass:

And on the hundredth eve we found

The City of the Secret Wound.

We saw the mystic blossoms blow

Round the City, far below;

Faintly in the sunset glow

We saw the soft blue glory flow

O'er many a golden garden gate:

And o'er the tiny dark green seas

Of tamarisks and tulip-trees,

Domes like golden oranges

Dream aloft elate.

And clearer, clearer as we went,

We heard from tower and battlement

A whisper, like a warning, sent

From watchers out of sight;

And clearer, brighter, as we drew

Close to the walls, we saw the blue

Flashing of plumes where peacocks flew

Thro' zones of pearly light.

On either side, a fat black bonze

Guarded the gates of red-wrought bronze,

Blazoned with blue sea-dragons

And mouths of yawning flame;

Down the road of dusty red,

Though their brown feet ached and bled,

Our coolies went with joyful tread:

Like living fans the gates outspread

And opened as we came.

PART III

THE MYSTIC RUBY

The white moon dawned; the sunset died;

And stars were trembling when we spied

The rose-red temple of our dreams:

Its lamp-lit gardens glimmered cool

With many an onyx-paven pool,

Amid soft sounds of flowing streams;

Where star-shine shimmered through the white

Tall fountain-shafts of crystal light

In ever changing rainbow-gleams.

Priests in flowing yellow robes

Glided under rosy globes

Through the green pomegranate boughs

Moonbeams poured their coloured rain;

Roofs of sea-green porcelain

Jutted o'er the rose-red house;

Bells were hung beneath its eaves;

Every wind that stirred the leaves

Tinkled as tired water does.

The temple had a low broad base

Of black bright marble; all its face

Was marble bright in rosy bloom;

And where two sea-green pillars rose

Deep in the flower-soft eave-shadows

We saw, thro' richly sparkling gloom,

Wrought in marvellous years of old

With bulls and peacocks bossed in gold,

The doors of powdered lacquer loom.

Quietly then the tall thin man,

Holding his turquoise-tinted fan,

Alighted from the palanquin;

We followed: never painter dreamed

Of how that dark rich temple gleamed

With gules of jewelled gloom within;

And as we wondered near the door

A priest came o'er the polished floor

In sandals of soft serpent-skin;

His mitre shimmered bright and blue

With pigeon's breast-plumes. When he knew

Our quest he stroked his broad white chin,

And looked at us with slanting eyes

And smiled; then through his deep disguise

We knew him! It was Creeping Sin!

But cunningly he bowed his head

Down on his gilded breast and said

Come: and he led us through the dusk

Of passages whose painted walls

Gleamed with dark old festivals;

Till where the gloom grew sweet with musk

And incense, through a door of amber

We came into a high-arched chamber.

There on a throne of jasper sat

A monstrous idol, black and fat;

Thick rose-oil dropped upon its head:

Drop by drop, heavy and sweet,

Trickled down to its ebon feet

Whereon the blood of goats was shed,

And smeared around its perfumed knees

In savage midnight mysteries.

It wore about its bulging waist

A belt of dark green bronze enchased

With big, soft, cloudy pearls; its wrists

Were clasped about with moony gems

Gathered from dead kings' diadems;

Its throat was ringed with amethysts,

And in its awful hand it held

A softly smouldering emerald.

Silkily murmured Creeping Sin,

"This is the stone you wished to win!"

"White Snake," replied the tall thin man,

"Show us the Ruby Stone, or I

Will slay thee with my hands." The sly

Long eyelids of the priest began

To slant aside; and then once more

He led us through the fragrant door.

And now along the passage walls

Were painted hideous animals,

With hooded eyes and cloven stings:

In the incense that like shadowy hair

Streamed over them they seemed to stir

Their craggy claws and crooked wings.

At last we saw strange moon-wreaths curl

Around a deep, soft porch of pearl.

O, what enchanter wove in dreams

That chapel wild with shadowy gleams

And prismy colours of the moon?

Shrined like a rainbow in a mist

Of flowers, the fretted amethyst

Arches rose to a mystic tune;

And never mortal art inlaid

Those cloudy floors of sea-soft jade.

There, in the midst, an idol rose

White as the silent starlit snows

On lonely Himalayan heights:

Over its head the spikenard spilled

Down to its feet, with myrrh distilled

In distant, odorous Indian nights:

It held before its ivory face

A flaming yellow chrysoprase.

O, silkily murmured Creeping Sin,

"This is the stone you wished to win."

But in his ear the tall thin man

Whispered with slow, strange lips—we knew

Not what, but Creeping Sin went blue

With fear; again his eyes began

To slant aside; then through the porch

He passed, and lit a tall, brown torch.

Down a corridor dark as death,

With beating hearts and bated breath

We hurried; far away we heard

A dreadful hissing, fierce as fire

When rain begins to quench a pyre;

And where the smoky torch-light flared

Strange vermin beat their bat-like wings,

And the wet walls dropped with slimy things.

And darker, darker, wound the way,

Beyond all gleams of night and day,

And still that hideous hissing grew

Louder and louder on our ears,

And tortured us with eyeless fears;

Then suddenly the gloom turned blue,

And, in the wall, a rough rock cave

Gaped, like a phosphorescent grave.

And from the purple mist within

There came a wild tumultuous din

Of snakes that reared their heads and hissed

As if a witch's cauldron boiled;

All round the door great serpents coiled,

With eyes of glowing amethyst,

Whose fierce blue flames began to slide

Like shooting stars from side to side.

Ah! with a sickly gasping grin

And quivering eyelids, Creeping Sin

Stole to the cave; but, suddenly,

As through its glimmering mouth he passed,

The serpents flashed and gripped him fast:

He wriggled and gave one awful cry,

Then all at once the cave was cleared;

The snakes with their victim had disappeared.

And fearlessly the tall thin man

Opened his turquoise-tinted fan

And entered; and the mists grew bright,

And we saw that the cave was a diamond hall

Lit with lamps for a festival.

A myriad globes of coloured light

Went gliding deep in its massy sides,

Like the shimmering moons in the glassy tides

Where a sea-king's palace enchants the night.

Gliding and flowing, a glory and wonder,

Through each other, and over, and under,

The lucent orbs of green and gold,

Bright with sorrow or soft with sleep,

In music through the glimmering deep,

Over their secret axles rolled,

And circled by the murmuring spheres

We saw in a frame of frozen tears

A mirror that made the blood run cold.

For, when we came to it, we found

It imaged everything around

Except the face that gazed in it;

And where the mirrored face should be

A heart-shaped Ruby fierily

Smouldered; and round the frame was writ,

Mystery: Time and Tide shall pass,

I am the Wisdom Looking-Glass.

This is the Ruby none can touch:

Many have loved it overmuch;

Its fathomless fires flutter and sigh,

Being as images of the flame

That shall make earth and heaven the same

When the fire of the end reddens the sky,

And the world consumes like a burning pall,

Till where there is nothing, there is all.

So we looked up at the tall thin man

And we saw that his face grew sad and wan:

Tears were glistening in his eyes:

At last, with a breaking sob, he bent

His head upon his breast and went

Swiftly away! With dreadful cries

We rushed to the softly glimmering door

And stared at the hideous corridor.

But his robe was gone as a dream that flies:

Back to the glass in terror we came,

And stared at the writing round the frame.

We could not understand one word:

And suddenly we thought we heard

The hissing of the snakes again:

How could we front them all alone?

O, madly we clutched at the mirrored stone

And wished we were back on the flowery plain:

And swifter than thought and swift as fear

The whole world flashed, and behold we were there.

Yes; there was the port of Old Japan,

With its twisted patterns, white and wan,

Shining like a mottled fan

Spread by the blue sea, faint and far;

And far away we heard once more

A sound of singing on the shore,

Where boys in blue kimonos bore

Roses in a golden jar:

And we heard, where the cherry orchards blow,

The serpent-charmers fluting low,

And the song of the maidens of Miyako.

And at our feet unbroken lay

The glass that had whirled us thither away:

And in the grass, among the flowers

We sat and wished all sorts of things:

O, we were wealthier than kings!

We ruled the world for several hours!

And then, it seemed, we knew not why,

All the daisies began to die.

We wished them alive again; but soon

The trees all fled up towards the moon

Like peacocks through the sunlit air:

And the butterflies flapped into silver fish;

And each wish spoiled another wish;

Till we threw the glass down in despair;

For, getting whatever you want to get,

Is like drinking tea from a fishing net.

At last we thought we'd wish once more

That all should be as it was before;

And then we'd shatter the glass, if we could;

But just as the world grew right again,

We heard a wanderer out on the plain

Singing what none of us understood;

Yet we thought that the world grew thrice more sweet

And the meadows were blossoming under his feet.

And we felt a grand and beautiful fear,

For we knew that a marvellous thought drew near;

So we kept the glass for a little while:

And the skies grew deeper and twice as bright,

And the seas grew soft as a flower of light,

And the meadows rippled from stile to stile;

And memories danced in a musical throng

Thro' the blossom that scented the wonderful song.

SONG

We sailed across the silver seas

And saw the sea-blue bowers,

We saw the purple cherry trees,

And all the foreign flowers,

We travelled in a palanquin

Beyond the caravan,

And yet our hearts had never seen

The Flower of Old Japan.

The Flower above all other flowers,

The Flower that never dies;

Before whose throne the scented hours

Offer their sacrifice;

The Flower that here on earth below

Reveals the heavenly plan;

But only little children know

The Flower of Old Japan.

There, in the dim blue flowery plain

We wished with the magic glass again

To go to the Flower of the song's desire:

And o'er us the whole of the soft blue sky

Flashed like fire as the world went by,

And far beneath us the sea like fire

Flashed in one swift blue brilliant stream,

And the journey was done, like a change in a dream.

PART IV

THE END OF THE QUEST

Like the dawn upon a dream

Slowly through the scented gloom

Crept once more the ruddy gleam

O'er the friendly nursery room.

There, before our waking eyes,

Large and ghostly, white and dim,

Dreamed the Flower that never dies,

Opening wide its rosy rim.

Spreading like a ghostly fan,

Petals white as porcelain,

There the Flower of Old Japan

Told us we were home again;

For a soft and curious light

Suddenly was o'er it shed.

And we saw it was a white

English daisy, ringed with red.

Slowly, as a wavering mist

Waned the wonder out of sight,

To a sigh of amethyst,

To a wraith of scented light.

Flower and magic glass had gone;

Near the clutching fire we sat

Dreaming, dreaming, all alone,

Each upon a furry mat.

While the firelight, red and clear,

Fluttered in the black wet pane,

It was very good to hear

Howling winds and trotting rain.

For we found at last we knew

More than all our fancy planned,

All the fairy tales were true,

And home the heart of fairyland.

EPILOGUE

Carol, every violet has

Heaven for a looking-glass!

Every little valley lies

Under many-clouded skies;

Every little cottage stands

Girt about with boundless lands.

Every little glimmering pond

Claims the mighty shores beyond—

Shores no seamen ever hailed,

Seas no ship has ever sailed.

All the shores when day is done

Fade into the setting sun,

So the story tries to teach

More than can be told in speech.

Beauty is a fading flower,

Truth is but a wizard's tower,

Where a solemn death-bell tolls,

And a forest round it rolls.

We have come by curious ways

To the Light that holds the days;

We have sought in haunts of fear

For that all-enfolding sphere:

And lo! it was not far, but near.

We have found, O foolish-fond,

The shore that has no shore beyond.

Deep in every heart it lies

With its untranscended skies;

For what heaven should bend above

Hearts that own the heaven of love?

Carol, Carol, we have come

Back to heaven, back to home.

APES AND IVORY

Apes and ivory, skulls and roses, in junks of old Hong-Kong,

Gliding over a sea of dreams to a haunted shore of song,

Masts of gold and sails of satin, shimmering out of the East,

O, Love has little need of you now to make his heart a feast.

Or is it an elephant, white as milk and bearing a severed head

That tatters his broad soft wrinkled flank in tawdry patches of red,

With a negro giant to walk beside and a temple dome above,

Where ruby and emerald shatter the sun,—is it these that should please my love?

Or is it a palace of pomegranates, where ivory-limbed young slaves

Lure a luxury out of the noon in the swooning fountain's waves;

Or couch like cats and sun themselves on the warm white marble brink?

O, Love has little to ask of these, this day in May, I think.

Is it Lebanon cedars or purple fruits of the honeyed southron air,

Spikenard, saffron, roses of Sharon, cinnamon, calamus, myrrh,

A bed of spices, a fountain of waters, or the wild white wings of a dove,

Now, when the winter is over and gone, is it these that should please my love?

The leaves outburst on the hazel-bough and the hawthorn's heaped wi' flower,

And God has bidden the crisp clouds build my love a lordlier tower,

Taller than Lebanon, whiter than snow, in the fresh blue skies above;

And the wild rose wakes in the winding lanes of the radiant land I love.

Apes and ivory, skulls and roses, in junks of old Hong-Kong,

Gliding over a sea of dreams to a haunted shore of song,

Masts of gold and sails of satin, shimmering out of the East,

O, Love has little need of you now to make his heart a feast.

A SONG OF SHERWOOD

Sherwood in the twilight, is Robin Hood awake?

Grey and ghostly shadows are gliding through the brake,

Shadows of the dappled deer, dreaming of the morn,

Dreaming of a shadowy man that winds a shadowy horn.

Robin Hood is here again: all his merry thieves

Hear a ghostly bugle-note shivering through the leaves,

Calling as he used to call, faint and far away,

In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

Merry, merry England has kissed the lips of June:

All the wings of fairyland were here beneath the moon,

Like a flight of rose-leaves fluttering in a mist

Of opal and ruby and pearl and amethyst.

Merry, merry England is waking as of old,

With eyes of blither hazel and hair of brighter gold:

For Robin Hood is here again beneath the bursting spray

In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

Love is in the greenwood building him a house

Of wild rose and hawthorn and honeysuckle boughs:

Love is in the greenwood, dawn is in the skies,

And Marian is waiting with a glory in her eyes.

Hark! The dazzled laverock climbs the golden steep!

Marian is waiting: is Robin Hood asleep?

Round the fairy grass-rings frolic elf and fay,

In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

Oberon, Oberon, rake away the gold,

Rake away the red leaves, roll away the mould,

Rake away the gold leaves, roll away the red,

And wake Will Scarlett from his leafy forest bed.

Friar Tuck and Little John are riding down together

With quarter-staff and drinking-can and grey goose-feather.

The dead are coming back again, the years are rolled away

In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

Softly over Sherwood the south wind blows.

All the heart of England hid in every rose

Hears across the greenwood the sunny whisper leap,

Sherwood in the red dawn, is Robin Hood asleep?

Hark, the voice of England wakes him as of old

And, shattering the silence with a cry of brighter gold

Bugles in the greenwood echo from the steep,

Sherwood in the red dawn, is Robin Hood asleep?

Where the deer are gliding down the shadowy glen

All across the glades of fern he calls his merry men—

Doublets of the Lincoln green glancing through the May

In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day—

Calls them and they answer: from aisles of oak and ash

Rings the Follow! Follow! and the boughs begin to crash,

The ferns begin to flutter and the flowers begin to fly,

And through the crimson dawning the robber band goes by.

Robin! Robin! Robin! All his merry thieves

Answer as the bugle-note shivers through the leaves,

Calling as he used to call, faint and far away,

In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

THE WORLD'S MAY-QUEEN

I

Whither away is the Spring to-day?

To England, to England!

In France they heard the South wind say,

"She's off on a quest for a Queen o' the May,

So she's over the hills far away,

To England!"

And why did she fly with her golden feet

To England, to England?

In Italy, too, they heard the sweet

Roses whisper and flutter and beat—

"She's an old and a true, true love to greet

In England!"

A moon ago there came a cry

From England, from England,

Faintly, fondly it faltered nigh

The throne of the Spring in the Southern sky,

And it whispered "Come," and the world went by,

And with one long loving blissful sigh

The Spring was away to England!

II

When Spring comes back to England

And crowns her brows with May,

Round the merry moonlit world

She goes the greenwood way:

She throws a rose to Italy,

A fleur-de-lys to France;

But round her regal morris-ring

The seas of England dance.

When Spring comes back to England

And dons her robe of green,

There's many a nation garlanded

But England is the Queen;

She's Queen, she's Queen of all the world

Beneath the laughing sky,

For the nations go a-Maying

When they hear the New Year cry—

"Come over the water to England,

My old love, my new love,

Come over the water to England,

In showers of flowery rain;

Come over the water to England,

April, my true love;

And tell the heart of England

The Spring is here again!"

III

So it's here, she is here with her eyes of blue

In England, In England!

She has brought us the rainbows with her, too,

And a glory of shimmering glimmering dew

And a heaven of quivering scent and hue

And a lily for me and a rose for you

In England.

There's many a wanderer far away

From England, from England,

Will toss upon his couch and say—

Though Spain is proud and France is gay,

And there's many a foot on the primrose way,

The world has never a Queen o' the May

But England.

IV

When Drake went out to seek for gold

Across the uncharted sea,

And saw the Western skies unfold

Their veils of mystery;

To lure him through the fevered hours

As nigh to death he lay,

There floated o'er the foreign flowers

A breath of English May:

And back to Devon shores again

His dreaming spirit flew

Over the splendid Spanish Main

To haunts his childhood knew,

Whispering "God forgive the blind

Desire that bade me roam,

I've sailed around the world to find

The sweetest way to home."

V

And it's whither away is the Spring to-day?

To England, to England!

In France you'll hear the South wind say,

"She off on a quest for a Queen o' the May,

So she's over the hills and far away,

To England!"

She's flown with the swallows across the sea

To England, to England!

For there's many a land of the brave and free

But never a home o' the hawthorn-tree,

And never a Queen o' the May for me

But England!

And round the fairy revels whirl

In England, in England!

And the buds outbreak and the leaves unfurl,

And where the crisp white cloudlets curl

The Dawn comes up like a primrose girl

With a crowd of flowers in a basket of pearl

For England!

PIRATES

Come to me, you with the laughing face, in the night as I lie

Dreaming of days that are dead and of joys gone by;

Come to me, comrade, come through the slow-dropping rain,

Come from your grave in the darkness and let us be pirates again.

Let us be boys together to-night, and pretend as of old

We are pirates at rest in a cave among huge heaps of gold,

Red Spanish doubloons and great pieces of eight, and muskets and swords,

And a smoky red camp-fire to glint, you know how, on our ill-gotten hoards.

The old cave in the fir-wood that slopes down the hills to the sea

Still is haunted, perhaps, by young pirates as wicked as we:

Though the fir with the magpie's big mud-plastered nest used to hide it so well,

And the boys in the gang had to swear that they never would tell.

Ah, that tree; I have sat in its boughs and looked seaward for hours.

I remember the creak of its branches, the scent of the flowers

That climbed round the mouth of the cave. It is odd I recall

Those little things best, that I scarcely took heed of at all.

I remember how brightly the brass on the butt of my spy-glass gleamed

As I climbed through the purple heather and thyme to our eyrie and dreamed;

I remember the smooth glossy sun-burn that darkened our faces and hands

As we gazed at the merchantmen sailing away to those wonderful lands.

I remember the long, slow sigh of the sea as we raced in the sun,

To dry ourselves after our swimming; and how we would run

With a cry and a crash through the foam as it creamed on the shore,

Then back to bask in the warm dry gold of the sand once more.

Come to me, you with the laughing face, in the gloom as I lie

Dreaming of days that are dead and of joys gone by;

Let us be boys together to-night and pretend as of old

We are pirates at rest in a cave among great heaps of gold.

Come; you shall be chief. We'll not quarrel, the time flies so fast.

There are ships to be grappled, there's blood to be shed, ere our playtime be past.

No; perhaps we will quarrel, just once, or it scarcely will seem

So like the old days that have flown from us both like a dream.

Still; you shall be chief in the end; and then we'll go home

To the hearth and the tea and the books that we loved: ah, but come,

Come to me, come through the night and the slow-dropping rain;

Come, old friend, come thro' the darkness and let us be playmates again.

A SONG OF ENGLAND

There is a song of England that none shall ever sing;

So sweet it is and fleet it is

That none whose words are not as fleet as birds upon the wing,

And regal as her mountains,

And radiant as the fountains

Of rainbow-coloured sea-spray that every wave can fling

Against the cliffs of England, the sturdy cliffs of England,

Could more than seem to dream of it,

Or catch one flying gleam of it,

Above the seas of England that never cease to sing.

There is a song of England that only lovers know;

So rare it is and fair it is,

O, like a fairy rose it is upon a drift of snow,

So cold and sweet and sunny,

So full of hidden honey,

So like a flight of butterflies where rose and lily blow

Along the lanes of England, the leafy lanes of England;

When flowers are at their vespers

And full of little whispers,

The boys and girls of England shall sing it as they go.

There is a song of England that only love may sing,

So sure it is and pure it is;

And seaward with the sea-mew it spreads a whiter wing,

And with the sky-lark hovers

Above the tryst of lovers,

Above the kiss and whisper that led the lovely Spring

Through all the glades of England, the ferny glades of England,

Until the way enwound her

With sprays of May, and crowned her

With stars of frosty blossom in a merry morris-ring.

There is a song of England that haunts her hours of rest:

The calm of it and balm of it

Are breathed from every hedgerow that blushes to the West

From the cottage doors that nightly

Cast their welcome out so brightly

On the lanes where laughing children are lifted and caressed

By the tenderest hands in England, hard and blistered hands of England:

And from the restful sighing

Of the sleepers that are lying

With the arms of God around them on the night's contented breast.

There is a song of England that wanders on the wind;

So sad it is and glad it is

That men who hear it madden and their eyes are wet and blind,

For the lowlands and the highlands

Of the unforgotten islands,

For the Islands of the Blesséd and the rest they cannot find

As they grope in dreams to England and the love they left in England;

Little feet that danced to meet them

And the lips that used to greet them,

And the watcher at the window in the home they left behind.

There is a song of England that thrills the beating blood

With burning cries and yearning

Tides of hidden aspiration hardly known or understood;

Aspirations of the creature

Tow'rds the unity of Nature;

Sudden chivalries revealing whence the longing is renewed

In the men that live for England, live and love and die for England:

By the light of their desire

They shall blindly blunder higher,

To a wider, grander Kingdom and a deeper, nobler Good.

There is a song of England that only heaven can hear;

So gloriously victorious,

It soars above the choral stars that sing the Golden Year;

Till even the cloudy shadows

That wander o'er her meadows

In silent purple harmonies declare His glory there,

Along the hills of England, the billowy hills of England;

While heaven rolls and ranges

Through all the myriad changes

That mirror God in music to the mortal eye and ear.

There is a song of England that none shall ever sing;

So sweet it is and fleet it is

That none whose words are not as fleet as birds upon the wing,

And regal as her mountains,

And radiant as her fountains

Of rainbow-coloured sea-spray that every wave can fling

Against the cliffs of England, the sturdy cliffs of England,

Could more than seem to dream of it,

Or catch one flying gleam of it,

Above the seas of England that never cease to sing.

THE OLD SCEPTIC

I am weary of disbelieving: why should I wound my love

To pleasure a sophist's pride in a graven image of truth?

I will go back to my home, with the clouds and the stars above,

And the heaven I used to know, and the God of my buried youth.

I will go back to the home where of old in my boyish pride

I pierced my father's heart with a murmur of unbelief.

He only looked in my face as I spoke, but his mute eyes cried

Night after night in my dreams; and he died in grief, in grief.

Books? I have read the books, the books that we write ourselves,

Extolling our love of an abstract truth and our pride of debate:

I will go back to the love of the cotter who sings as he delves,

To that childish infinite love and the God above fact and date.

To that ignorant infinite God who colours the meaningless flowers,

To that lawless infinite Poet who crowns the law with the crime;

To the Weaver who covers the world with a garment of wonderful hours,

And holds in His hand like threads the tales and the truths of time.

Is the faith of the cotter so simple and narrow as this? Ah, well,

It is hardly so narrow as yours who daub and plaster with dyes

The shining mirrors of heaven, the shadowy mirrors of hell,

And blot out the dark deep vision, if it seem to be framed with lies.

No faith I hurl against you, no fact to freeze your sneers.

Only the doubt you taught me to weld in the fires of youth

Leaps to my hand like the flaming sword of nineteen hundred years,

The sword of the high God's answer, O Pilate, what is truth?

Your laughter has killed more hearts than ever were pierced with swords,

Ever you daub new mirrors and turn the old to the wall;

And more than blood is lost in the weary battle of words;

For creeds are many; but God is One, and contains them all.

Ah, why should we strive or cry? Surely the end is close!

Hold by your little truths: deem your triumph complete!

But nothing is true or false in the infinite heart of the rose;

And the earth is a little dust that clings to our travelling feet.

I will go back to my home and look at the wayside flowers,

And hear from the wayside cabins the kind old hymns again,

Where Christ holds out His arms in the quiet evening hours,

And the light of the chapel porches broods on the peaceful lane.

And there I shall hear men praying the deep old foolish prayers,

And there I shall see, once more, the fond old faith confessed,

And the strange old light on their faces who hear as a blind man hears,—

Come unto Me, ye weary, and I will give you rest.

I will go back and believe in the deep old foolish tales,

And pray the simple prayers that I learned at my mother's knee,

Where the Sabbath tolls its peace thro' the breathless mountain-vales,

And the sunset's evening hymn hallows the listening sea.

THE DEATH OF CHOPIN

Sing to me! Ah, remember how

Poor Heine here in Paris leant

Watching me play at the fall of day

And following where the music went,

Till that old cloud upon his brow

Was almost smoothed away.

"Do roses in the moonlight flame

Like this and this?" he said and smiled;

Then bent his head as o'er his dead

Brother might breathe some little child

The accustomed old half-jesting name,

With all its mockery fled,

Like summer lightnings, far away,

In heaven. O, what Bohemian nights

We passed down there for that brief year

When art revealed her last delights;

And then, that night, that night in May

When Hugo came to hear!

"Do roses in the moonlight glow

Like this and this?" I could not see

His eyes, and yet—they were quite wet,

Blinded, I think! What should I be

If in that hour I did not know

My own diviner debt?

For God has made this world of ours

Out of His own exceeding pain,

As here in art man's bleeding heart

Slow drop by drop completes the strain;

And dreams of death make sweet the flowers

Where lovers meet to part.

Recall, recall my little room

Where all the masters came that night,

Came just to hear me, Meyerbeer,

Lamartine, Balzac; and no light

But my two candles in the gloom;

Though she, she too was there,

George Sand. This music once unlocked

My heart, she took the gold she prized:

Her novel gleams no richer: dreams

Like mine are best unanalysed:

And she forgets her poor bemocked

Prince Karol, now, it seems.

I was Prince Karol; yes, and Liszt

Count Salvator Albani: she

My Floriani—all so far

Away!—My dreams are like the sea

That round Majorca sighed and kissed

Each softly mirrored star.

O, what a golden round of hours

Our island villa knew: we two

Alone with sky and sea, the sigh

Of waves, the warm unfathomed blue;

With what a chain of nights like flowers

We bound Love, she and I.

What music, what harmonious

Glad triumphs of the world's desire

Where passion yearns to God and burns

Earth's dross out with its own pure fire,

Or tolls like some deep angelus

Through Death's divine nocturnes.

"Do roses in the moonlight glow

Like this and this?" What did she think

Of him whose hands at Love's command

Made Life as honey o'er the brink

Of Death drip slow, darkling and slow?

Ah, did she understand?

She studied every sob she heard,

She watched each dying hope she found;

And yet she understood not one

Poor sorrow there that like a wound

Gaped, bleeding, pleading—for one word—

No? And the dream was done.

For her—I am "wrapped in incense gloom,

In drifting clouds and golden light;"

Once I was shod with fire and trod

Beethoven's path through storm and night:

It is too late now to resume

My monologue with God.

Well, my lost love, you were so kind

In those old days: ah, yes; you came

When I was ill! In dreams you still

Will come? (Do roses always flame

By moonlight, thus?) I, too, grow blind

With wondering if she will.

Yet, Floriani, what am I

To you, though love was life to me?

My life consumed like some perfumed

Pale altar-flame beside the sea:

You stood and smiled and watched it die!

You, you whom it illumed,

Could you not feed it with your love?

Am I not starving here and now?

Sing, sing! I'd miss no smile or kiss—

No roses in Majorca glow

Like this and this—so death may prove

Best—ah, how sweet life is!

SONG

(AFTER THE FRENCH OF ROSTAND)

O, many a lover sighs

Beneath the summer skies

For black or hazel eyes

All day.

No light of hope can mar

My whiter brighter star;

I love a Princess far

Away.

Now you that haste to meet

Your love's returning feet

Must plead for every sweet

Caress;

But, day and night and day,

Without a prayer to pray,

I love my far away

Princess.

BUTTERFLIES

Sun-child, as you watched the rain

Beat the pane,

Saw the garden of your dreams

Where the clove carnation grows

And the rose

Veiled with shimmering shades and gleams,

Mirrored colours, mystic gleams,

Fairy dreams,

Drifting in your radiant eyes

Half in earnest asked, that day,

Half in play,

Where were all the butterflies?

Where were all the butterflies

When the skies

Clouded and their bowers of clover

Bowed beneath the golden shower?

Every flower

Shook and the rose was brimming over.

Ah, the dog-rose trembling over

Thyme and clover,

How it glitters in the sun,

Now the hare-bells lift again

Bright with rain

After all the showers are done!

See, when all the showers are done,

How the sun

Softly smiling o'er the scene

Bids the white wings come and go

To and fro

Through the maze of gold and green.

Magic webs of gold and green

Rainbow sheen

Mesh the maze of flower and fern,

Cuckoo-grass and meadow-sweet,

And the wheat

Where the crimson poppies burn.

Ay; and where the poppies burn,

They return

All across the dreamy downs,

Little wings that flutter and beat

O'er the sweet

Bluffs the purple clover crowns.

Where the fairy clover crowns

Dreamy downs,

And amidst the golden grass

Buttercups and daisies blow

To and fro

When the shadowy billows pass;

Time has watched them pause and pass

Where Love was;

Ah, what fairy butterflies,

Little wild incarnate blisses,

Coloured kisses,

Floating under azure skies!

Under those eternal skies

See, they rise:

Mottled wings of moony sheen,

Wings in whitest star-shine dipped,

Orange tipped,

Eyed with black and veined with green.

They were fairies plumed with green

Rainbow-sheen

Ere Time bade their host begone

From that palace built of roses

Which still dozes

In the greenwood all alone.

In the greenwood all alone

And unknown:

Now they roam these mortal dells

Wondering where that happy glade is,

Painted Ladies,

Admirals, and Tortoise-shells,

O, Fritillaries, Admirals,

Tortoise-shells;

You, like fragments of the skies

Fringed with Autumn's richest hues,

Dainty blues

Patterned with mosaic dyes;

Oh, and you whose peacock dyes

Gleam with eyes;

You, whose wings of burnished copper

Burn upon the sunburnt brae

Where all day

Whirrs the hot and grey grasshopper;

While the grey grasshopper whirrs

In the furze,

You that with your sulphur wings

Melt into the gold perfume

Of the broom

Where the linnet sits and sings;

You that, as a poet sings,

On your wings

Image forth the dreams of earth,

Quickening them in form and hue

To the new

Glory of a brighter birth;

You that bring to a brighter birth

Dust and earth,

Rapt to glory on your wings,

All transfigured in the white

Living light

Shed from out the soul of things;

Heralds of the soul of things,

You whose wings

Carry heaven through every glade;

Thus transfigured from the petals

Death unsettles,

Little souls of leaf and blade;

You that mimic bud and blade,

Light and shade;

Tinted souls of leaf and stone,

Flower and sunny bank of sand,

Fairyland

Calls her children to their own;

Calls them back into their own

Great unknown;

Where the harmonies they cull

On their wings are made complete

As they beat

Through the Gate called Beautiful.

SONG OF THE WOODEN-LEGGED FIDDLER

(PORTSMOUTH 1805)

I lived in a cottage adown in the West

When I was a boy, a boy;

But I knew no peace and I took no rest

Though the roses nigh smothered my snug little nest;

For the smell of the sea

Was much rarer to me,

And the life of a sailor was all my joy.

CHORUS.—The life of a sailor was all my joy!

My mother she wept, and she begged me to stay

Anchored for life to her apron-string,

And soon she would want me to help with the hay;

So I bided her time, then I flitted away

On a night of delight in the following spring,

With a pair of stout shoon

And a seafaring tune

And a bundle and stick in the light of the moon,

Down the long road

To Portsmouth I strode,

To fight like a sailor for country and king.

CHORUS.—To fight like a sailor for country and king.

And now that my feet are turned homeward again

My heart is still crying Ahoy! Ahoy!

And my thoughts are still out on the Spanish main

A-chasing the frigates of France and Spain,

For at heart an old sailor is always a boy;

And his nose will still itch

For the powder and pitch

Till the days when he can't tell t'other from which,

Nor a grin o' the guns from a glint o' the sea,

Nor a skipper like Nelson from lubbers like me.

CHORUS.—Nor a skipper like Nelson from lubbers like me.

Ay! Now that I'm old I'm as bold as the best,

And the life of a sailor is all my joy;

Though I've swapped my leg

For a wooden peg

And my head is as bald as a new-laid egg,

The smell of the sea

Is like victuals to me,

And I think in the grave I'll be crying Ahoy!

For, though my old carcass is ready to rest,

At heart an old sailor is always a boy.

CHORUS.—At heart an old sailor is always a boy.

THE FISHER-GIRL

Where the old grey churchyard slopes to the sea,

On the sunny side of a mossed headstone;

Watching the wild white butterflies pass

Through the fairy forests of grass,

Two little children with brown legs bare

Were merrily, merrily

Weaving a wonderful daisy-chain,

And chanting the rhyme that was graven there

Over and over and over again;

While the warm wind came and played with their hair

And laughed and was gone

Out, far out to the foam-flowered lea

Like an ocean-wandering memory.

Eighteen hundred and forty-three,

Dan Trevennick was lost at sea;

And, buried here at her husband's side

Lies the body of Joan, his bride,

Who, a little while after she lost him, died.

This was the rhyme that was graven there,

And the children chanted it quietly;

As the warm wind came and played with their hair,

And rustled the golden grasses against the stone,

And laughed and was gone

To waken the wild white flowers of the sea,

And sing a song of the days that were,

A song of memory, gay and blind

As the sun on the graves that it left behind;

For this, ah this, was the song of the wind.

I

She sat on the tarred old jetty, with a sailor's careless ease,

And the clear waves danced around her feet and kissed her tawny knees;

Her head was bare, and her thick black hair was coiled behind a throat

Chiselled as hard and bright and bold as the bow of a sailing boat.

II

Her eyes were blue, and her jersey was blue as the lapping, slapping seas,

And the rose in her cheek was painted red by the brisk Atlantic breeze;

And she sat and waited her father's craft, while Dan Trevennick's eyes

Were sheepishly watching her sunlit smiles and her soft contented sighs.

III

For he thought he would give up his good black pipe and his evening glasses of beer,

And blunder to chapel on Sundays again for a holy Christian year,

To hold that foot in his hard rough hand and kiss the least of its toes:

Then he swore at himself for a great damned fool; which he probably was, God knows.

IV

Often in summer twilights, too, he would sit on a coil of rope,

As the stars came out in their twinkling crowds to play with wonder and hope,

While he watched the side of her clear-cut face as she sat on the jetty and fished,

And even to help her coil her line was more than he hoped or wished.

V

But once or twice o'er the dark green tide he saw with a solemn delight,

Hooked and splashing after her line, a flash and a streak of white;

As hand over hand she hauled it up, a great black conger eel,

For Dan Trevennick to kill as it squirmed with its head beneath his heel.

VI

And at last, with a crash and a sunset cry from the low soft evening star,

A shadowy schooner suddenly loomed o'er the dark green oily bar;

With fairy-like spars and misty masts in the golden dusk of gloaming,

Where the last white seamew's wide-spread wings were wistfully westward roaming;

VII

Then the song of the foreign seamen rose in the magical evening air,

Faint and far away, as it seemed, but they knew it was, ah, so near;

Far away as her heart from Dan's as he sheepishly drew to her side,

And near as her heart when he kissed the lips of his newly promised bride.

VIII

And when they were riding away in the train on the night of their honeymoon,

What a whisper tingled against her cheek as it blushed like a rose in June;

For she said, "I am tired and ready for bed," and Dan said, "So am I;"

And she murmured, "Are you tired, too, poor Dan?" and he answered her, "No, dear, why?"

IX

It was never a problem-play, at least, and the end of it all is this;

They were drowned in the bliss of their ignorance and buried the rest in a kiss;

And they loved one another their whole life long, as lovers will often do;

For it never was only the fairy-tales that rang so royally true.

X

The rose in her cheek was painted red by the brisk Atlantic breeze;

Her eyes were blue, and her jersey was blue as the lapping, slapping seas;

Her head was bare, and her thick black hair was coiled behind a throat

Chiselled as hard and bright and bold as the bow of a sailing boat.

XI

Eighteen hundred and forty-three,

Dan Trevennick was lost at sea;

And, buried here at her husband's side

Lies the body of Joan, his bride,

Who, a little while after she lost him, died.

A SONG OF TWO BURDENS

The round brown sails were reefed and struggling home

Over the glitter and gloom of the angry deep:

Dark in the cottage she sang, "Soon, soon, he will come,

Dreamikin, Drowsy-head, sleep, my little one, sleep."

Over the glitter and gloom of the angry deep

Was it only a dream or a shadow that vanished away?

"Lullaby, little one, sleep, my little one, sleep."

She sang in a dream as the shadows covered the day.

Was it only a sail or a shadow that vanished away?

The boats come home: there is one that will never return;

But she sang in a dream as the shadows buried the day;

And she set the supper and begged the fire to burn.

The boats come home; but one will never return;

And a strangled cry went up from the struggling sea.

She sank on her knees and begged the fire to burn,

"Burn, oh burn, for my love is coming to me!"

A strangled cry went up from the struggling sea,

A cry where the ghastly surf to the moon-dawn rolled;

"Burn, oh burn; for my love is coming to me,

His hands will be scarred with the ropes and starved with the cold."

A strangled cry where the foam in the moonlight rolled,

A bitter cry from the heart of the ghastly sea;

"His hands will be frozen, the night is dark and cold,

Burn, oh burn, for my love is coming to me."

One cry to God from the soul of the shuddering sea,

One moment of stifling lips and struggling hands;

"Burn, oh burn; for my love is coming to me;

And oh, I think the little one understands."

One moment of stifling lips and struggling hands,

Then only the glitter and gloom of the angry deep;

"And oh, I think the little one understands;

Dreamikin, Drowsy-head, sleep, my little one, sleep."

EARTH-BOUND

Ghosts? Love would fain believe,

Earth being so fair, the dead might wish to return!

Is it so strange if, even in heaven, they yearn

For the May-time and the dreams it used to give?

Through dark abysms of Space,

From strange new spheres where Death has called them now

May they not, with a crown on every brow,

Still cry to the loved earth's lost familiar face?

We two, love, we should come

Seeking a little refuge from the light

Of the blinding terrible star-sown Infinite,

Seeking some sheltering roof, some four-walled home,

From that too high, too wide

Communion with the universe and God,

How glad to creep back to some lane we trod

Hemmed in with a hawthorn hedge on either side.

Fresh from death's boundless birth,

How fond the circled vision of the sea

Would seem to souls tired of Infinity,

How kind the soft blue boundaries of earth,

How rich the nodding spray

Of pale green leaves that made the sapphire deep

A background to the dreams of that brief sleep

We called our life when heaven was far away.

How strange would be the sight

Of the little towns and twisted streets again,

Where all the hurrying works and ways of men

Would seem a children's game for our delight.

What boundless heaven could give

This joy in the strait austere restraints of earth,

Whereof the dead have felt the immortal dearth

Who look upon God's face and cannot live?

Our ghosts would clutch at flowers

As drowning men at straws, for fear the sea

Should sweep them back to God's Eternity,

Still clinging to the day that once was ours.

No more with fevered brain

Plunging across the gulfs of Space and Time

Would we revisit this our earthly clime

We two, if we could ever come again;

Not as we came of old,

But reverencing the flesh we now despise

And gazing out with consecrated eyes,

Each of us glad of the other's hand to hold.

So we should wander nigh

Our mortal home, and see its little roof

Keeping the deep eternal night aloof

And yielding us a refuge from the sky.

We should steal in, once more,

Under the cloudy lilac at the gate,

Up the walled garden, then with hearts elate

Forget the stars and close our cottage door.

Oh then, as children use

To make themselves a little hiding-place,

We would rejoice in narrowness of space,

And God should give us nothing more to lose.

How good it all would seem

To souls that from the æonian ebb and flow

Came down to hear once more the to and fro

Swing o' the clock dictate its hourly theme.

How dear the strange recall

From vast antiphonies of joy and pain

Beyond the grave, to these old books again,

That cosy lamp, those pictures on the wall.

Home! Home! The old desire!

We would shut out the innumerable skies,

Draw close the curtains, then with patient eyes

Bend o'er the hearth; laugh at our memories,

Or watch them crumbling in the crimson fire.

ART, THE HERALD

"The voice of one crying in the wilderness"

I

Beyond; beyond; and yet again beyond!

What went ye out to seek, oh foolish-fond?

Is not the heart of all things here and now?

Is not the circle infinite, and the centre

Everywhere, if ye would but hear and enter?

Come; the porch bends and the great pillars bow.

II

Come; come and see the secret of the sun;

The sorrow that holds the warring worlds in one;

The pain that holds Eternity in an hour;

One God in every seed self-sacrificed,

One star-eyed, star-crowned universal Christ,

Re-crucified in every wayside flower.

THE OPTIMIST

Teach me to live and to forgive

The death that all must die

Who pass in slumber through this heaven

Of earth and sea and sky;

Who live by grace of Time and Space

At which their peace is priced;

And cast their lots upon the robe

That wraps the cosmic Christ;

Who cannot see the world-wide Tree

Where Love lies bleeding still;

This universal cross of God

Our star-crowned Igdrasil.

Teach me to live; I do not ask

For length of earthly days,

Or that my heaven-appointed task

Should fall in pleasant ways;

If in this hour of warmth and light

The last great knell were knolled;

If Death should close mine eyes to-night

And all the tale be told;

While I have lips to speak or sing

And power to draw this breath,

Shall I not praise my Lord and King

Above all else, for death?

When on a golden eve he drove

His keenest sorrow deep

Deep in my heart, and called it love;

I did not wince or weep.

A wild Hosanna shook the world

And wakened all the sky,

As through a white and burning light

Her passionate face went by.

When on a golden dawn he called

My best beloved away,

I did not shrink or stand appalled

Before the hopeless day.

The joy of that triumphant dearth

And anguish cannot die;

The joy that casts aside this earth

For immortality.

I would not change one word of doom

Upon the dreadful scroll,

That gave her body to the tomb

And freed her fettered soul.

For now each idle breeze can bring

The kiss I never seek;

The nightingale has heard her sing,

The rose caressed her cheek.

And every pang of every grief

That ruled my soul an hour,

Has given new splendours to the leaf,

New glories to the flower;

And melting earth into the heaven

Whose inmost heart is pain,

Has drawn the veils apart and given

Her soul to mine again.

A POST-IMPRESSION

I

He sat with his foolish mouth agape at the golden glare of the sea,

And his wizened and wintry flaxen locks fluttered around his ears,

And his foolish infinite eyes were full of the sky's own glitter and glee,

As he dandled an old Dutch Doll on his knee and sang the song of the spheres.

II

Blue and red and yellow and green they are melting away in the white;

Hey! but the wise old world was wrong and my idiot heart was right;

Yes; and the merry-go-round of the stars rolls to my cracked old tune,

Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon.

III

Then he cradled his doll on his crooning heart and cried as a sea-bird cries;

And the hot sun reeled like a drunken god through the violent violet vault:

And the hillside cottage that danced to the deep debauch of the perfumed skies

Grew palsied and white in the purple heath as a pillar of Dead Sea salt.

IV

There were three gaunt sun-flowers nigh his chair: they were yellow as death and tall;

And they threw their sharp blue shadowy stars on the blind white wizard wall;

And they nodded their heads to the weird old hymn that daunted the light of the noon,

Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon.

V

The little dog laughed and leered with the white of his eye as he sidled away

To stare at the dwarfish hunchback waves that crawled to the foot of the hill,

For his master's infinite mind was wide to the wealth of the night and the day;

The walls were down: it was one with the Deep that only a God can fill.

VI

Then a tiny maiden of ten sweet summers arrived with a song and a smile,

And she swung on the elfin garden-gate and sung to the sea for a while,

And a phantom face went weeping by and a ghost began to croon

Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon.

VII

And she followed a butterfly up to his chair; and the moon-calf caught at her hand

And stared at her wide blue startled eyes and muttered, "My dear, I have been,

In fact, I am there at this moment, I think, in a wonderful fairy-land:"

And he bent and he whispered it low in her ear—"I know why the grass is green.

VIII

"I know why the daisy is white, my dear, I know why the seas are blue;

I know that the world is a dream, my dear, and I know that the dream is true;

I know why the rose and the toad-stool grow, as a curse and a crimson boon,

Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon.

IX

"If I gaze at a rose, do you know, it grows till it overshadows the earth,

Like a wonderful Tree of Knowledge, my dear, the Tree of our evil and good;

But I dare not tell you the terrible vision that gave the toad-stool birth,

The dream of a heart that breaks, my dear, and a Tree that is bitter with blood.

X

"Oh, Love may wander wide as the wind that blows from sea to sea,

But a wooden dream, for me, my dear, and a painted memory;

For the God that has bidden the toad-stool grow has writ in his cosmic rune,

Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon."

XI

Then he stared at the child and he laughed aloud, and she suddenly screamed and fled,

As he dreamed of enticing her out thro' the ferns to a quarry that gapped the hill,

To hurtle her down and grin as her gold hair scattered around her head

Far, far below, like a sunflower disk, so crimson-spattered and still.

XII

"Ah, hush!" he cried; and his dark old eyes were wet with a sacred love

As he kissed the wooden face of his doll and winked at the skies above,

"I know, I know why the toad-stools grow, and the rest of the world will, soon;

Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon."

XIII

"Blue and red and yellow and green they are all mixed up in the white;

Hey! but the wise old world was wrong and my idiot heart was right;

Yes; and the merry-go-round of the stars rolls to my cracked old tune,

Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon."

THE BARREL-ORGAN

There's a barrel-organ carolling across a golden street

In the City as the sun sinks low;

And the music's not immortal; but the world has made it sweet

And fulfilled it with the sunset glow;

And it pulses through the pleasures of the City and the pain

That surround the singing organ like a large eternal light;

And they've given it a glory and a part to play again

In the Symphony that rules the day and night.

And now it's marching onward through the realms of old romance,

And trolling out a fond familiar tune,

And now it's roaring cannon down to fight the King of France,

And now it's prattling softly to the moon,

And all around the organ there's a sea without a shore

Of human joys and wonders and regrets;

To remember and to recompense the music evermore

For what the cold machinery forgets....

Yes; as the music changes,

Like a prismatic glass,

It takes the light and ranges

Through all the moods that pass;

Dissects the common carnival

Of passions and regrets,

And gives the world a glimpse of all

The colours it forgets.

And there La Traviata sighs

Another sadder song;

And there Il Trovatore cries

A tale of deeper wrong;

And bolder knights to battle go

With sword and shield and lance,

Than ever here on earth below

Have whirled into—a dance—!

Go down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac-time, in lilac-time;

Go down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!)

And you shall wander hand in hand with love in summer's wonderland;

Go down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!)

The cherry-trees are seas of bloom and soft perfume and sweet perfume,

The cherry-trees are seas of bloom (and oh, so near to London!)

And there they say, when dawn is high and all the world's a blaze of sky

The cuckoo, though he's very shy, will sing a song for London.

The Dorian nightingale is rare and yet they say you'll hear him there

At Kew, at Kew in lilac-time (and oh, so near to London!)

The linnet and the throstle, too, and after dark the long halloo

And golden-eyed tu-whit, tu-whoo of owls that ogle London.

For Noah hardly knew a bird of any kind that isn't heard

At Kew, at Kew in lilac-time (and oh, so near to London!)

And when the rose begins to pout and all the chestnut spires are out

You'll hear the rest without a doubt, all chorussing for London:—

Come down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac-time, in lilac-time;

Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!)

And you shall wander hand in hand with love in summer's wonderland;

Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!)

And then the troubadour begins to thrill the golden street,

In the City as the sun sinks low;

And in all the gaudy busses there are scores of weary feet

Marking time, sweet time, with a dull mechanic beat,

And a thousand hearts are plunging to a love they'll never meet,

Through the meadows of the sunset, through the poppies and the wheat,

In the land where the dead dreams go.

Verdi, Verdi, when you wrote Il Trovatore did you dream

Of the City when the sun sinks low,

Of the organ and the monkey and the many-coloured stream

On the Piccadilly pavement, of the myriad eyes that seem

To be litten for a moment with a wild Italian gleam

As A che la morte parodies the world's eternal theme

And pulses with the sunset-glow.

There's a thief, perhaps, that listens with a face of frozen stone

In the City as the sun sinks low;

There's a portly man of business with a balance of his own,

There's a clerk and there's a butcher of a soft reposeful tone.

And they're all of them returning to the heavens they have known:

They are crammed and jammed in busses and—they're each of them alone

In the land where the dead dreams go.

There's a very modish woman and her smile is very bland

In the City as the sun sinks low;

And her hansom jingles onward, but her little jewelled hand

Is clenched a little tighter and she cannot understand

What she wants or why she wanders to that undiscovered land,

For the parties there are not at all the sort of thing she planned,

In the land where the dead dreams go.

There's a rowing man that listens and his heart is crying out

In the City as the sun sinks low;

For the barge, the eight, the Isis, and the coach's whoop and shout,

For the minute-gun, the counting and the long dishevelled rout,

For the howl along the tow-path and a fate that's still in doubt,

For a roughened oar to handle and a race to think about

In the land where the dead dreams go.

There's a labourer that listens to the voices of the dead

In the City as the sun sinks low;

And his hand begins to tremble and his face to smoulder red

As he sees a loafer watching him and—there he turns his head

And stares into the sunset where his April love is fled,

For he hears her softly singing and his lonely soul is led

Through the land where the dead dreams go.

There's an old and haggard demi-rep, it's ringing in her ears,

In the City as the sun sinks low;

With the wild and empty sorrow of the love that blights and sears,

Oh, and if she hurries onward, then be sure, be sure she hears,

Hears and bears the bitter burden of the unforgotten years,

And her laugh's a little harsher and her eyes are brimmed with tears

For the land where the dead dreams go.

There's a barrel-organ carolling across a golden street

In the City as the sun sinks low;

Though the music's only Verdi there's a world to make it sweet

Just as yonder yellow sunset where the earth and heaven meet

Mellows all the sooty City! Hark, a hundred thousand feet

Are marching on to glory through the poppies and the wheat

In the land where the dead dreams go.

So it's Jeremiah, Jeremiah,

What have you to say

When you meet the garland girls

Tripping on their way?

All around my gala hat

I wear a wreath of roses

(A long and lonely year it is

I've waited for the May!)

If any one should ask you,

The reason why I wear it is—

My own love, my true love

Is coming home to-day.

And it's buy a bunch of violets for the lady

(It's lilac-time in London; it's lilac-time in London!)

Buy a bunch of violets for the lady

While the sky burns blue above:

On the other side the street you'll find it shady

(It's lilac-time in London; it's lilac-time in London!)

But buy a bunch of violets for the lady,

And tell her she's your own true love.

There's a barrel-organ carolling across a golden street

In the City as the sun sinks glittering and slow;

And the music's not immortal; but the world has made it sweet

And enriched it with the harmonies that make a song complete

In the deeper heavens of music where the night and morning meet,

As it dies into the sunset-glow;

And it pulses through the pleasures of the City and the pain

That surround the singing organ like a large eternal light,

And they've given it a glory and a part to play again

In the Symphony that rules the day and night.

And there, as the music changes,

The song runs round again.

Once more it turns and ranges

Through all its joy and pain,

Dissects the common carnival

Of passions and regrets;

And the wheeling world remembers all

The wheeling song forgets.

Once more La Traviata sighs

Another sadder song:

Once more Il Trovatore cries

A tale of deeper wrong;

Once more the knights to battle go

With sword and shield and lance

Till once, once more, the shattered foe

Has whirled into—a dance!

Come down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac-time, in lilac-time;

Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!)

And you shall wander hand in hand with love in summer's wonderland;

Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!)

THE LITANY OF WAR

Sandalphon, whose white wings to heaven upbear

The weight of human prayer,

Stood silent in the still eternal Light

Of God, one dreadful night.

His wings were clogged with blood and foul with mire,

His body seared with fire.

"Hast thou no word for Me?" the Master said.

The angel sank his head:

"Word from the nations of the East and West,"

He moaned, "that blood is best.

The patriot prayers of either half of earth,

Hear Thou, and judge their worth.

Out of the obscene seas of slaughter, hear,

First, the first nation's prayer:

'O God, deliver Thy people. Let Thy sword

Destroy our enemies, Lord!'

"Pure as the first, as passionate in trust

That their own cause is just;

Puppets as fond in those dark hands of greed;

As fervent in their creed;

As blindly moved, as utterly betrayed,

As urgent for Thine aid;

Out of the obscene seas of slaughter, hear

The second nation's prayer:

'O God, deliver Thy people. Let Thy sword

Destroy our enemies, Lord.'

"Over their slaughtered children, one great cry

From either enemy!

From either host, thigh-deep in filth and shame,

One prayer, one and the same;

Out of the obscene seas of slaughter, hear,

From East and West, one prayer:

'O God, deliver Thy people. Let Thy sword

Destroy our enemies, Lord.'"

Then, on the Cross of His creative pain,

God bowed His head again.

Then, East and West, over all seas and lands,

Out-stretched His piercèd hands.

"And yet," Sandalphon whispered, "men deny

The Eternal Calvary."

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE

[Written in answer to certain scientific pronouncements]

I

In the beginning?—Slowly grope we back

Along the narrowing track,

Back to the deserts of the world's pale prime,

The mire, the clay, the slime;

And then ... what then? Surely to something less;

Back, back, to Nothingness!

II

You dare not halt upon that dwindling way!

There is no gulf to stay

Your footsteps to the last. Go back you must!

Far, far below the dust,

Descend, descend! Grade by dissolving grade,

We follow, unafraid!

Dissolve, dissolve this moving world of men

Into thin air—and then?

III

O pioneers, O warriors of the Light,

In that abysmal night,

Will you have courage, then, to rise and tell

Earth of this miracle?

Will you have courage, then, to bow the head,

And say, when all is said—

"Out of this Nothingness arose our thought!

This blank abysmal Nought

Woke, and brought forth that lighted City street,

Those towers, that armoured fleet?" ...

IV

When you have seen those vacant primal skies

Beyond the centuries.

Watched the pale mists across their darkness flow,

As in a lantern-show,

Weaving, by merest "chance," out of thin air,

Pageants of praise and prayer;

Watched the great hills like clouds arise and set,

And one—named Olivet;

When you have seen, as a shadow passing away,

One child clasp hands and pray;

When you have seen emerge from that dark mire

One martyr, ringed with fire;

Or, from that Nothingness, by special grace,

One woman's love-lit face, ...

V

Will you have courage, then, to front that law

(From which your sophists draw

Their only right to flout one human creed)

That nothing can proceed—

Not even thought, not even love—from less

Than its own nothingness?

The law is yours! But dare you waive your pride,

And kneel where you denied?

The law is yours! Dare you re-kindle, then,

One faith for faithless men,

And say you found, on that dark road you trod,

In the beginning—GOD?

THE LAST BATTLE

Kings of the earth, Kings of the earth, the trumpet rings for warning,

And like the golden swords that ray from out the setting sun

The shout goes out of the trumpet mouth across the hills of morning,

Wake; for the last great battle dawns and all the wars are done.

Now all the plains of Europe smoke with marching hooves of thunder,

And through each ragged mountain-gorge the guns begin to gleam;

And round a hundred cities where the women watch and wonder,

The tramp of passing armies aches and faints into a dream.

The King of Ind is drawing nigh: a hundred leagues are clouded

Along his loud earth-shaking march from east to western sea:

The King o' the Setting Sun is here and all the seas are shrouded

With sails that carry half the world to front Eternity.

Soon shall the darkness roll around the grappling of the nations,

A darkness lit with deadly gleams of blood and steel and fire;

Soon shall the last great pæan of earth's war-worn generations

Roar through the thunder-clouded air round War's red funeral pyre.

But here defeat and victory are both allied with heaven,

The enfolding sky makes every foe the centre of her dome,

Each fights for God and his own right, and unto each is given

The right to find the heart of heaven where'er he finds his home.

O, who shall win, and who shall lose, and who shall take the glory

Here at the meeting of the roads, where every cause is right?

O, who shall live, and who shall die, and who shall tell the story?

Each strikes for faith and fatherland in that immortal fight.

High on the grey old hills of Time the last immortal rally,

Under the storm of the last great tattered flag, shall laugh to see

The blood of Armageddon roll from every smoking valley,

Shall laugh aloud, then rush on death for God and chivalry.

Kings of the earth, Kings of the earth, O, which of you then shall inherit

The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory? for the world's old light grows dim

And the cry of you all goes up all night to the dark enfolding Spirit,

Each of you fights for God and home; but God, ah, what of Him?

THE PARADOX

"I Am that I Am"

I

All that is broken shall be mended;

All that is lost shall be found;

I will bind up every wound

When that which is begun shall be ended.

Not peace I brought among you but a sword

To divide the night from the day,

When I sent My worlds forth in their battle-array

To die and to live,

To give and to receive,

Saith the Lord.

II

Of old time they said none is good save our God;

But ye that have seen how the ages have shrunk from my rod,

And how red is the wine-press wherein at my bidding they trod,

Have answered and said that with Eden I fashioned the snake,

That I mould you of clay for a moment, then mar you and break,

And there is none evil but I, the supreme Evil, God.

Lo, I say unto both, I am neither;

But greater than either;

For meeting and mingling in Me they become neither evil nor good;

Their cycle is rounded, they know neither hunger nor food,

They need neither sickle nor seed-time, nor root nor fruit,

They are ultimate, infinite, absolute.

Therefore I say unto all that have sinned,

East and West and South and North

The wings of my measureless love go forth

To cover you all: they are free as the wings of the wind.

III

Consider the troubled waters of the sea

Which never rest;

As the wandering waves are ye;

Yet assuaged and appeased and forgiven,

As the seas are gathered together under the infinite glory of heaven,

I gather you all to my breast.

But the sins and the creeds and the sorrows that trouble the sea

Relapse and subside,

Chiming like chords in a world-wide symphony

As they cease to chide;

For they break and they are broken of sound and hue,

And they meet and they murmur and they mingle anew,

Interweaving, intervolving, like waves: they have no stay:

They are all made as one with the deep, when they sink and are vanished away;

Yea, all is toned at a turn of the tide

To a calm and golden harmony;

But I—shall I wonder or greatly care,

For their depth or their height?

Shall it be more than a song in my sight

How many wandering waves there were,

Or how many colours and changes of light?

It is your eyes that see

And take heed of these things: they were fashioned for you, not for Me.

IV

With the stars and the clouds I have clothed Myself here for your eyes

To behold That which Is. I have set forth the strength of the skies

As one draweth a picture before you to make your hearts wise;

That the infinite souls I have fashioned may know as I know,

Visibly revealed

In the flowers of the field,

Yea, declared by the stars in their courses, the tides in their flow,

And the clash of the world's wide battle as it sways to and fro,

Flashing forth as a flame

The unnameable Name,

The ineffable Word,

I am the Lord.

V

I am the End to which the whole world strives:

Therefore are ye girdled with a wild desire and shod

With sorrow; for among you all no soul

Shall ever cease or sleep or reach its goal

Of union and communion with the Whole,

Or rest content with less than being God.

Still, as unending asymptotes, your lives

In all their myriad wandering ways

Approach Me with the progress of the golden days;

Approach Me; for my love contrives

That ye should have the glory of this

For ever; yea, that life should blend

With life and only vanish away

From day to wider wealthier day,

Like still increasing spheres of light that melt and merge in wider spheres

Even as the infinite years of the past melt in the infinite future years.

Each new delight of sense,

Each hope, each love, each fear,

Widens, relumes and recreates each sphere,

From a new ring and nimbus of pre-eminence.

I am the Sphere without circumference:

I only and for ever comprehend

All others that within me meet and blend.

Death is but the blinding kiss

Of two finite infinities;

Two finite infinite orbs

The splendour of the greater of which absorbs

The less, though both like Love have no beginning and no end.

VI

Therefore is Love's own breath

Like Knowledge, a continual death;

And all his laughter and kisses and tears,

And woven wiles of peace and strife,

That ever widen thus your temporal spheres,

Are making of the memory of your former years

A very death in life.

VII

I am that I am;

Ye are evil and good;

With colour and glory and story and song ye are fed as with food:

The cold and the heat,

The bitter and the sweet,

The calm and the tempest fulfil my Word;

Yet will ye complain of my two-edged sword

That has fashioned the finite and mortal and given you the sweetness of strife,

The blackness and whiteness,

The darkness and brightness,

Which sever your souls from the formless and void and hold you fast-fettered to life?

VIII

Behold now, is Life not good?

Yea, is it not also much more than the food,

More than the raiment, more than the breath?

Yet Strife is its name!

Say, which will ye cast out first from the furnace, the fuel or the flame?

Would ye all be as I am; and know neither evil nor good; neither life; neither death;

Or mix with the void and the formless till all were as one and the same?

IX

I am that I am; the Container of all things: kneel, lift up your hands

To the high Consummation of good and of evil which none understands;

The divine Paradox, the ineffable Word, in whose light the poor souls that ye trod

Underfoot as too vile for their fellows are at terrible union with God!

Am I not over both evil and good,

The righteous man and the shedder of blood?

Shall I save or slay?

I am neither the night nor the day,

Saith the Lord.

Judge not, oh ye that are round my footstool, judge not, ere the hour be born

That shall laugh you also to scorn.

X

Ah, yet I say unto all that have sinned,

East and West and South and North

The wings of my measureless love go forth

To cover you all: they are free as the wings of the wind.

XI

But one thing is needful; and ye shall be true

To yourselves and the goal and the God that ye seek;

Yea, the day and the night shall requite it to you

If ye love one another, if your love be not weak.

XII

Since I sent out my worlds in their battle-array

To die and to live,

To give and to receive,

Not peace, not peace, I have brought among you but a sword,

To divide the night from the day,

Saith the Lord;

Yet all that is broken shall be mended,

And all that is lost shall be found,

I will bind up every wound,

When that which is begun shall be ended.

THE PROGRESS OF LOVE

(A LYRICAL SYMPHONY)

I

In other worlds I loved you, long ago:

Love that hath no beginning hath no end.

The woodbine whispers, low and sweet and low,

In other worlds I loved you, long ago;

The firwoods murmur and the sea-waves know

The message that the setting sun shall send.

In other worlds I loved you, long ago:

Love that hath no beginning hath no end.

II

And God sighed in the sunset; and the sea

Chanted the soft recessional of Time

Against the golden shores of mystery;

And ever as that long low change and chime

With one slow sob of molten music yearned

Westward, it seemed as if the Love sublime

Almost uttered itself, where the waves burned

In little flower-soft flames of rose and green

That woke to seaward, while the tides returned

Rising and falling, ruffled and serene,

With all the mirrored tints of heaven above

Shimmering through their mystic myriad sheen.

As a dove's burnished breast throbbing with love

Swells and subsides to call her soft-eyed mate

Home through the rosy gloom of glen or grove,

So when the greenwood noon was growing late

The sea called softly through the waste of years,

Called to the star that still can consecrate

The holy golden haze of human tears

Which tinges every sunset with our grief

Until the perfect Paraclete appears.

Ah, the long sigh that yields the world relief

Rose and relapsed across Eternity,

Making a joy of sorrows that are brief,

As, o'er the bright enchantment of the sea,

Facing the towers of that old City of Pain

Which stands upon the shores of mystery

And frowns across the immeasurable main,

Venus among her cloudy sunset flowers

Woke; and earth melted into heaven again.

For even the City's immemorial towers

Were tinted into secret tone and time,

Like old forgotten tombs that age embowers

With muffling roses and with mossy rime

Until they seem no monument of ours,

But one more note in earth's accordant chime.

O Love, Love, Love, all dreams, desires and powers,

Were but as chords of that ineffable psalm;

And all the long blue lapse of summer hours,

And all the breathing sunset's golden balm

By that æonian sorrow were resolved

As dew into the music's infinite calm,

Through which the suns and moons and stars revolved

According to the song's divine decree,

Till Time was but a tide of intervolved

And interweaving worlds of melody;

In other worlds I loved you, long ago,—

The angelic citoles fainted o'er the sea;

And seraph citerns answered, sweet and low,

From where the sunset and the moonrise blend,—

In other worlds I loved you, long ago;

Love that hath no beginning hath no end;

O Love, Love, Love, the bitter City of Pain

Bidding the golden echoes westward wend,

Chimed in accordant undertone again:

Though every grey old tower rose like a tomb

To mock the glory of the shoreless main

They could but strike such discords as illume

The music with strange gleams of utter light

And hallow all the valley's rosy gloom.

And there, though greyly sinking out of sight

Before the wonders of the sky and sea,

Back through the valley, back into the night,

While mystery melted into mystery,

The City still rebuffed the far sweet West

That dimmed her sorrows with infinity;

Yet sometimes yearning o'er the sea's bright breast

To that remote Avilion would she gaze

Where all lost loves and weary warriors rest.

Then she remembered, through that golden haze,

(Oh faint as flowers the rose-white waves resound)

Her Arthur whom she loved in the dead days,

And how he sailed to heal him of his wound,

And how he lives and reigns eternally

Where now that unknown love is throned and crowned

Who laid his bleeding head against her knee

And loosed the bitter breast-plate and unbound

His casque and brought him strangely o'er the sea,

And how she reigns beside him on that shore

For ever (Yrma, queen, bend down to me)

And they twain have no sorrow any more.

III

They have forgotten all that vanished away

When life's dark night died into death's bright day

They have forgotten all except the gleam

Of light when once he kissed her in a dream

Once on the lips and once upon the brow

In the white orb of God's transcendent Now;

And even then he knew that, long before,

Their eyes had met upon some distant shore;

Yea; that most lonely and immortal face

Which dwells beyond the dreams of time and space

Bowed down to him from out the happy place

And whispered to him, low and sweet and low

In other worlds I loved you, long ago;

And then he knew his love could never die

Because his queen was throned beyond the sky

And called him to his own immortal sphere

Forgetting Launcelot and Guinevere.

So Yrma reigns with Arthur, and they know

They loved on earth a million years ago;

And watched the sea-waves wistfully westward wend;

And heard a voice whispering in their flow,

And calling through the silent sunset-glow,

Love that hath no beginning hath no end.

IV

It was about the dawn of day

I heard Etain and Anwyl say

The waving ferns are a fairy forest,

It is time, it is time to wander away;

For the dew is bright on the heather bells,

And the breeze in the clover sways and swells,

As the waves on the blue sea wake and wander,

Over and under the braes and dells.

She was eight years old that day,

Full of laughter and play;

Eight years old and Anwyl nine,—

Two young lovers were they.

Two young lovers were they,

Born in the City of Pain;

There was never a song in the world so gay

As the song of the child, Etain;

There was never a laugh so sweet

With the ripple of fairy bells,

And never a fairy foot so fleet

Dancing down the woodland dells!

She was eight years old that day,

Two young lovers were they.

There was never a sea of mystical gleams

Glooming under enchanted skies

Deep as the dark miraculous dreams

In Anwyl's haunted eyes.

There was never a glory of light

Around the carolling lark

As Etain's eyes were brave and bright

To daunt the coming dark.

Two young lovers were they

Born in the City of Pain;

There was never a song in the world so gay

As the song of the child, Etain;

Blithe as the wind in the trees,

Blithe as the bird on the bough,

Blithe as the bees in the sweet Heart's-ease

Where Love lies bleeding now.

V

And God sighed in the sunset; and the sea

Forgot her sorrow, and all the breathless West

Grew quiet as the blue tranquillity

That clad the broken mountain's brilliant breast,

Over the City, with deep heather-bloom

Heaving from crag to crag in sweet unrest,

A sea of dim rich colour and warm perfume

Whose billows rocked the drowsy honey-bee

Among the golden isles of gorse and broom

Like some enchanted ancient argosy

Drunkenly blundering over seas of dream

Past unimagined isles of mystery,

Over whose yellow sands the soft waves cream,

And sunbeams float and toss across the bare

Rose-white arms and perilous breasts that gleam

Where sirens wind their glossy golden hair;

Oh, miles on miles, the honeyed heather-bloom

Heaving its purple through the high bright air

Rolled a silent glory of gleam and gloom

From mossy crag to crag and crest to crest

Untroubled by the valley's depth of doom.

The hawk dropped down into the pine-forest

And, far below, the lavrock ruffled her wings

Blossomwise over her winsome secret nest.

Then suddenly, softly, as when a fairy sings

Out of the heart of a rose in the heart of the fern,

Or in the floating starlight faintly rings

The frail blue hare-bells—turn again, and turn,

Under and over, the silvery crescents cry

To where the crimson fox-glove belfries burn

And with a deeper softer peal reply,

There came a ripple of music through the roses

That rustled on the dimmest rim of sky

Where many a frame of fretted leaves encloses

For lovers wandering in the fern-wet wood

An arch of summer sea that softly dozes

As if all mysteries were understood:

Yrma, my queen, what love could understand

That faint sweet music, God saith all is good,

As those two children, hand in sunburnt hand,

Over the blithe blue hills and far away

Wandered into their own green fairyland?

VI

For the song is lost that shook the dew

Where the wild musk-roses glisten,

When the sunset dreamed that a dream was true

And the birds were hushed to listen.

The song is lost that shook the night

With wings of richer fire,

Where the years had touched their eyes with light

And their souls with a new desire;

And the new delight of the strange old story

Burned in the flower-soft skies,

And nine more years with a darker glory

Had deepened the light of her eyes;

But lost, oh more than lost the song

That shook the rose to tears,

As hand in hand they danced along

Through childhood's everlasting years.

"Oh, Love has wings," the linnet sings;

But the dead return no more, no more;

And the sea is breaking its old grey heart

Against the golden shore.

She was eight years old that day,

Two young lovers were they.

If every song as they danced along

Paused on the springing spray;

Is there never a bird in the wide greenwood

Will hush its heart to-day?

There's never a leaf with dew impearled

To make their pathway sweet,

And never a blossom in all the world

That knows the kiss of their feet.

No light to-night declares the word

That thrilled the blossomed bough,

And stilled the happy singing bird

That none can silence now.

The weary nightingale may sob

With her bleeding breast against a thorn,

And the wild white rose with every throb

Grow red as the laugh of morn;

With wings outspread she sinks her head

But Love returns no more, no more;

And the sea is breaking its old grey heart

Against the golden shore.

Born in the City of Pain;

Ah, who knows, who knows

When Death shall turn to delight again

Or a wound to a red, red rose?

Eight years old that day,

Full of laughter and play;

Eight years old and Anwyl nine,—

Two young lovers were they.

VII

And down the scented heather-drowsy hills

The barefoot children wandered, hand in hand,

And paddled through the laughing silver rills

In quest of fairyland;

And in each little sunburnt hand a spray,

A purple fox-glove bell-branch lightly swung,

And Anwyl told Etain how, far away,

One day he wandered through the dreamland dells

And watched the moonlit fairies as they sung

And tolled the fox-glove bells;

And oh, how sweetly, sweetly to and fro

The fragrance of the music reeled and rung

Under the loaded boughs of starry May.

And God sighed in the sunset, and the sea

Grew quieter than the hills: the mystery

Of ocean, earth and sky was like a word

Uttered, but all unheard,

Uttered by every wave and cloud and leaf

With all the immortal glory of mortal grief;

And every wave that broke its heart of gold

In music on the rainbow-dazzled shore

Seemed telling, strangely telling, evermore

A story that must still remain untold.

Oh, Once upon a time, and o'er and o'er

As aye the Happy ever after came

The enchanted waves lavished their faery lore

And tossed a foam-bow and a rosy flame

Around the whispers of the creaming foam,

Till the old rapture with the new sweet name

Through all the old romance began to roam,

And Anwyl, gazing out across the sea,

Dreamed that he heard the distance whisper "Come."

"Etain," he murmured softly and wistfully,

With the soul's wakening wonder in his eyes,

"Is it not strange to think that there can be

"No end for ever and ever to those skies,

No shore beyond, or if there be a shore

Still without end the world beyond it lies;

"Think; think, Etain;" and all his faery lore

Mixed with the faith that brought all gods to birth

And sees new heavens transcend for evermore

The poor impossibilities of earth;

But Etain only laughed: the world to her

Was one sweet smile of very present mirth;

Its flowers were only flowers, common or rare;

Her soul was like a little garden closed

By rose-clad walls, a place of southern air

Islanded from the Mystery that reposed

Its vast and brooding wings on that abyss

Through which like little clouds that dreamed and dozed

The thoughts of Anwyl wandered toward some bliss

Unknown, unfathomed, far, how far away,

Where God has gathered all the eternities

Into strange heavens, beyond the night and day.

VIII

And over the rolling golden bay,

In the funeral pomp of the dying day,

The bell of Time was wistfully tolling

A million million years away;

And over the heather-drowsy hill

Where the burdened bees were buzzing still,

The two little sun-bright barefoot children

Wandered down at the flowers' own will;

For still as the bell in the sunset tolled,

The meadow-sweet and the mary-gold

And the purple orchis kissed their ankles

And lured them over the listening wold.

And the feathery billows of blue-gold grass

Bowed and murmured and bade them pass,

Where a sigh of the sea-wind softly told them

There is no Time—Time never was.

And what if a sorrow were tolled to rest

Where the rich light mellowed away in the West,

As a glory of fruit in an autumn orchard

Heaped and asleep o'er the sea's ripe breast?

Why should they heed it, what should they know

Of the years that come or the years that go,

With the warm blue sky around and above them

And the wild thyme whispering to and fro?

For they heard in the dreamy dawn of day

A fairy harper faintly play,

Follow me, follow me, little children,

Over the hills and far away;

Where the dew is bright on the heather-bells,

And the breeze in the clover sways and swells,

As the waves on the blue sea wake and wander,

Over and under the braes and dells.

And the hare-bells tinkled and rang Ding dong

Bell in the dell as they danced along,

And their feet were stained on the hills with honey,

And crushing the clover till evensong.

And, oh the ripples that rolled in rhyme

Under the wild blue banks of thyme,

To the answering rhyme of the rolling ocean's

Golden glory of change and chime!

For they came to a stream and her fairy lover

Caught at her hand and swung her over,

And the broad wet buttercups laughed and gilded

Their golden knees in the deep sweet clover.

There was never a lavrock up in the skies

Blithe as the laugh of their lips and eyes,

As they glanced and glittered across the meadows

To waken the sleepy butterflies.

There was never a wave on the sea so gay

As the light that danced on their homeward way

Where the waving ferns were a fairy forest

And a thousand years as yesterday.

She was eight years old that day,

Full of laughter and play;

Eight years old and Anwyl nine,—

Two young lovers were they.

And when the clouds like folded sheep

Were drowsing over the drowsy deep,

And like a rose in a golden cradle

Anwyl breathed on the breast of sleep,

Or ever the petals and leaves were furled

At the vesper-song of the sunset-world,

The sleepy young rose of nine sweet summers

Dreamed in his rose-bed cosily curled.

And what if the light of his nine bright years

Glistened with laughter or glimmered with tears,

Or gleamed like a mystic globe around him

White as the light of the sphere of spheres?

And what if a glory of angels there,

Starring an orb of ineffable air,

Came floating down from the Gates of jasper

That melt into flowers at a maiden's prayer?

And what if he dreamed of a fairy face

Wondering out of some happy place,

Quietly as a star at sunset

Shines in the rosy dreams of space?

For only as far as the west wind blows

The sweets of a swinging full-blown rose,

Eight years old and queen of the lilies

Little Etain slept—ah, how close!

At a flower-cry over the moonlit lane

In a cottage of roses dreamed Etain,

And their purple shadows kissed at her lattice

And dappled her sigh-soft counterpane;

And or ever Etain with her golden head

Had nestled to sleep in her lily-white bed,

She breathed a dream to her fairy lover,

Please, God, bless Anwyl and me, she said.

And a song arose in the rose-white West,

And a whisper of wings o'er the sea's bright breast,

And a cry where the moon's old miracle wakened

A glory of pearl o'er the pine-forest.

Why should they heed it? What should they know

Of the years to come or the years to go?

With the starry skies around and above them

And the roses whispering to and fro.

Ah, was it a song of the mystic morn

When into their beating hearts the thorn

Should pierce through the red wet crumpled roses

And all the sorrow of love be born?

Ah, was it a cry of the wild wayside

Whereby one day they must surely ride,

Out of the purple garden of passion

To Calvary, to be crucified?

Only the sound of the distant sea

Broke on the shores of Mystery,

And tolled as a bell might toll for sorrow

Till Time be tombed in Eternity;

And in their dreams they only heard

Far away, one secret bird

Sing, till the passionate purple twilight

Throbbed with the wonder of one sweet word:

One sweet word and the wonder awoke,

And the leaves and the flowers and the starlight spoke

In silent rapture the strange old secret

That none e'er knew till the death-dawn broke;

One sweet whisper, and hand in hand

They wandered in dreams through fairyland,

Rapt in the star-bright mystical music

Which only a child can understand.

But never a child in the world can tell

The wonderful tale he knows so well,

Though ever as old Time dies in the sunset

It tolls and tolls like a distant bell.

Love, love, love; and they hardly knew

The sense of the glory that round them grew;

But the world was a wide enchanted garden;

And the song, the song, the song rang true.

And they danced with the fairies in emerald rings

Arched by the light of their rainbow wings,

And they heard the wild green Harper striking

A starlight over the golden strings.

Love, oh love; and they roamed once more

Through a forest of flowers on a fairy shore,

And the sky was a wild bright laugh of wonder

And the West was a dream of the years of yore.

In other worlds I loved you, long ago:

Love that hath no beginning hath no end:

The heather whispers low and sweet and low,

In other worlds I loved you, long ago;

The meadows murmur and the firwoods know

The message that the kindling East shall send;

In other worlds I loved you, long ago:

Love that hath no beginning hath no end.

IX

Out of the deep, my dream, out of the deep,

Yrma, thy voice came to me in my sleep,

And through a rainbow woven of human tears

I saw two lovers wandering down the years;

Two children, first, that roamed a sunset land,

And then two lovers wandering hand in hand,

Forgetful of their childhood's Paradise,

For nine more years had darkened in their eyes,

And heaven itself could hardly find again

Anwyl, the star-child, or the flower, Etain.

For on a day in May, as through the wood

With earth's new passion beating in his blood

He went alone, an empty-hearted youth,

Seeking he knew not what white flower of truth

Or beauty, on all sides he seemed to see

Swift subtle hints of some new harmony,

Yet all unheard, ideal, and incomplete,

A silent song compact of hopes and fears,

A music such as lights the wandering feet

Of Yrma when on earth she reappears.

And he forgot that sad grey City of Pain,

For all earth's old romance returned again,

And as he went, his dreaming soul grew glad

To think that he might meet with Galahad

Or Parsifal in some green glade of fern,

Or see between the boughs a helmet burn

And hear a joyous laugh kindle the sky

As through the wood Sir Launcelot rode by

With face upturned to take the sun like wine.

Ah, was it love that made the whole world shine

Like some great angel's face, blinded with bliss,

While Anwyl dreamed of bold Sir Amadis

And Guinevere's white arms and Iseult's kiss,

And that glad island in a golden sea

Where Arthur lives and reigns eternally?

Surely the heavens were one wide rose-white flame

As down the path to meet him Yrma came;

Ah, was it Yrma, with those radiant eyes,

That came to greet and lead him through the skies,

The skies that gloomed and gleamed so far above

The little wandering prayers of human love?...

He had forgotten all except the gleam

Of light when once he kissed her in a dream, ...

For surely then he knew that long before

Their eyes had met upon some distant shore....

Ah, was it Yrma whose red lips he met

Between the branches, where the leaves were wet?

Etain or Yrma, for it seemed her face

Bent down upon him from some happy place

And whispered to him, low and sweet and low,

In other worlds I loved you, long ago!

And he, too, knew his love could never die,

Because his queen was throned beyond the sky.

Yet In sweet mortal eyes he met her now

And kissed Etain beneath the hawthorn bough,

And dared to dream his infinite dream was true

On earth and reign with Etain, dream he knew

Why leaves were green and sides were fresh and blue;

Yea, dream he knew, as children dream they know

They knew all this a million years ago,

And watched the sea-waves wistfully westward wend

And heard a voice whispering in their flow

And calling through the silent sunset-glow

Love that hath no beginning hath no end.

Ah, could they see in the Valley of Gloom

That clove the cliffs behind the City;

Ah, could they hear in the forest of Doom

The peril that neared without pause or pity?

Behind the veils of ivy and vine,

Wild musk-roses and white woodbine,

In glens that were wan as with moonlit tears

And rosy with ghosts of eglantine

And pale as with lilies of long-past years,

Ah, could they see, could they hear, could they know

Behind that beautiful outward show,

Behind the pomp and glory of life

That seething old anarchic strife?

For there in many a dim blue glade

Where the rank red poppies burned,

And if perchance some dreamer strayed

He nevermore returned,

Cold incarnate memories

Of earth's retributory throes,

Deadly desires and agonies

Dark as the worm that never dies,

In the outer night arose,

And waited under those wonderful skies

With Hydra heads and mocking eyes

That winked upon the waning West

From out the gloom of the oak-forest,

Till all the wild profound of wood

That o'er the haunted valley slept

Glowed with eyes like pools of blood

As, lusting after a hideous food,

Through the haggard vistas crept

Without a cry, without a hiss,

The serpent broods of the abyss.

Ancestral folds in darkness furled

Since the beginnings of the world.

Ring upon awful ring uprose

That obscure heritage of foes,

The exceeding bitter heritage

Which still a jealous God bestows

From inappellable age to age,

The ghostly worms that softly move

Through every grey old corse of love

And creep across the coffined years

To batten on our blood and tears;

And there were hooded shapes of death

Gaunt and grey, cruel and blind,

Stealing softly as a breath

Through the woods that loured behind

The City; hooded shapes of fear

Slowly, slowly stealing near;

While all the gloom that round them rolled

With intertwisting coils grew cold.

And there with leer and gap-toothed grin

Many a gaunt ancestral Sin

With clutching fingers, white and thin,

Strove to put the boughs aside;

And still before them all would glide

Down the wavering moon-white track

One lissom figure, clad in black;

Who wept at mirth and mocked at pain

And murmured a song of the wind and the rain;

His laugh was wild with a secret grief;

His eyes were deep like woodland pools;

And, once and again, as his face drew near

In a rosy gloaming of eglantere,

All the ghosts that gathered there

Bowed together, naming his name:

Lead us, ah thou Shadow of a Leaf,

Child and master of all our shame,

Fool of Doubt and King of Fools.

Now the linnet had ended his evensong,

And the lark dropt down from his last wild ditty

And ruffled his wings and his speckled breast

Blossomwise over his June-sweet nest;

While winging wistfully into the West

As a fallen petal is wafted along

The last white sea-mew sought for rest;

And, over the gleaming heave and swell

Of the swinging seas,

Drowsily breathed the dreaming breeze.

Then, suddenly, out of the Valley of Gloom

That clove the cliffs behind the City,

Out of the silent forest of Doom

That clothed the valley with clouds of fear

Swelled the boom of a distant bell

Once, and the towers of the City of Pain

Echoed it, without hope or pity.

The tale of that tolling who can tell?

That dark old music who shall declare?

Who shall interpret the song of the bell?

Is it nothing to you, all ye that hear,

Sorrowed the bell, Is it nothing to you?

Is it nothing to you? the shore-wind cried,

Is it nothing to you? the cliffs replied.

But the low light laughed and the skies were blue,

And this was only the song of the bell.

X

ANWYL

A darkened easement in a darker room

Was all his home, whence weary and bowed and white

He watched across the slowly gathering gloom

The slowly westering light.

Bitterness in his heavy-clouded eyes,

Bitterness as of heaven's intestine wars

Brooded; he looked upon the unfathomed skies

And whispered—to the stars—

Some day, he said, she will forget all this

That she calls life, and looking far above

See throned among the great eternities

This dream of mine, this love;

Love that has given my soul these wings of fire

To beat in glory above the sapphire sea,

Until the wings of the infinite desire

Close in infinity;

Love that has taken the glory of hawthorn boughs,

And all the dreaming beauty of hazel skies,

As ministers to the radiance of her brows

And haunted April eyes;

Love that is hidden so deep beneath the dust

Of little daily duties and delights,

Till that reproachful face of hers grows just

And God at last requites

A soul whose dream was deeper than the skies,

A heart whose hope was wider than the sea,

Yet could not enter through his true love's eyes

Their grey infinity.

And so I know I wound her all day long

Because my heart must seem so far away;

And even my love completes the silent wrong

For all that it can say

Seems vast and meaningless to mortal sense;

Its vague desire can never reach its goal

Till knowledge vanishes in omniscience

And God surrounds her soul,

Breaking its barriers down and flooding in

Through all her wounds in one almighty tide,

Mingling her soul with that great Love wherein

My soul waits, glorified.

XI

ETAIN

My love is dying, dying in my heart;

There is no song in heaven for such as I

Who watch the days and years of youth depart,

The bloom decay and die;

The rose that withers in the hollow cheek,

The leaden rings that mark us old and wise;

And Time that writes what Pity dares not speak

Around the fading eyes.

He dreams he loves; but only loves his dream;

And in his dream he never can forget

Abana seems a so much mightier stream

And Pharpar wider yet;

The little deeds of love that light the shrine

Of common daily duties with such gleams

Of heaven, to me are scarcely less divine

Than those poor wandering dreams

Of deeds that never happen! I give him this,

This heart he cannot find in heaven above;

This heart, this heart of all the eternities,

This life of mine, this love;

Love that is lord of all the world at once

And never bade the encircled spirit roam

To the circle's bound, beyond the moons and suns,

But makes each heart its home,

And every home the heart of Space and Time,

And each and all a heaven if love could reign;

One infinite untranscended heaven sublime

With God's own joy and pain.

Why, that was what God meant, to set us here

In Eden, when he saw that all was good;

And we have made the sun black with despair,

And turned the moon to blood.

So has Love taught me that too learnèd tongue,

And in his poorer wisdom made me wise;

I grew so proud of the red drops we wrung

From all philosophies.

My heart is narrow, foolish, what you will;

But this I know God meant who set us here,

And gave each soul the Infinities to fulfil

From its own widening sphere.

To annex new regions to the soul's domain,

To expand the circle of the golden hours,

Till it enfolds again and yet again

New heavens, new fields, new flowers,

Oh, this is well; but still the central heart

Is here at home, not wandering like the wind

That gathers nothing, but must still depart

Leaving a waste behind.

Where is the song I sang that April morn,

When all the poet in his eyes awoke

My sleeping heart to heaven; and love was born?

For while the glad day broke

We met; and as the softly kindling skies

Thrilled through the scented vistas of the wood

I felt the sudden love-light in his eyes

Kindle my beating blood.

Happy day, happy day,

Chasing the clouds of the night away

And bidding the dreams of the dawn depart

Over the freshening April blue,

Till the blossoms awake to welcome the May,

And the world is made anew;

And the blackbird sings on the dancing spray

With eyes of glistening dew;

"Happy, happy, happy day;"

For he knows that his love is true;

He knows that his love is true, my heart,

He knows that his love is true!

I cannot sing it: these tears blind me: love,

O love, come back before it is too late,

Why, even Christ came down to us from above:

I think His love was great;

Yet he stood knocking, knocking at the door

Until his piteous hands were worn with scars;

He did not hide that crown of love he wore

Among the lonely stars.

This round of hours, the daily flowers I cull

Are more to me than all the rolling spheres,

A wounded bird at hand more pitiful

Than some great seraph's tears.

How should I join the great wise choir above

With my starved spirit's pale inhuman dearth,

Who never heard the cry of heavenly love

Rise from the sweet-souled earth?

Yet it is I he needs, and I for whom

His greed exceeds, his dreams fly wide of the mark!

Is it all self? I wander in the gloom;

The ways of God grow dark;

I watch the rose that withers in the cheek,

The leaden rings that mark us old and wise;

And Time that writes what Pity dares not speak

Around the fading eyes.

XII

And ever as Anwyl went the unknown end

Faded before him, back and back and back

He saw new empty heavens for ever bend

Over his endless track;

And memory, burning with new hopeless fire,

Showed him how every passing infinite hour

Made some new Crucifix for the World's Desire

Is some new wayside flower:

He saw what joy and beauty owed to death;

How all the world was one great sacrifice

Of Him, in whom all creatures that draw breath

Share God's eternal skies;

How Love is lord of all the world at once;

And never bids the encircled spirit roam

To the circle's bound, beyond the moons and suns,

But makes each heart its home,

And every home the heart of Space and Time,

And each and all a heaven if love could reign

One infinite untranscended heaven sublime

With God's own joy and pain.

XIII

Out of the deep, my dream, out of the deep,

A little child came to him in his sleep

And led him back to what was Paradise

Before the years had darkened in his eyes,

And showed him what he ne'er could lose again—

The light that once enshrined the child Etain.

Ah, was it Yrma with those radiant eyes

That came to greet and lead him through the skies;

Ay; all the world was one wide rose-white flame,

As down the path to meet him Yrma came

And caught the child up in her arms and cried,

This is my child that moved in Etain's side,

Thy child and Etain's: I the unknown ideal

And she the rich, the incarnate, breathing real

Are one; for me thou never canst attain

But by the love I yield thee for Etain;

Even as through Christ thy soul allays its dearth,

Love's heaven is only compassed upon earth;

And by that love, in thine own Etain's eyes

Thou shalt find all God's untranscended skies.

As of old, as of old, with Etain that day,

Over the hills, and far away,

He roamed thro' the fairy forests of fern:

Two young lovers were they.

And God sighed in the sunset, and the sea

Grew quieter than the hills: the mystery

Of ocean, earth and sky was like a word

Uttered, but all unheard,

Uttered by every wave and cloud and leaf

With all the immortal glory of mortal grief;

And every wave that broke its heart of gold

In music on the rainbow-dazzled shore

Seemed telling, strangely telling, evermore

A story that must still remain untold.

Oh, Once upon a time, and o'er and o'er

As aye the Happy ever after came

The enchanted waves lavished their faery lore

And tossed a foam-bow and a rosy flame

Around the whispers of the creaming foam,

Till the old rapture with the new sweet name

Through all the old romance began to roam.

XIV

And those two lovers only heard

—Oh, love is a dream that knows no waking—

Far away, one secret bird,

Where all the roses breathed one word,

And every crispel on the beach—

Oh, love is a sea that is ever breaking!—

Lisped it in a sweeter speech;

As hand in hand, by the sunset sea

That breaks on the shores of mystery,

They stood in the gates of the City of Pain

To watch the wild waves flutter and beat

In roses of white soft light at their feet,

Roses of delicate music and light,

Music and moonlight under their feet.

Crumbling and flashing and softly crashing

In rainbow colours that dazzle and wane

And wither and waken and, wild with delight,

Dance and dance to a mystic tune

And scatter their leaves in a flower-soft rain

Over the shimmering golden shore

Between the West and the waking moon,

Between the sunset and the night;

And then they sigh for the years of yore

And gather their glory together again,

Petal by petal and gleam by gleam,

Till, all in one rushing rose-bright stream

They dazzle back to the deep once more,

For the dream of the sea is an endless dream,

And love is a sea that hath no shore,

And the roses dance as they danced before.

XV

In other worlds I loved you, long ago:

Love that hath no beginning hath no end:

Low to her heart he breathed it, sweet and low;

In other worlds I loved you, long ago;

This is a word that all the sea-waves know

And whisper as through the shoreless West they wend,

In other worlds I loved you, long ago:

Love that hath no beginning hath no end.

XVI

"Yet love can die!" she murmured once again;

For this was in that City by the Sea,

That old grey City of Pain,

Built on the shifting shores of Mystery

And mocked by all the immeasurable main.

"Love lives to die!"

Under the deep eternal sky

His deeper voice caught up that deep refrain;

"A year ago, and under yonder sun

Earth had no Heaven to hold our hearts in one!

For me there was no love, afar or nigh:

And, O, if love were thus in time begun,

Love, even our love, in time must surely die."

Then memory murmured, "No";

And he remembered, a million years ago,

He saw the sea-waves wistfully westward wend;

And heard her voice whispering in their flow

And calling through the silent sunset-glow.

Love that hath no beginning hath no end.

"Love dies to live!" How wild, how deep the joy

That knows no death can e'er destroy

What cannot bear destruction! By these eyes

I know that, ere the fashioning of the skies,

Or ever the sun and moon and stars were made

I loved you. Sweet, I am no more afraid.

"Love lives to die!"

Under the deep eternal sky

Her wild sweet voice caught up that deep refrain:

There, in that silent City by the Sea,

Listening the wild-wave music of Infinity,

There, in that old grey City of mortal pain,

Their voices mingled in mystic unison

With that immortal harmony

Which holds the warring worlds in one.

Their Voice, one Voice, yet manifold,

Possessed the seas, the fields, the sky,

With utterance of the dream that cannot die;

Possessed the West's wild rose and dappled gold,

And that old secret of the setting sun

Which, to the glory of Eternity,

Time, tolling like a distant bell,

Evermore faints to tell,

And, ever telling, never yet has told.

One, and yet manifold

Arose their Voice, oh strangely one again

With murmurs of the immeasurable main;

As, far beyond earth's cloudy bars,

Their Soul surpassed the sunset and the stars,

And all the heights and depths of temporal pain,

Till seas of seraph music round them rolled.

And in that mystic plane

They felt their mortal years

Break away as a dream of pain

Breaks in a stream of tears.

Love, of whom life had birth,

See now, is death not sweet?

Love, is this heaven or earth?

Both are beneath thy feet.

Nay, both within thy heart!

O Love, the glory nears;

The Gates of Pearl are flung apart,

The Rose of Heaven appears.

Across the deeps of change,

Like pangs of visible song,

What angel-spirits, remote and strange,

Thrill through the starry throng?

And oh, what wind that blows

Over the mystic Tree,

What whisper of the sacred Rose,

What murmur of the sapphire Sea,

What dreams that faint and fail

From harps of burning gold,

But tell in heaven the sweet old tale

An earthly sunset told?

Hark! like a holy bell

Over that spirit Sea,

Time, in the world it loves so well,

Tolls for Eternity.

Earth calls us once again,

And, through the mystic Gleam,

The grey old City of mortal pain

Dawns on the heavenly dream.

Sweet as the voice of birds

At dawn, the years return,

With little songs and sacred words

Of human hearts that yearn.

The sweet same waves resound

Along our earthly shore;

But now this earth we lost and found

Is heaven for evermore.

Hark! how the cosmic choir,

In sea and flower and sun,

Recalls that triumph of desire

Which made all music one:

One universal soul,

Completing joy with pain,

And harmonising with the Whole

The temporal refrain,

Until from hill and plain,

From bud and blossom and tree,

From shadow and shining after rain,

From cloud and clovered bee,

From earth and sea and sky,

From laughter and from tears,

One molten golden harmony

Fulfils the yearning years.

Love, of whom death had birth,

See now, is life not sweet?

Love, is this heaven or earth?

Both are beneath thy feet.

In other worlds I loved you, long ago;

Love that hath no beginning hath no end;

The sea-waves whisper, low and sweet and low,

In other worlds I loved you, long ago;

The May-boughs murmur and the roses know

The message that the dawning moon shall send;

In other worlds I loved you, long ago;

Love that hath no beginning hath no end.

THE FOREST OF WILD THYME

DEDICATED TO HELEN, ROSIE, AND BEATRIX

PERSONS OF THE TALE

OURSELVES

FATHER

MOTHER

LITTLE BOY BLUE

THE HIDEOUS HERMIT

THE KING OF FAIRY-LAND

PEASE-BLOSSOM

MUSTARD-SEED

Dragons, Fairies, Mammoths, Angels, etc.

APOLOGIA

One more hour to wander free

With Puck on his unbridled bee

Thro' heather-forests, leagues of bloom,

Our childhood's maze of scent and sun!

Forbear awhile your notes of doom,

Dear Critics, give me still this one

Swift hour to hunt the fairy gleam

That flutters thro' the unfettered dream.

It mocks me as it flies, I know:

All too soon the gleam will go;

Yet I love it and shall love

My dream that brooks no narrower bars

Than bind the darkening heavens above,

My Jack o'Lanthorn of the stars:

Then, I'll follow it no more,

I'll light the lamp: I'll close the door.

PRELUDE

Hush! if you remember how we sailed to old Japan,

Peterkin was with us then, our little brother Peterkin!

Now we've lost him, so they say: I think the tall thin man

Must have come and touched him with his curious twinkling fan

And taken him away again, our merry little Peterkin;

He'll be frightened all alone; we'll find him if we can;

Come and look for Peterkin, poor little Peterkin.

No one would believe us if we told them what we know,

Or they wouldn't grieve for Peterkin, merry little Peterkin!

If they'd only watched us roaming through the streets of Miyako,

And travelling in a palanquin where parents never go,

And seen the golden gardens where we wandered once with Peterkin,

And smelt the purple orchards where the cherry-blossoms blow,

They wouldn't mourn for Peterkin, merry little Peterkin.

Put away your muskets, lay aside the drum,

Hang it by the wooden sword we made for little Peterkin!

He was once our trumpeter, now his bugle's dumb,

Pile your arms beneath it, for the owlet light is come,

We'll wander through the roses where we marched of old with Peterkin,

We'll search the summer sunset where the Hybla beehives hum,

And—if we meet a fairy there—we'll ask for news of Peterkin.

He was once our cabin-boy and cooked the sweets for tea;

And O, we've sailed around the world with laughing little Peterkin;

From nursery floor to pantry door we've roamed the mighty sea,

And come to port below the stairs in distant Caribee,

But wheresoe'er we sailed we took our little lubber Peterkin,

Because his wide grey eyes believed much more than ours could see,

And so we liked our Peterkin, our trusty little Peterkin.

Peterkin, Peterkin, I think if you came back

The captain of our host to-day should be the bugler Peterkin,

And he should lead our smugglers up that steep and narrow track,

A band of noble brigands, bearing each a mighty pack

Crammed with lace and jewels to the secret cave of Peterkin,

And he should wear the biggest boots and make his pistol crack,—

The Spanish cloak, the velvet mask, we'd give them all to Peterkin.

Come, my brother pirates, I am tired of play;

Come and look for Peterkin, little brother Peterkin,

Our merry little comrade that the fairies took away,

For people think we've lost him, and when we come to say

Our good-night prayers to mother, if we pray for little Peterkin

Her eyes are very sorrowful, she turns her head away.

Come and look for Peterkin, merry little Peterkin.

God bless little Peterkin, wherever he may be!

Come and look for Peterkin, lonely little Peterkin:

I wonder if they've taken him again across the sea

From the town of Wonder-Wander and the Amfalula tree

To the land of many marvels where we roamed of old with Peterkin,

The land of blue pagodas and the flowery fields of tea!

Come and look for Peterkin, poor little Peterkin.

PART I

THE SPLENDID SECRET

Now father stood engaged in talk

With mother on that narrow walk

Between the laurels (where we play

At Red-skins lurking for their prey)

And the grey old wall of roses

Where the Persian kitten dozes

And the sunlight sleeps upon

Crannies of the crumbling stone

—So hot it is you scarce can bear

Your naked hand upon it there,

Though there luxuriating in heat

With a slow and gorgeous beat

White-winged currant-moths display

Their spots of black and gold all day.—

Well, since we greatly wished to know

Whether we too might some day go

Where little Peterkin had gone

Without one word and all alone,

We crept up through the laurels there

Hoping that we might overhear

The splendid secret, darkly great,

Of Peterkin's mysterious fate;

And on what high adventure bound

He left our pleasant garden-ground,

Whether for old Japan once more

He voyaged from the dim blue shore,

Or whether he set out to run

By candle-light to Babylon.

We just missed something father said

About a young prince that was dead,

A little warrior that had fought

And failed: how hopes were brought to nought

He said, and mortals made to bow

Before the Juggernaut of Death,

And all the world was darker now,

For Time's grey lips and icy breath

Had blown out all the enchanted lights

That burned in Love's Arabian nights;

And now he could not understand

Mother's mystic fairy-land,

"Land of the dead, poor fairy-tale,"

He murmured, and her face grew pale,

And then with great soft shining eyes

She leant to him—she looked so wise—

And, with her cheek against his cheek,

We heard her, ah so softly, speak.

"Husband, there was a happy day,

Long ago, in love's young May,

When with a wild-flower in your hand

You echoed that dead poet's cry—

'Little flower, but if I could understand!'

And you saw it had roots in the depths of the sky,

And there in that smallest bud lay furled

The secret and meaning of all the world."

He shook his head and then he tried

To kiss her, but she only cried

And turned her face away and said,

"You come between me and my dead!

His soul is near me, night and day,

But you would drive it far away;

And you shall never kiss me now

Until you lift that brave old brow

Of faith I know so well; or else

Refute the tale the skylark tells,

Tarnish the glory of that May,

Explain the Smallest Flower away."

And still he said, "Poor fairy-tales,

How terribly their starlight pales

Before the solemn sun of truth

That rises o'er the grave of youth!"

"Is heaven a fairy-tale?" she said,—

And once again he shook his head;

And yet we ne'er could understand

Why heaven should not be fairy-land,

A part of heaven at least, and why

The thought of it made mother cry,

And why they went away so sad,

And father still quite unforgiven,

For what could children be but glad

To find a fairy-land in heaven?

And as we talked it o'er we found

Our brains were really spinning round;

But Dick, our eldest, late returned

From school, by all the lore he'd learned

Declared that we should seek the lost

Smallest Flower at any cost.

For, since within its leaves lay furled

The secret of the whole wide world,

He thought that we might learn therein

The whereabouts of Peterkin;

And, if we found the Flower, we knew

Father would be forgiven, too;

And mother's kiss atone for all

The quarrel by the rose-hung wall;

We knew, not how we knew not why,

But Dick it was who bade us try,

Dick made it all seem plain and clear,

And Dick it is who helps us here

To tell this tale of fairy-land

In words we scarce can understand.

For ere another golden hour

Had passed, our anxious parents found

We'd left the scented garden-ground

To seek—the Smallest Flower.

PART II

THE FIRST DISCOVERY

O, grown-ups cannot understand

And grown-ups never will,

How short's the way to fairy-land

Across the purple hill:

They smile: their smile is very bland,

Their eyes are wise and chill;

And yet—at just a child's command—

The world's an Eden still.

Under the cloudy lilac-tree,

Out at the garden-gate,

We stole, a little band of three,

To tempt our fairy fate.

There was no human eye to see,

No voice to bid us wait;

The gardener had gone home to tea,

The hour was very late.

I wonder if you've ever dreamed,

In summer's noonday sleep,

Of what the thyme and heather seemed

To ladybirds that creep

Like little crimson shimmering gems

Between the tiny twisted stems

Of fairy forests deep;

And what it looks like as they pass

Through jungles of the golden grass.

If you could suddenly become

As small a thing as they,

A midget-child, a new Tom Thumb,

A little gauze-winged fay,

Oh then, as through the mighty shades

Of wild thyme woods and violet glades

You groped your forest-way,

How fraught each fragrant bough would be

With dark o'erhanging mystery.

How high the forest aisles would loom,

What wondrous wings would beat

Through gloamings loaded with perfume

In many a rich retreat,

While trees like purple censers bowed

And swung beneath a swooning cloud

Mysteriously sweet,

Where flowers that haunt no mortal clime

Burden the Forest of Wild Thyme.

We'd watched the bats and beetles flit

Through sunset-coloured air

The night that we discovered it

And all the heavens were bare:

We'd seen the colours melt and pass

Like silent ghosts across the grass

To sleep—our hearts knew where;

And so we rose, and hand in hand

We sought the gates of fairy-land.

For Peterkin, oh Peterkin,

The cry was in our ears,

A fairy clamour, clear and thin

From lands beyond the years;

A wistful note, a dying fall

As of the fairy bugle-call

Some dreamful changeling hears,

And pines within his mortal home

Once more through fairy-land to roam.

We left behind the pleasant row

Of cottage window-panes,

The village inn's red-curtained glow,

The lovers in the lanes;

And stout of heart and strong of will

We climbed the purple perfumed hill,

And hummed the sweet refrains

Of fairy tunes the tall thin man

Taught us of old in Old Japan.

So by the tall wide-barred church-gate

Through which we all could pass

We came to where that curious plate,

That foolish plate of brass,

Said Peterkin was fast asleep

Beneath a cold and ugly heap

Of earth and stones and grass.

It was a splendid place for play,

That churchyard, on a summer's day;

A splendid place for hide-and-seek

Between the grey old stones;

Where even grown-ups used to speak

In awestruck whispering tones;

And here and there the grass ran wild

In jungles for the creeping child,

And there were elfin zones

Of twisted flowers and words in rhyme

And great sweet cushions of wild thyme.

So in a wild thyme snuggery there

We stayed awhile to rest;

A bell was calling folk to prayer:

One star was in the West:

The cottage lights grew far away,

The whole sky seemed to waver and sway

Above our fragrant nest;

And from a distant dreamland moon

Once more we heard that fairy tune:

Why, mother once had sung it us

When, ere we went to bed,

She told the tale of Pyramus,

How Thisbe found him dead

And mourned his eyes as green as leeks,

His cherry nose, his cowslip cheeks.

That tune would oft around us float

Since on a golden noon

We saw the play that Shakespeare wrote

Of Lion, Wall, and Moon;

Ah, hark—the ancient fairy theme—

Following darkness like a dream!

The very song Will Shakespeare sang,

The music that through Sherwood rang

And Arden and that forest glade

Where Hermie and Lysander strayed,

And Puck cried out with impish glee,

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

Though the masquerade was mute

Of Quince and Snout and Snug and Flute,

And Bottom with his donkey's head

Decked with roses, white and red,

Though the fairies had forsaken

Sherwood now and faintly shaken

The forest-scents from off their feet,

Yet from some divine retreat

Came the music, sweet and clear,

To hang upon the raptured ear

With the free unfettered sway

Of blossoms in the moon of May.

Hark! the luscious fluttering

Of flower-soft words that kiss and cling,

And part again with sweet farewells,

And rhyme and chime like fairy-bells.

"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows

Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,

Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,

With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine."

Out of the undiscovered land

So sweetly rang the song,

We dreamed we wandered, hand in hand,

The fragrant aisles along,

Where long ago had gone to dwell

In some enchanted distant dell

The outlawed fairy throng

When out of Sherwood's wildest glen

They sank, forsaking mortal men.

And as we dreamed, the shadowy ground

Seemed gradually to swell;

And a strange forest rose around,

But how—we could not tell—

Purple against a rose-red sky

The big boughs brooded silently:

Far off we heard a bell;

And, suddenly, a great red light

Smouldered before our startled sight.

Then came a cry, a fiercer flash,

And down between the trees

We saw great crimson figures crash,

Wild-eyed monstrosities;

Great dragon-shapes that breathed a flame

From roaring nostrils as they came:

We sank upon our knees;

And looming o'er us, ten yards high,

Like battle-ships they thundered by.

And then, as down that mighty dell

We followed, faint with fear,

We understood the tolling bell

That called the monsters there;

For right in front we saw a house

Woven of wild mysterious boughs

Bursting out everywhere

In crimson flames, and with a shout

The monsters rushed to put it out.

And, in a flash, the truth was ours;

And there we knew—we knew—

The meaning of those trees like flowers,

Those boughs of rose and blue,

And from the world we'd left above

A voice came crooning like a dove

To prove the dream was true:

And this—we knew it by the rhyme

Must be—the Forest of Wild Thyme.

For out of the mystical rose-red dome

Of heaven the voice came murmuring down:

Oh, Ladybird, Ladybird, fly away home;

Your house is on fire and your children are gone.

We knew, we knew it by the rhyme,

Though we seemed, after all,

No tinier, yet the sweet wild thyme

Towered like a forest tall

All round us; oh, we knew not how.

And yet—we knew those monsters now:

Our dream's divine recall

Had dwarfed us, as with magic words;

The dragons were but ladybirds!

And all around us as we gazed,

Half glad, half frightened, all amazed,

The scented clouds of purple smoke

In lurid gleams of crimson broke;

And o'er our heads the huge black trees

Obscured the sky's red mysteries;

While here and there gigantic wings

Beat o'er us, and great scaly things

Fold over monstrous leathern fold

Out of the smouldering copses rolled;

And eyes like blood-red pits of flame

From many a forest-cavern came

To glare across the blazing glade,

Till, with the sudden thought dismayed,

We wondered if we e'er should find

The mortal home we left behind:

Fear clutched us in a grisly grasp,

We gave one wild and white-lipped gasp,

Then turned and ran, with streaming hair,

Away, away, and anywhere!

And hurry-skurry, heart and heel and hand, we tore along,

And still our flying feet kept time and pattered on for Peterkin,

For Peterkin, oh Peterkin, it made a kind of song

To prove the road was right although it seemed so dark and wrong,

As through the desperate woods we plunged and ploughed for little Peterkin,

Where many a hidden jungle-beast made noises like a gong

That rolled and roared and rumbled as we rushed along to Peterkin.

Peterkin, Peterkin, if you could only hear

And answer us, one little word from little lonely Peterkin

To take and comfort father, he is sitting in his chair

In the library: he's listening for your footstep on the stair

And your patter down the passage, he can only think of Peterkin:

Come back, come back to father, for to-day he'd let us tear

His newest book to make a paper-boat for little Peterkin.

PART III

THE HIDEOUS HERMIT

Ah, what wonders round us rose

When we dared to pause and look,

Curious things that seemed all toes,

Goblins from a picture-book;

Ants like witches, four feet high,

Waving all their skinny arms,

Glared at us and wandered by,

Muttering their ancestral charms.

Stately forms in green and gold

Armour strutted through the glades,

Just as Hamlet's ghost, we're told,

Mooned among the midnight shades:

Once a sort of devil came

Scattering broken trees about,

Winged with leather, eyed with flame,—

He was but a moth, no doubt.

Here and there, above us clomb

Feathery clumps of palm on high:

Those were ferns, of course, but some

Really seemed to touch the sky;

Yes; and down one fragrant glade,

Listening as we onward stole,

Half delighted, half afraid,

Dong, we heard the hare-bells toll!

Something told us what that gleam

Down the glen was brooding o'er;

Something told us in a dream

What the bells were tolling for!

Something told us there was fear,

Horror, peril, on our way!

Was it far or was it near?

Near, we heard the night-wind say.

Toll, the music reeled and pealed

Through the vast and sombre trees,

Where a rosy light revealed

Dimmer, sweeter mysteries;

And, like petals of the rose,

Fairy fans in beauty beat,

Light in light—ah, what were those

Rhymes we heard the night repeat?

Toll, a dream within a dream,

Up an aisle of rose and blue,

Up the music's perfumed stream

Came the words, and then we knew,

Knew that in that distant glen

Once again the case was tried,

Hark!—Who killed Cock Robin, then?

And a tiny voice replied,

"I

killed

Cock

Robin!"

"I! And who are You, sir, pray?"

Growled a voice that froze our marrow:

"Who!" we heard the murderer say,

"Lord, sir, I'm the famous Sparrow,

And this 'ere's my bow and arrow!

I

killed

Cock

Robin!"

Then, with one great indrawn breath,

Such a sighin' and a sobbin'

Rose all round us for the death

Of poor, poor Cock Robin,

Oh, we couldn't bear to wait

Even to hear the murderer's fate,

Which we'd often wished to know

Sitting in the fireside glow

And with hot revengeful looks

Searched for in the nursery-books;

For the Robin and the Wren

Are such friends to mortal men,

Such dear friends to mortal men!

Toll; and through the woods once more

Stole we, drenched with fragrant dew:

Toll; the hare-bell's burden bore

Deeper meanings than we knew:

Still it told us there was fear,

Horror, peril on our way!

Was it far or was it near?

Near, we heard the night-wind say!

Near; and once or twice we saw

Something like a monstrous eye,

Something like a hideous claw

Steal between us and the sky:

Still we hummed a dauntless tune

Trying to think such things might be

Glimpses of the fairy moon

Hiding in some hairy tree.

Yet around us as we went

Through the glades of rose and blue

Sweetness with the horror blent

Wonder-wild in scent and hue:

Here Aladdin's cavern yawned,

Jewelled thick with gorgeous dyes;

There a head of clover dawned

Like a cloud In eastern skies.

Hills of topaz, lakes of dew,

Fairy cliffs of crystal sheen

Passed we; and the forest's blue

Sea of branches tossed between:

Once we saw a gryphon make

One soft iris as it passed

Like the curving meteor's wake

O'er the forest, far and fast.

Winged with purple, breathing flame,

Crimson-eyed we saw him go,

Where—ah! could it be the same

Cockchafer we used to know?—

Valley-lilies overhead,

High aloof in clustered spray,

Far through heaven their splendour spread,

Glimmering like the Milky Way.

Mammoths father calls "extinct,"

Creatures that the cave-men feared,

Through that forest walked and blinked,

Through that jungle crawled and leered;

Beasts no Nimrod ever knew,

Woolly bears black and red;

Crocodiles, we wondered who

Ever dared to see them fed,

Were they lizards? If they were,

They could swallow us with ease;

But they slumbered quietly there

In among the mighty trees;

Red and silver, blue and green,

Played the moonlight on their scales;

Golden eyes they had, and lean

Crookèd legs with cruel nails.

Yet again, oh, faint and far,

Came the shadow of a cry,

Like the calling of a star

To its brother in the sky;

Like an echo in a cave

Where young mermen sound their shells,

Like the wind across a grave

Bright with scent of lily-bells.

Like a fairy hunter's horn

Sounding in some purple glen

Sweet revelly to the morn

And the fairy quest again:

Then, all round it surged a song

We could never understand

Though it lingered with us long,

And it seemed so sad and grand.

SONG

Little Boy Blue, come blow up your horn,

Summon the day of deliverance in:

We are weary of bearing the burden of scorn

As we yearn for the home that we never shall win;

For here there is weeping and sorrow and sin.

And the poor and the weak are a spoil for the strong!

Ah, when shall the song of the ransomed begin?

The world is grown weary with waiting so long.

Little Boy Blue, you are gallant and brave,

There was never a doubt in those clear bright eyes.

Come, challenge the grim dark Gates of the Grave

As the skylark sings to those infinite skies!

This world is a dream, say the old and the wise,

And its rainbows arise o'er the false and the true;

But the mists of the morning are made of our sighs,—

Ah, shatter them, scatter them, Little Boy Blue!

Little Boy Blue, if the child-heart knows,

Sound but a note as a little one may;

And the thorns of the desert shall bloom with the rose,

And the Healer shall wipe all tears away;

Little Boy Blue, we are all astray,

The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn,

Ah, set the world right, as a little one may;

Little Boy Blue, come blow up your horn!

Yes; and there between the trees

Circled with a misty gleam

Like the light a mourner sees

Round an angel in a dream;

Was it he? oh, brave and slim,

Straight and clad in æry blue,

Lifting to his lips the dim

Golden horn? We never knew!

Never; for a witch's hair

Flooded all the moonlit sky,

And he vanished, then and there,

In the twinkling of an eye:

Just as either boyish cheek

Puffed to set the world aright,

Ere the golden horn could speak

Round him flowed the purple night.

*    *    *    *

At last we came to a round black road

That tunnelled through the woods and showed,

Or so we thought, a good clear way

Back to the upper lands of day;

Great silken cables overhead

In many a mighty mesh were spread

Netting the rounded arch, no doubt

To keep the weight of leafage out.

And, as the tunnel narrowed down,

So thick and close the cords had grown

No leaf could through their meshes stray,

And the faint moonlight died away;

Only a strange grey glimmer shone

To guide our weary footsteps on,

Until, tired out, we stood before

The end, a great grey silken door.

Then from out a weird old wicket, overgrown with shaggy hair

Like a weird and wicked eyebrow round a weird and wicked eye,

Two great eyeballs and a beard

For one ghastly moment peered

At our faces with a sudden stealthy stare:

Then the door was open wide,

And a hideous hermit cried

With a shy and soothing smile from out his lair,

Won't you walk into my parlour? I can make you cosy there!

And we couldn't quite remember where we'd heard that phrase before,

As the great grey-bearded ogre stood beside his open door;

But an echo seemed to answer from a land beyond the sky—

Won't you walk into my parlour? said the spider to the fly!

Then we looked a little closer at the ogre as he stood

With his great red eyeballs glowing like two torches in a wood,

And his mighty speckled belly and his dreadful clutching claws

And his nose—a horny parrot's beak, his whiskers and his jaws;

Yet he seemed so sympathetic, and we saw two tears descend,

As he murmured, "I'm so ugly, but I've lost my dearest friend!

I tell you most lymphatic'ly, I've yearnings in my soul,"—

And right along his parrot's beak we saw the tear-drops roll;

He's an arrant sentimentalist, we heard a distant sigh,

Won't you weep upon my bosom? said the spider to the fly.

"If you'd dreamed my dreams of beauty, if you'd seen my works of art,

If you'd felt the cruel hunger that is gnawing at my heart,

And the grief that never leaves me and the love I can't forget,

(For I loved with all the letters in the Chinese alphabet!)

Oh, you'd all come in to comfort me: you ought to help the weak;

And I'm full of melting moments; and—I—know—the—thing—you—seek!"

And the haunting echo answered, Well, I'm sure you ought to try;

There's a duty to one's neighbour, said the spider to the fly.

So we walked into his parlour

Though a gleam was in his eye;

And it was the prettiest parlour

That ever we did spy!

But we saw by the uncertain

Misty light, shot through with gleams

Of many a silken curtain

Broidered o'er with dreadful dreams,

That he locked the door behind us! So we stood with bated breath

In a silence deep as death.

There were scarlet gleams and crimson

In the curious foggy grey,

Like the blood-red light that swims on

Old canals at fall of day,

Where the smoke of some great city loops and droops in gorgeous veils

Round the heavy purple barges' tawny sails.

Were those creatures gagged and muffled,

See—there—by that severed head?

Was it but a breeze that ruffled

Those dark curtains, splashed with red,

Ruffled the dark figures on them, made them moan like things in pain?

How we wished that we were safe at home again.

*    *    *    *

"Oh, we want to hear of Peterkin; good sir, you say you know;

Won't you tell us, won't you put us in the way we want to go?"

So we pleaded, for he seemed so very full of sighs and tears

That we couldn't doubt his kindness, and we smothered all our fears;

But he said, "You must be crazy if you come to me for help;

Why should I desire to send you to your horrid little whelp?"

And again, the foolish echo made a far-away reply,

Oh, don't come to me for comfort,

Pray don't look to me for comfort,

Heavens! you mustn't be so selfish, said the spider to the fly.

"Still, when the King of Scotland, so to speak, was in a hole,

He was aided by my brother; it's a story to console

The convict of the treadmill and the infant with a sum,

For it teaches you to try again until your kingdom's come!

The monarch dawdled in that hole for centuries of time

Until my own twin-brother rose and showed him how to climb:

He showed him how to swing and sway upon a tiny thread

Across a mighty precipice, and light upon his head

Without a single fracture and without a single pain

If he only did it frequently and tried and tried again:"

And once again the whisper like a moral wandered by,

Perseverance is a virtue, said the spider to the fly.

Then he moaned, "My heart is hungry; but I fear I cannot eat,

(Of course I speak entirely now of spiritual meat!)

For I only fed an hour ago, but if we calmly sat

While I told you all my troubles in a confidential chat

It would give me such an appetite to hear you sympathise,

And I should sleep the better—see, the tears are in my eyes!

Dead yearnings are such dreadful things, let's keep 'em all alive,—

Let's sit and talk awhile, my dears; we'll dine, I think, at five."

And he brought his chair beside us in his most engaging style,

And began to tell his story with a melancholy smile.—

"You remember Miss Muffet

Who sat on a tuffet

Partaking of curds and whey;

Well, I am the spider

Who sat down beside her

And frightened Miss Muffet away!

"There was nothing against her!

An elderly spinster

Were such a grammatical mate

For a spider and spinner,

I swore I would win her,

I knew I had met with my fate!

"That love was the purest

And strongest and surest

I'd felt since my first thread was spun;

I know I'm a bogey,

But she's an old fogey,

So why in the world did she run?

"When Bruce was in trouble,

A spider, my double,

Encouraged him greatly, they say!

Now, why should the spider

Who sat down beside her

Have frightened Miss Muffet away?"

He seemed to have much more to tell,

But we could scarce be listening well,

Although we tried with all our might

To look attentive and polite;

For still afar we heard the thin

Clear fairy-call to Peterkin;

Clear as a skylark's mounting song

It drew our wandering thoughts along.

Afar, it seemed, yet, ah, so nigh,

Deep in our dreams it scaled the sky,

In captive dreams that brooked no bars

It touched the love that moves the stars,

And with sweet music's golden tether

It bound our hearts and heaven together.

SONG

Wake, arise, the lake, the skies

Fade into the faery day;

Come and sing before our king,

Heed not Time, the dotard grey;

Time has given his crown to heaven—

Ah, how long? Awake, away!

Then, as the Hermit rambled on

In one long listless monotone,

We heard a wild and mournful groan

Come rumbling down the tunnelled way;

A voice, an awful mournful bray,

Singing some old funereal lay;

Then solemn footsteps, muffled, dull,

Approached as if they trod on wool,

And as they nearer, nearer drew,

We saw our Host was listening too!

His bulging eyes began to glow

Like great red match-heads rubbed at night,

And then he stole with a grim "O-ho!"

To that grey old wicket where, out of sight,

Blandly rubbing his hands and humming,

He could see, at one glance, whatever was coming.

He had never been so jubilant or frolicsome before,

As he scurried on his cruel hairy crutches to the door;

And flung it open wide

And most hospitably cried,

"Won't you walk into my parlour? I've some little friends to tea,—

They'll be highly entertaining to a man of sympathy,

Such as you yourself must be!"

Then the man, for so he seemed,

(Doubtless one who'd lost his way

And was dwarfed as we had been!)

In his ancient suit of black,

Black upon the verge of green,

Entered like a ghost that dreamed

Sadly of some bygone day;

And he never ceased to sing

In that awful mournful bray.

The door closed behind his back;

He walked round us in a ring,

And we hoped that he might free us,

But his tears appeared to blind him,

For he didn't seem to see us,

And the Hermit crept behind him

Like a cat about to spring.

And the song he sang was this;

And his nose looked very grand

As he sang it, with a bliss

Which we could not understand;

For his voice was very sad,

While his nose was proud and glad.

Rain, April, rain, thy sunny, sunny tears!

Through the black boughs the robe of Spring appears,

Yet, for the ghosts of all the bygone years,

Rain, April, rain.

Rain, April, rain; the rose will soon be glad;

Spring will rejoice, a Spring I, too, have had;

A little while, till I no more be sad,

Rain, April, rain.

And then the spider sprang

Before we could breathe or speak,

And one great scream out-rang

As the terrible horny beak

Crunched into the Sad Man's head,

And the terrible hairy claws

Clutched him around his middle;

And he opened his lantern-jaws,

And he gave one twist, one twiddle,

One kick, and his sorrow was dead.

And there, as he sucked his bleeding prey,

The spider leered at us—"You will do,

My sweet little dears, for another day;

But this is the sort I like; huh! huh!"

And there we stood, in frozen fear,

Whiter than death,

With bated breath;

And lo! as we thought of Peterkin,

Father and home and Peterkin,

Once more that music clear and thin,

Clear as a skylark's mounting song,

But nearer now, more sweet, more strong,

Drew all our wandering thoughts along,

Until it seemed, a mystic sea

Of hidden delight and harmony

Began to ripple and rise all round

The prison where our hearts lay bound;

And from sweet heaven's most rosy rim

There swelled a distant marching hymn

Which made the hideous Hermit pause

And listen with lank down-dropt jaws,

Till, with great bulging eyes of fear,

He sought the wicket again to peer

Along the tunnel, as like sweet rain

We heard the still approaching strain,

And, under it, the rhythmic beat

Of multitudinous marching feet.

Nearer, nearer, they rippled and rang,

And this was the marching song they sang:—

SONG

A fairy band are we

In fairy-land:

Singing march we, hand in hand;

Singing, singing all day long:

(Some folk never heard a fairy-song!)

Singing, singing,

When the merry thrush is swinging

On a springing spray;

Or when the witch that lives in gloomy caves

And creeps by night among the graves

Calls a cloud across the day;

Cease we never our fairy song,

March we ever, along, along,

Down the dale, or up the hill,

Singing, singing still.

And suddenly the Hermit turned and ran with all his might

Through the back-door of his parlour as we thought of little Peterkin;

And the great grey roof was shattered by a shower of rosy light,

And the spider-house went floating, torn and tattered through the night

In a flight of prismy streamers, as a shout went up for Peterkin;

And lo, the glistening fairy-host stood there arrayed for fight,

In arms of rose and green and gold, to lead us on to Peterkin.

And all around us, rippling like a pearl and opal sea,

The host of fairy faces winked a kindly hint of Peterkin;

And all around the rosy glade a laugh of fairy glee

Watched spider-streamers floating up from fragrant tree to tree

Till the moonlight caught the gossamers and, oh we wished for Peterkin!

Each rope became a rainbow; but it made us ache to see

Such a fairy forest-pomp without explaining it to Peterkin.

Then all the glittering crowd

With a courtly gesture bowed

Like a rosy jewelled cloud

Round a flame,

As the King of Fairy-land,

Very dignified and grand,

Stepped forward to demand

Whence we came.

He'd a cloak of gold and green

Such as caterpillars spin,

For the fairy ways, I ween,

Are very frugal;

He'd a bow that he had borne

Since the crimson Eden morn,

And a honeysuckle horn

For his bugle.

So we told our tale of faëry to the King of Fairy-land,

And asked if he could let us know the latest news of Peterkin;

And he turned him with a courtly smile and waved his jewelled wand

And cried, Pease-blossom, Mustard-seed! You know the old command;

Well; these are little children; you must lead them on to Peterkin.

Then he knelt, the King of Faëry knelt; his eyes were great and grand

As he took our hands and kissed them, saying, Father loves your Peterkin!

So out they sprang, on either side,

A light fantastic fairy guide,

To lead us to the land unknown

Where little Peterkin was gone;

And, as we went with timid pace,

We saw that every fairy face

In all that moonlit host was wet

With tears: we never shall forget

The mystic hush that seemed to fade

Away like sound, as down the glade

We passed beyond their zone of light.

Then through the forest's purple night

We trotted, at a pleasant speed,

With gay Pease-blossom and Mustard-seed.

PART IV

PEASE-BLOSSOM AND MUSTARD-SEED

Shyly we surveyed our guides

As through the gloomy woods we went

In the light that the straggling moonbeams lent:

We envied them their easy strides!

Pease-blossom in his crimson cap

And delicate suit of rose-leaf green,

His crimson sash and his jewelled dagger,

Strutted along with an elegant swagger

Which showed that he didn't care one rap

For anything less than a Fairy Queen:

His eyes were deep like the eyes of a poet,

Although his crisp and curly hair

Certainly didn't seem to show it!

While Mustard-seed was a devil-may-care

Epigrammatic and pungent fellow

Clad in a splendid suit of yellow,

With emerald stars on his glittering breast

And eyes that shone with a diamond light:

They made you feel sure it would always be best

To tell him the truth: he was not perhaps quite

So polite as Pease-blossom, but then who could be

Quite such a debonair fairy as he?

We never could tell you one-half that we heard

And saw on that journey. For instance, a bird

Ten times as big as an elephant stood

By the side of a nest like a great thick wood:

The clouds in glimmering wreaths were spread

Behind its vast and shadowy head

Which rolled at us trembling below. (Its eyes

Were like great black moons in those pearl-pale skies.)

And we feared he might take us, perhaps, for a worm.

But he ruffled his breast with the sound of a storm,

And snuggled his head with a careless disdain

Under his huge hunched wing again;

And Mustard-seed said, as we stole thro' the dark,

There was nothing to fear: it was only a Lark!

And so he cheered the way along

With many a neat little epigram,

While dear Pease-blossom before him swam

On a billow of lovely moonlit song,

Telling us why they had left their home

In Sherwood, and had hither come

To dwell in this magical scented clime,

This dim old Forest of sweet Wild Thyme,

"Men toil," he said, "from morn till night

With bleeding hands and blinded sight

For gold, more gold! They have betrayed

The trust that in their souls was laid;

Their fairy birthright they have sold

For little disks of mortal gold;

And now they cannot even see

The gold upon the greenwood tree,

The wealth of coloured lights that pass

In soft gradations through the grass,

The riches of the love untold

That wakes the day from grey to gold;

And howsoe'er the moonlight weaves

Magic webs among the leaves

Englishmen care little now

For elves beneath the hawthorn bough:

Nor if Robin should return

Dare they of an outlaw learn;

For them the Smallest Flower is furled,

Mute is the music of the world;

And unbelief has driven away

Beauty from the blossomed spray."

Then Mustard-seed with diamond eyes

Taught us to be laughter-wise,

And he showed us how that Time

Is much less powerful than a rhyme;

And that Space is but a dream;

"For look," he said, with eyes agleam,

"Now you are become so small

You think the Thyme a forest tall;

But underneath your feet you see

A world of wilder mystery

Where, if you were smaller yet,

You would just as soon forget

This forest, which you'd leave above

As you have left the home you love!

For, since the Thyme you used to know

Seems a forest here below,

What if you should sink again

And find there stretched a mighty plain

Between each grass-blade and the next?

You'd think till you were quite perplexed!

Especially if all the flowers

That lit the sweet Thyme-forest bowers

Were in that wild transcendent change

Turned to Temples, great and strange,

With many a pillared portal high

And domes that swelled against the sky!

How foolish, then, you will agree,

Are those who think that all must see

The world alike, or those who scorn

Another who, perchance, was born

Where—in a different dream from theirs—

What they call sins to him are prayers!

"We cannot judge; we cannot know;

All things mingle; all things flow;

There's only one thing constant here—

Love—that untranscended sphere:

Love, that while all ages run

Holds the wheeling worlds in one;

Love that, as your sages tell,

Soars to heaven and sinks to hell."

Even as he spoke, we seemed to grow

Smaller, the Thyme trees seemed to go

Farther away from us: new dreams

Flashed out on us with mystic gleams

Of mighty Temple-domes: deep awe

Held us all breathless as we saw

A carven portal glimmering out

Between new flowers that put to rout

Our other fancies: in sweet fear

We tiptoed past, and seemed to hear

A sound of singing from within

That told our souls of Peterkin:

Our thoughts of him were still the same

Howe'er the shadows went and came,

So, on we wandered, hand in hand,

And all the world was fairy-land.

*    *    *    *

And as we went we seemed to hear

Surging up from distant dells

A solemn music, soft and clear

As if a field of lily-bells

Were tolling all together, sweet

But sad and low and keeping time

To multitudinous marching feet

With a slow funereal beat

And a deep harmonious chime

That told us by its dark refrain

The reason fairies suffered pain.

SONG

Bear her along

Keep ye your song

Tender and sweet and low:

Fairies must die!

Ask ye not why

Ye that have hurt her so.

Passing away—flower from the spray! Colour and light from the leaf!

Soon, soon will the year shed its bloom on her bier, and the dust of its dreams on our grief.

Men upon earth

Bring us to birth

Gently at even and morn!

When as brother and brother

They greet one another

And smile—then a fairy is born!

But at each cruel word

Upon earth that is heard,

Each deed of unkindness or hate,

Some fairy must pass

From the games in the grass

And steal thro' the terrible Gate.

Passing away—flower from the spray! Colour and light from the leaf!

Soon, soon will the year shed its bloom on her bier, and the dust of its dreams on our grief.

If ye knew, if ye knew

All the wrong that ye do

By the thought that ye harbour alone,

How the face of some fairy

Grows wistful and weary

And the heart in her cold as a stone!

Ah, she was born

Blithe as the morn

Under an April sky,

Born of the greeting

Of two lovers meeting.

They parted, and so she must die.

Passing away—flower from the spray! Colour and light from the leaf!

Soon, soon will the year shed its bloom on her bier, and the dust of its dreams on our grief.

Cradled in blisses,

Yea, born of your kisses,

Oh, ye lovers that met by the moon,

She would not have cried

In the darkness and died

If ye had not forgotten so soon.

Cruel mortals, they say,

Live for ever and aye,

And they pray in the dark on their knees.

But the flowers that are fled

And the loves that are dead,

What heaven takes pity on these?

Bear her along—singing your song—tender and sweet and low!

Fairies must die! Ask ye not why—ye that have hurt her so.

Passing away—

Flower from the spray!

Colour and light from the leaf!

Soon, soon will the year

Shed its bloom on her bier

And the dust of its dreams on our grief.

*    *    *    *

Then we came through a glittering crystal grot

By a path like, a pale moonbeam,

And a broad blue bridge of Forget-me-not

Over a shimmering stream,

To where, through the deep blue dusk, a gleam

Rose like the soul of the setting sun;

A sunset breaking through the earth,

A crimson sea of the poppies of dream,

Deep as the sleep that gave them birth

In the night where all earthly dreams are done.

And then, like a pearl-pale porch of the moon,

Faint and sweet as a starlit shrine,

Over the gloom

Of the crimson bloom

We saw the Gates of Ivory shine;

And, lulled and lured by the lullaby tune

Of the cradling airs that drowsily creep

From blossom to blossom, and lazily croon

Through the heart of the midnight's mystic noon,

We came to the Gates of the City of Sleep.

Faint and sweet as a lily's repose

On the broad black breast of a midnight lake,

The City delighted the cradling night:

Like a straggling palace of cloud it rose;

The towers were crowned with a crystal light

Like the starry crown of a white snowflake

As they pierced in a wild white pinnacled crowd,

Through the dusky wreaths of enchanted cloud

That swirled all round like a witch's hair.

And we heard, as the sound of a great sea sighing,

The sigh of the sleepless world of care;

And we saw strange shadowy figures flying

Up to the Ivory Gates and beating

With pale hands, long and famished and thin;

Like blinded birds we saw them dash

Against the cruelly gleaming wall:

We heard them wearily moan and call

With sharp starved lips for ever entreating

The pale doorkeeper to let them in.

And still, as they beat, again and again,

We saw on the moon-pale lintels a splash

Of crimson blood like a poppy-stain

Or a wild red rose from the gardens of pain

That sigh all night like a ghostly sea

From the City of Sleep to Gethsemane.

And lo, as we neared the mighty crowd

An old blind man came, crying aloud

To greet us, as once the blind man cried

In the Bible picture—you know we tried

To paint that print, with its Eastern sun;

But the reds and the yellows would mix and run,

And the blue of the sky made a horrible mess

Right over the edge of the Lord's white dress.

And the old blind man, just as though he had eyes,

Came straight to meet us; and all the cries

Of the crowd were hushed; and a strange sweet calm

Stole through the air like a breath of the balm

That was wafted abroad from the Forest of Thyme

(For it rolled all round that curious clime

With its magical clouds of perfumed trees.)

And the blind man cried, "Our help is at hand,

Oh, brothers, remember the old command,

Remember the frankincense and myrrh,

Make way, make way for those little ones there;

Make way, make way, I have seen them afar

Under a great white Eastern star;

For I am the mad blind man who sees!"

Then he whispered, softly—Of such as these;

And through the hush of the cloven crowd

We passed to the gates of the City, and there

Our fairy heralds cried aloud—

Open your Gates; don't stand and stare;

These are the Children for whom our King

Made all the star-worlds dance in a ring!

And lo, like a sorrow that melts from the heart

In tears, the slow gates melted apart;

And into the City we passed like a dream;

And then, in one splendid marching stream

The whole of that host came following through.

We were only children, just like you;

Children, ah, but we felt so grand

As we led them—although we could understand

Nothing at all of the wonderful song

That rose all round as we marched along.

SONG

You that have seen how the world and its glory

Change and grow old like the love of a friend;

You that have come to the end of the story,

You that were tired ere you came to the end;

You that are weary of laughter and sorrow,

Pain and pleasure, labour and sin,

Sick of the midnight and dreading the morrow,

Ah, come in; come in.

You that are bearing the load of the ages;

You that have loved overmuch and too late;

You that confute all the saws of the sages;

You that served only because you must wait,

Knowing your work was a wasted endeavour;

You that have lost and yet triumphed therein,

Add loss to your losses and triumph for ever;

Ah, come in; come in.

And we knew as we went up that twisted street,

With its violet shadows and pearl-pale walls,

We were coming to Something strange and sweet,

For the dim air echoed with elfin calls;

And, far away, in the heart of the City,

A murmur of laughter and revelry rose,—

A sound that was faint as the smile of Pity,

And sweet as a swan-song's golden close.

And then, once more, as we marched along,

There surged all round us that wonderful song;

And it swung to the tramp of our marching feet

But ah, it was tenderer now and so sweet

That it made our eyes grow wet and blind,

And the whole wide-world seem mother-kind,

Folding us round with a gentle embrace,

And pressing our souls to her soft sweet face.

SONG

Dreams; dreams; ah, the memory blinding us,

Blinding our eyes to the way that we go;

Till the new sorrow come, once more reminding us

Blindly of kind hearts, ours long ago:

Mother-mine, whisper we, yours was the love for me!

Still, though our paths lie lone and apart,

Yours is the true love, shining above for me,

Yours are the kind eyes, hurting my heart.

Dreams; dreams; ah, how shall we sing of them,

Dreams that we loved with our head on her breast:

Dreams; dreams; and the cradle-sweet swing of them;

Ay, for her voice was the sound we loved best:

Can we remember at all or, forgetting it,

Can we recall for a moment the gleam

Of our childhood's delight and the wonder begetting it,

Wonder awakened in dreams of a dream?

And once again, from the heart of the City

A murmur of tenderer laughter rose,

A sound that was faint as the smile of Pity,

And sweet as a swan-song's golden close;

And it seemed as if some wonderful Fair

Were charming the night of the City of Dreams,

For, over the mystical din out there,

The clouds were litten with flickering gleams,

And a roseate light like the day's first flush

Quivered and beat on the towers above,

And we heard through the curious crooning hush

An elfin song that we used to love.

Little Boy Blue, come blow up your horn ...

And the soft wind blew it the other way;

So all that we heard was—Cow's in the corn;

But we never heard anything half so gay!

And ever we seemed to be drawing nearer

That mystical roseate smoke-wreathed glare,

And the curious music grew louder and clearer,

Till mustard-seed said, "We are lucky, you see,

We've arrived at a time of festivity!"

And so to the end of the street we came,

And turned a corner, and—there we were,

In a place that glowed like the dawn of day,

A crowded clamouring City square

Like the cloudy heart of an opal, aflame

With the lights of a great Dream-Fair:

Thousands of children were gathered there,

Thousands of old men, weary and grey,

And the shouts of the showmen filled the air—

This way! This way! This way!

And See-Saw; Margery Daw; we heard a rollicking shout,

As the swing-boats hurtled over our heads to the tune of the roundabout;

And Little Boy Blue, come blow up your horn, we heard the showmen cry,

And Dickory Dock, I'm as good as a clock, we heard the swings reply.

This way, this way to your Heart's Desire;

Come, cast your burdens down;

And the pauper shall mount his throne in the skies,

And the king be rid of his crown:

And souls that were dead shall be fed with fire

From the fount of their ancient pain,

And your lost love come with the light in her eyes

Back to your heart again.

Ah, here be sure she shall never prove

Less kind than her eyes were bright;

This way, this way to your old lost love,

You shall kiss her lips to-night;

This way for the smile of a dead man's face

And the grip of a brother's hand,

This way to your childhood's heart of grace

And your home in Fairy-land.

Dickory Dock, I'm as good as a clock, d'you hear my swivels chime?

To and fro as I come and go, I keep eternal time.

O, little Bo-peep, if you've lost your sheep and don't know where to find 'em,

Leave 'em alone and they'll come home, and carry their tails behind 'em.

And See-Saw; Margery Daw; there came the chorussing shout,

As the swing-boats answered the roaring tune of the rollicking roundabout;

Dickory, dickory, dickory, dock, d'you hear my swivels chime?

Swing; swing; you're as good as a king if you keep eternal time.

Then we saw that the tunes of the world were one;

And the metre that guided the rhythmic sun

Was at one, like the ebb and the flow of the sea,

With the tunes that we learned at our mother's knee;

The beat of the horse-hoofs that carried us down

To see the fine Lady of Banbury Town;

And so, by the rhymes that we knew, we could tell

Without knowing the others—that all was well.

And then, our brains began to spin;

For it seemed as if that mighty din

Were no less than the cries of the poets and sages

Of all the nations in all the ages;

And, if they could only beat out the whole

Of their music together, the guerdon and goal

Of the world would be reached with one mighty shout,

And the dark dread secret of Time be out;

And nearer, nearer they seemed to climb,

And madder and merrier rose the song,

And the swings and the see-saws marked the time;

For this was the maddest and merriest throng

That ever was met on a holy-day

To dance the dust of the world away;

And madder and merrier, round and round

The whirligigs whirled to the whirling sound,

Till it seemed that the mad song burst its bars

And mixed with the song of the whirling stars,

The song that the rhythmic Time-Tides tell

To seraphs in Heaven and devils in Hell;

Ay; Heaven and Hell in accordant chime

With the universal rhythm and rhyme

Were nearing the secret of Space and Time;

The song of that ultimate mystery

Which only the mad blind men who see,

Led by the laugh of a little child,

Can utter; ay, wilder and yet more wild

It maddened, till now—full song—it was out!

It roared from the starry roundabout—

A child was born in Bethlehem, in Bethlehem, in Bethlehem,

A child was born in Bethlehem; ah, hear my fairy fable;

For I have seen the King of Kings, no longer thronged with angel wings,

But crooning like a little babe, and cradled in a stable.

The wise men came to greet him with their gifts of myrrh and frankincense,—

Gold and myrrh and frankincense they brought to make him mirth;

And would you know the way to win to little brother Peterkin,

My childhood's heart shall guide you through the glories of the earth.

A child was born in Bethlehem, in Bethlehem, in Bethlehem;

The wise men came to welcome him: a star stood o'er the gable;

And there they saw the King of Kings, no longer thronged with angel wings,

But crooning like a little babe, and cradled in a stable.

And creeping through the music once again the fairy cry

Came freezing o'er the snowy towers to lead us on to Peterkin:

Once more the fairy bugles blew from lands beyond the sky,

And we all groped out together, dazed and blind, we knew not why;

Out through the City's farther gates we went to look for Peterkin;

Out, out into the dark Unknown, and heard the clamour die

Far, far away behind us as we trotted on to Peterkin.

Then once more along the rare

Forest-paths we groped our way:

Here the glow-worm's league-long glare

Turned the Wild Thyme night to day:

There we passed a sort of whale

Sixty feet in length or more,

But we knew it was a snail

Even when we heard it snore.

Often through the glamorous gloom

Almost on the top of us

We beheld a beetle loom

Like a hippopotamus;

Once or twice a spotted toad

Like a mountain wobbled by

With a rolling moon that glowed

Through the skin-fringe of its eye.

Once a caterpillar bowed

Down a leaf of Ygdrasil

Like a sunset-coloured cloud

Sleeping on a quiet hill:

Once we came upon a moth

Fast asleep with outspread wings,

Like a mighty tissued cloth

Woven for the feet of kings.

There above the woods in state

Many a temple dome that glows

Delicately like a great

Rainbow-coloured bubble rose:

Though they were but flowers on earth,

Oh, we dared not enter in;

For in that divine re-birth

Less than awe were more than sin.

Yet their mystic anthems came

Sweetly to our listening ears;

And their burden was the same—

"No more sorrow, no more tears!

Whither Peterkin has gone

You, assuredly, shall go:

When your wanderings are done,

All he knows you, too, shall know!"

So we thought we'd onward roam

Till earth's Smallest Flower appeared,

With a less tremendous dome

Less divinely to be feared:

Then, perchance, if we should dare

Timidly to enter in,

Might some kindly doorkeeper

Give us news of Peterkin.

At last we saw a crimson porch

Far away, like a dull red torch

Burning in the purple gloom;

And a great ocean of perfume

Rolled round us as we drew anear,

And then we strangely seemed to hear

The shadow of a mighty psalm,

A sound as if a golden sea

Of music swung in utter calm

Against the shores of Eternity;

And then we saw the mighty dome

Of some mysterious Temple tower

On high; and knew that we had come,

At last, to that sweet House of Grace

Which wise men find in every place—

The Temple of the Smallest Flower.

And there—alas—our fairy friends

Whispered, "Here our kingdom ends:

You must enter in alone,

But your souls will surely show

Whither Peterkin is gone

And the road that you must go:

We, poor fairies, have no souls!

Hark, the warning hare-bell tolls;"

So "Good-bye, good-bye," they said,

"Dear little seekers-for-the-dead."

They vanished; ah, but as they went

We heard their voices softly blent

In some mysterious fairy song

That seemed to make us wise and strong;

For it was like the holy calm

That fills the bosomed rose with balm,

Or blessings that the twilight breathes

Where the honeysuckle wreathes

Between young lovers and the sky

As on banks of flowers they lie;

And with wings of rose and green

Laughing fairies pass unseen,

Singing their sweet lullaby,—

Lulla-lulla-lullaby!

Lulla-lulla-lullaby!

Ah, good-night, with lullaby!

*    *    *    *

Only a flower? Those carven walls,

Those cornices and coronals,

The splendid crimson porch, the thin

Strange sounds of singing from within—

Through the scented arch we stept,

Pushed back the soft petallic door,

And down the velvet aisles we crept;

Was it a Flower—no more?

For one of the voices that we heard,

A child's voice, clear as the voice of a bird,

Was it not?—nay, it could not be!

And a woman's voice that tenderly

Answered him in fond refrain,

And pierced our hearts with sweet sweet pain,

As if dear Mary-mother hung

Above some little child, and sung.

Between the waves of that golden sea

The cradle-songs of Eternity;

And, while in her deep smile he basked,

Answered whatsoe'er he asked.

What is there hid in the heart of a rose,

Mother-mine?

Ah, who knows, who knows, who knows?

A man that died on a lonely hill

May tell you, perhaps, but none other will,

Little child.

What does it take to make a rose,

Mother-mine?

The God that died to make it knows

It takes the world's eternal wars,

It takes the moon and all the stars,

It takes the might of heaven and hell

And the everlasting Love as well,

Little child.

But there, in one great shrine apart

Within the Temple's holiest heart,

We came upon a blinding light,

Suddenly, and a burning throne

Of pinnacled glory, wild and white;

We could not see Who reigned thereon;

For, all at once, as a wood-bird sings,

The aisles were full of great white wings

Row above mystic burning row;

And through the splendour and the glow

We saw four angels, great and sweet,

With outspread wings and folded feet,

Come gliding down from a heaven within

The golden heart of Paradise;

And in their hands, with laughing eyes,

Lay little brother Peterkin.

And all around the Temple of the Smallest of the Flowers

The glory of the angels made a star for little Peterkin;

For all the Kings of Splendour and all the Heavenly Powers

Were gathered there together in the fairy forest bowers

With all their globed and radiant wings to make a star for Peterkin,

The star that shone upon the East, a star that still is ours,

Whene'er we hang our stockings up, a star of wings for Peterkin.

Then all, in one great flash, was gone—

A voice cried, "Hush, all's well!"

And we stood dreaming there alone,

In darkness. Who can tell

The mystic quiet that we felt,

As if the woods in worship knelt;

Far off we heard a bell

Tolling strange human folk to prayer

Through fields of sunset-coloured air.

And then a voice, "Why, here they are!"

And—as it seemed—we woke;

The sweet old skies, great star by star

Upon our vision broke;

Field over field of heavenly blue

Rose o'er us; then a voice we knew

Softly and gently spoke—

"See, they are sleeping by the side

Of that dear little one—who died."

PART V

THE HAPPY ENDING

We told dear father all our tale

That night before we went to bed,

And at the end his face grew pale,

And he bent over us and said

(Was it not strange?) he, too, was there,

A weary, weary watch to keep

Before the gates of the City of Sleep;

But, ere we came, he did not dare

Even to dream of entering in,

Or even to hope for Peterkin.

He was the poor blind man, he said,

And we—how low he bent his head!

Then he called mother near; and low

He whispered to us—"Prompt me now;

For I forget that song we heard,

But you remember every word."

Then memory came like a breaking morn,

And we breathed it to him—A child was born!

And there he drew us to his breast

And softly murmured all the rest.—

The wise men came to greet him with their gifts of myrrh and frankincense,—

Gold and myrrh and frankincense they brought to make him mirth;

And would you know the way to win to little brother Peterkin,

My childhood's heart shall guide you through the glories of the earth.

Then he looked up and mother knelt

Beside us, oh, her eyes were bright;

Her arms were like a lovely belt

All round us as we said Good-night

To father: he was crying now,

But they were happy tears, somehow;

For there we saw dear mother lay

Her cheek against his cheek and say—

Hush, let me kiss those tears away.

DEDICATION

What can a wanderer bring

To little ones loved like you?

You have songs of your own to sing

That are far more steadfast and true,

Crumbs of pity for birds

That flit o'er your sun-swept lawn,

Songs that are dearer than all our words

With a love that is clear as the dawn.

What should a dreamer devise,

In the depths of his wayward will,

To deepen the gleam of your eyes

Who can dance with the Sun-child still?

Yet you glanced on his lonely way,

You cheered him in dream and deed,

And his heart is o'erflowing, o'erflowing to-day

With a love that—you never will need.

What can a pilgrim teach

To dwellers in fairy-land?

Truth that excels all speech

You murmur and understand!

All he can sing you he brings;

But—one thing more if he may,

One thing more that the King of Kings

Will take from the child on the way.

Yet how can a child of the night

Brighten the light of the sun?

How can he add a delight

To the dances that never are done?

Ah, what if he struggles to turn

Once more to the sweet old skies

With praise and praise, from the fetters that burn,

To the God that brightened your eyes?

Yes; he is weak, he will fail,

Yet, what if, in sorrows apart,

One thing, one should avail,

The cry of a grateful heart;

It has wings: they return through the night

To a sky where the light lives yet,

To the clouds that kneel on his mountain-height

And the path that his feet forget.

What if he struggles and still

Fails and struggles again?

What if his broken will

Whispers the struggle is vain?

Once at least he has risen

Because he remembered your eyes;

Once they have brought to his earthly prison

The passion of Paradise.

Kind little eyes that I love,

Eyes forgetful of mine,

In a dream I am bending above

Your sleep, and you open and shine;

And I know as my own grow blind

With a lonely prayer for your sake,

He will hear—even me—little eyes that were kind,

God bless you, asleep or awake.

FORTY SINGING SEAMEN AND OTHER POEMS

TO GARNETT

FORTY SINGING SEAMEN

"In our lands be Beeres and Lyons of dyvers colours as ye redd, grene, black, and white. And in our land be also unicornes and these Unicornes slee many Lyons.... Also there dare no man make a lye in our lande, for if he dyde he sholde incontynent be sleyn."—Mediæval Epistle, of Pope Prester John.

I

Across the seas of Wonderland to Mogadore we plodded,

Forty singing seamen in an old black barque,

And we landed in the twilight where a Polyphemus nodded

With his battered moon-eye winking red and yellow through the dark!

For his eye was growing mellow,

Rich and ripe and red and yellow,

As was time, since old Ulysses made him bellow in the dark!

Cho.—Since Ulysses bunged his eye up with a pine-torch in the dark!

II

Were they mountains in the gloaming or the giant's ugly shoulders

Just beneath the rolling eyeball, with its bleared and vinous glow,

Red and yellow o'er the purple of the pines among the boulders

And the shaggy horror brooding on the sullen slopes below,

Were they pines among the boulders

Or the hair upon his shoulders?

We were only simple seamen, so of course we didn't know.

Cho.—We were simple singing seamen, so of course we couldn't know.

III

But we crossed a plain of poppies, and we came upon a fountain

Not of water, but of jewels, like a spray of leaping fire;

And behind it, in an emerald glade, beneath a golden mountain

There stood a crystal palace, for a sailor to admire;

For a troop of ghosts came round us,

Which with leaves of bay they crowned us,

Then with grog they well nigh drowned us, to the depth of our desire!

Cho.—And 'twas very friendly of them, as a sailor can admire!

IV

There was music all about us, we were growing quite forgetful

We were only singing seamen from the dirt of London-town,

Though the nectar that we swallowed seemed to vanish half regretful

As if we wasn't good enough to take such vittles down,

When we saw a sudden figure,

Tall and black as any nigger,

Like the devil—only bigger—drawing near us with a frown!

Cho.—Like the devil—but much bigger—and he wore a golden crown!

V

And "What's all this?" he growls at us! With dignity we chaunted,

"Forty singing seamen, sir, as won't be put upon!"

"What? Englishmen?" he cries, "Well, if ye don't mind being haunted,

Faith you're welcome to my palace; I'm the famous Prester John!

Will ye walk into my palace?

I don't bear 'ee any malice!

One and all ye shall be welcome in the halls of Prester John!"

Cho.—So we walked into the palace and the halls of Prester John!

VI

Now the door was one great diamond and the hall a hollow ruby—

Big as Beachy Head, my lads, nay bigger by a half!

And I sees the mate wi' mouth agape, a-staring like a booby,

And the skipper close behind him, with his tongue out like a calf!

Now the way to take it rightly

Was to walk along politely

Just as if you didn't notice—so I couldn't help but laugh!

Cho.—For they both forgot their manners and the crew was bound to laugh!

VII

But he took us through his palace and, my lads, as I'm a sinner,

We walked into an opal like a sunset-coloured cloud—

"My dining-room," he says, and, quick as light we saw a dinner

Spread before us by the fingers of a hidden fairy crowd;

And the skipper, swaying gently

After dinner, murmurs faintly,

"I looks to-wards you, Prester John, you've done us very proud!"

Cho.—And we drank his health with honours, for he done us very proud!

VIII

Then he walks us to his garden where we sees a feathered demon

Very splendid and important on a sort of spicy tree!

"That's the Phœnix," whispers Prester, "which all eddicated seamen

Knows the only one existent, and he's waiting for to flee!

When his hundred years expire

Then he'll set hisself a-fire

And another from his ashes rise most beautiful to see!"

Cho.—With wings of rose and emerald most beautiful to see!

IX

Then he says, "In younder forest there's a little silver river,

And whosoever drinks of it, his youth shall never die!

The centuries go by, but Prester John endures for ever

With his music in the mountains and his magic on the sky!

While your hearts are growing colder,

While your world is growing older,

There's a magic in the distance, where the sea-line meets the sky,"

Cho.—It shall call to singing seamen till the fount o' song is dry!

X

So we thought we'd up and seek it, but that forest fair defied us,—

First a crimson leopard laughs at us most horrible to see,

Then a sea-green lion came and sniffed and licked his chops and eyed us,

While a red and yellow unicorn was dancing round a tree!

We was trying to look thinner,

Which was hard, because our dinner

Must ha' made us very tempting to a cat o' high degree!

Cho.—Must ha' made us very tempting to the whole menarjeree!

XI

So we scuttled from that forest and across the poppy meadows

Where the awful shaggy horror brooded o'er us in the dark!

And we pushes out from shore again a-jumping at our shadows,

And pulls away most joyful to the old black barque!

And home again we plodded

While the Polyphemus nodded

With his battered moon-eye winking red and yellow through the dark.

Cho.—Oh, the moon above the mountains, red and yellow through the dark!

XII

Across the seas of Wonderland to London-town we blundered,

Forty singing seamen as was puzzled for to know

If the visions that we saw was caused by—here again we pondered—

A tipple in a vision forty thousand years ago.

Could the grog we dreamt we swallowed

Make us dream of all that followed?

We were only simple seamen, so of course we didn't know!

Cho.—We were simple singing seamen, so of course we could not know!

THE EMPIRE BUILDERS

Who are the Empire-builders? They

Whose desperate arrogance demands

A self-reflecting power to sway

A hundred little selfless lands?

Lord God of battles, ere we bow

To these and to their soulless lust,

Let fall Thy thunders on us now

And strike us equal to the dust.

Before the stars in heaven were made

Our great Commander led us forth;

And now the embattled lines are laid

To East, to West, to South, to North;

According as of old He planned

We take our station in the field,

Nor dare to dream we understand

The splendour of the swords we wield.

We know not what the Soul intends

That lives and moves behind our deeds;

We wheel and march to glorious ends

Beyond the common soldier's needs:

And some are raised to high rewards,

And some by regiments are hurled

To die upon the opposing swords

And sleep—forgotten by the world.

And not where navies churn the foam,

Nor called to fields of fierce emprize,

In many a country cottage-home

The Empire-builder lives and dies:

Or through the roaring streets he goes

A lean and weary City slave,

The conqueror of a thousand foes

Who walks, unheeded, to his grave.

Leaders unknown of hopes forlorn

Go past us in the daily mart,

With many a shadowy crown of thorn

And many a kingly broken heart:

Though England's banner overhead

Ever the secret signal flew,

We only see its Cross is red

As children see the skies are blue.

For all are Empire-builders here,

Whose hearts are true to heaven and home

And, year by slow revolving year,

Fulfil the duties as they come;

So simple seems the task, and yet

Many for this are crucified;

Ay, and their brother-men forget

The simple wounds in palm and side.

But he that to his home is true,

Where'er the tides of power may flow,

Has built a kingdom great and new

Which Time nor Fate shall overthrow

These are the Empire-builders, these

Annex where none shall say them nay

Beyond the world's uncharted seas

Realms that can never pass away.

NELSON'S YEAR

(1905)

I

"Hasten the Kingdom, England!"

This year, a hundred years ago,

The world attended, breathless, on the gathering pomp of war,

While England and her deathless dead, with all their mighty hearts aglow,

Swept onward like the dawn of doom to triumph at Trafalgar;

Then the world was hushed to wonder

As the cannon's dying thunder

Broke out again in muffled peals across the heaving sea,

And home the Victor came at last,

Home, home, with England's flag half-mast,

That never dipped to foe before, on Nelson's Victory.

II

God gave this year to England;

And what He gives He takes again;

He gives us life, He gives us death: our victories have wings;

He gives us love and in its heart He hides the whole world's heart of pain:

We gain by loss: impartially the eternal balance swings!

Ay; in the fire we cherish

Our thoughts and dreams may perish;

Yet shall it burn for England's sake triumphant as of old!

What sacrifice could gain for her

Our own shall still maintain for her,

And hold the gates of Freedom wide that take no keys of gold.

III

God gave this year to England;

Her eyes are far too bright for tears

Of sorrow; by her silent dead she kneels, too proud for pride;

Their blood, their love, have bought her right to claim the new imperial years

In England's name for Freedom, in whose love her children died;

In whose love, though hope may dwindle,

Love and brotherhood shall kindle

Between the striving nations as a choral song takes fire,

Till new hope, new faith, new wonder

Cleave the clouds of doubt asunder,

And speed the union of mankind in one divine desire.

IV

Hasten the Kingdom, England;

This year across the listening world

There came a sound of mingled tears where victory and defeat

Clasped hands; and Peace—among the dead—stood wistfully, with white wings furled,

Knowing the strife was idle; for the night and morning meet,

Yet there is no disunion

In heaven's divine communion

As through the gates of twilight the harmonious morning pours;

Ah, God speed that grander morrow

When the world's divinest sorrow

Shall show how Love stands knocking at the world's unopened doors.

V

Hasten the Kingdom, England;

Look up across the narrow seas,

Across the great white nations to thy dark imperial throne

Where now three hundred million souls attend on thine august decrees;

Ah, bow thine head in humbleness, the Kingdom is thine own:

Not for the pride or power

God gave thee this in dower;

But, now the West and East have met and wept their mortal loss,

Now that their tears have spoken

And the long dumb spell is broken,

Is it nothing that thy banner bears the red eternal cross?

VI

Ay! Lift the flag of England;

And lo, that Eastern cross is there,

Veiled with a hundred meanings as our English eyes are veiled;

Yet to the grander dawn we move oblivious of the sign we bear,

Oblivious of the heights we climb until the last be scaled;

Then with all the earth before us

And the great cross floating o'er us

We shall break the sword we forged of old, so weak we were and blind;

While the inviolate heaven discloses

England's Rose of all the roses

Dawning wide and ever wider o'er the kingdom of mankind.

VII

Hasten the Kingdom, England;

For then all nations shall be one;

One as the ordered stars are one that sing upon their way,

One with the rhythmic glories of the swinging sea and the rolling sun,

One with the flow of life and death, the tides of night and day;

One with all dreams of beauty,

One with all laws of duty;

One with the weak and helpless while the one sky burns above;

Till eyes by tears made glorious

Look up at last victorious,

And lips that starved break open in one song of life and love.

VIII

Hasten the Kingdom, England;

And when the Spring returns again

Rekindle in our English hearts the universal Spring,

That we may wait in faith upon the former and the latter rain,

Till all waste places burgeon and the wildernesses sing;

Pour the glory of thy pity

Through the dark and troubled city;

Pour the splendour of thy beauty over wood and meadow fair;

May the God of battles guide thee

And the Christ-child walk beside thee

With a word of peace for England in the dawn of Nelson's Year.

IN TIME OF WAR

I

To-night o'er Bagshot heath the purple heather

Rolls like dumb thunder to the splendid West;

And mighty ragged clouds are massed together

Above the scarred old common's broken breast;

And there are hints of blood between the boulders,

Red glints of fiercer blossom, bright and bold;

And round the shaggy mounds and sullen shoulders

The gorse repays the sun with savage gold.

And now, as in the West the light grows holy,

And all the hollows of the heath grow dim,

Far off, a sulky rumble rolls up slowly

Where guns at practice growl their evening hymn.

And here and there in bare clean yellow spaces

The print of horse-hoofs like an answering cry

Strikes strangely on the sense from lonely places

Where there is nought but empty heath and sky.

The print of warlike hoofs, where now no figure

Of horse or man along the sky's red rim

Breaks on the low horizon's rough black rigour

To make the gorgeous waste less wild and grim;

Strangely the hoof-prints strike, a Crusoe's wonder,

Framed with sharp furze amongst the footless fells,

A menace and a mystery, rapt asunder,

As if the whole wide world contained nought else,—

Nought but the grand despair of desolation

Between us and that wild, how far, how near,

Where, clothed with thunder, nation grapples nation,

And Slaughter grips the clay-cold hand of Fear.

II

And far above the purple heath the sunset stars awaken,

And ghostly hosts of cloud across the West begin to stream,

And all the low soft winds with muffled cannonades are shaken,

And all the blood-red blossom draws aloof into a dream;

A dream—no more—and round the dream the clouds are curled together;

A dream of two great stormy hosts embattled in the sky;

For there against the low red heavens each sombre ridge of heather

Up-heaves a hedge of bayonets around a battle-cry;

Melts in the distant battle-field or brings the dream so near it

That, almost, as the rifted clouds around them swim and reel,

A thousand grey-lipped faces flash—ah, hark, the heart can hear it—

The sharp command that lifts as one the levelled lines of steel.

And through the purple thunders there are silent shadows creeping

With murderous gleams of light, and then—a mighty leaping roar

Where foe and foe are met; and then—a long low sound of weeping

As Death laughs out from sea to sea, another fight is o'er.

Another fight—but ah, how much is over? Night descending

Draws o'er the scene her ghastly moon-shot veil with piteous hands;

But all around the bivouac-glare the shadowy pickets wending

See sights, hear sounds that only war's own madness understands.

No circle of the accursed dead where dreaming Dante wandered,

No city of death's eternal dole could match this mortal world

Where men, before the living soul and quivering flesh are sundered,

Through all the bestial shapes of pain to one wide grave are hurled.

But in the midst for those who dare beyond the fringe to enter

Be sure one kingly figure lies with pale and blood-soiled face,

And round his brows a ragged crown of thorns; and in the centre

Of those pale folded hands and feet the sigil of his grace.

See, how the pale limbs, marred and scarred in love's lost battle, languish;

See how the splendid passion still smiles quietly from his eyes:

Come, come and see a king indeed, who triumphs in his anguish,

Who conquers here in utter loss beneath the eternal skies.

For unto lips so deadly calm what answer shall be given?

Oh pale, pale king so deadly still beneath the unshaken stars,

Who shall deny thy kingdom here, though heaven and earth were riven,

With the last roar of onset in the world's intestine wars?

The laugh is Death's; he laughs as erst o'er hours that England cherished,

"Count up, count up the stricken homes that wail the first-born son,

Count by your starved and fatherless the tale of what hath perished;

Then gather with your foes and ask if you—or I—have won."

III

The world rolls on; and love and peace are mated:

Still on the breast of England, like a star,

The blood-red lonely heath blows, consecrated,

A brooding practice-ground for blood-red war.

Yet is there nothing out of tune with Nature

There, where the skylark showers his earliest song,

Where sun and wind have moulded every feature,

And one world-music bears each note along.

There many a brown-winged kestrel swoops or hovers

In poised and patient quest of his own prey;

And there are fern-clad glens where happy lovers

May kiss the murmuring summer noon away.

There, as the primal earth was—all is glorious

Perfect and wise and wonderful in view

Of that great heaven through which we rise victorious

O'er all that strife and change and death can do.

No nation yet has risen o'er earth's first nature;

Though love illumed each individual mind,

Like some half-blind, half-formed primeval creature

The State still crawled a thousand years behind.

Still on the standards of the great World-Powers

Lion and bear and eagle sullenly brood,

Whether the slow folds flap o'er halcyon hours

Or stream tempestuously o'er fields of blood.

By war's red evolution we have risen

Far, since fierce Erda chose her conquering few,

And out of Death's red gates and Time's grey prison

They burst, elect from battle, tried and true.

But now Death mocks at youth and love and glory,

Chivalry slinks behind his loaded mines,

With meaner murderous lips War tells her story,

And round her cunning brows no laurel shines.

And here to us the eternal charge is given

To rise and make our low world touch God's high:

To hasten God's own kingdom, Man's own heaven,

And teach Love's grander army how to die.

No kingdom then, no long-continuing city

Shall e'er again be stablished by the sword;

No blood-bought throne defy the powers of pity,

No despot's crown outweigh one helot's word.

Imperial England, breathe thy marching orders:

The great host waits; the end, the end is close,

When earth shall know thy peace in all her borders,

And all her deserts blossom with thy Rose.

Princedoms and peoples rise and flash and perish

As the dew passes from the flowering thorn;

Yet the one Kingdom that our dreams still cherish

Lives in a light that blinds the world's red morn.

Hasten the Kingdom, England, the days darken;

We would not have thee slacken watch or ward,

Nor doff thine armour till the whole world hearken,

Nor till Time bid thee lay aside the sword.

Hasten the Kingdom; hamlet, heath, and city,

We are all at war, one bleeding bulk of pain;

Little we know; but one thing—by God's pity—

We know, and know all else on earth is vain.

We know not yet how much we dare, how little;

We dare not dream of peace; yet, as at need,

England, God help thee, let no jot or tittle

Of Love's last law go past thee without heed.

Who saves his life shall lose it! The great ages

Bear witness—Rome and Babylon and Tyre

Cry from the dust-stopped lips of all their sages,—

There is no hope if man can climb no higher.

England, by God's grace set apart to ponder

A little while from battle, ah, take heed,

Keep watch, keep watch, beside thy sleeping thunder;

Call down Christ's pity while those others bleed;

Waken the God within thee, while the sorrow

Of battle surges round a distant shore,

While Time is thine, lest on some deadly morrow

The moving finger write—but thine no more.

Little we know—but though the advancing æons

Win every painful step by blood and fire,

Though tortured mouths must chant the world's great pæans,

And martyred souls proclaim the world's desire;

Though war be nature's engine of rejection,

Soon, soon, across her universal verge

The soul of man in sacred insurrection

Shall into God's diviner light emerge.

Hasten the Kingdom, England, queen and mother;

Little we know of all Time's works and ways;

Yet this, this, this is sure: we need none other

Knowledge or wisdom, hope or aim or praise,

But to keep this one stormy banner flying

In this one faith that none shall e'er disprove,

Then drive the embattled world before thee, crying,

There is one Emperor, whose name is Love.

ODE FOR THE SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY OF SWINBURNE

I

He needs no crown of ours, whose golden heart

Poured out its wealth so freely in pure praise

Of others: him the imperishable bays

Crown, and on Sunium's height he sits apart:

He hears immortal greetings this great morn:

Fain would we bring, we also, all we may,

Some wayside flower of transitory bloom,

Frail tribute, only born

To greet the gladness of this April day

Then waste on death's dark wind its faint perfume.

II

Here on this April day the whole sweet Spring

Speaks thro' his music only, or seems to speak.

And we that hear, with hearts uplift and weak,

What can we more than claim him for our king?

Here on this April day (and many a time

Shall April come and find him singing still)

He is one with the world's great heart beyond the years,

One with the pulsing rhyme

Of tides that work some heavenly rhythmic will

And hold the secret of all human tears.

III

For he, the last of that immortal race

Whose music, like a robe of living light

Re-clothed each new-born age and made it bright

As with the glory of Love's transfiguring face,

Reddened earth's roses, kindled the deep blue

Of England's radiant, ever-singing sea,

Recalled the white Thalassian from the foam.

Woke the dim stars anew

And triumphed in the triumph of Liberty,

We claim him; but he hath not here his home.

IV

Not here; round him to-day the clouds divide:

We know what faces thro' that rose-flushed air

Now bend above him: Shelley's face is there,

And Hugo's, lit with more than kingly pride.

Replenished there with splendour, the blind eyes

Of Milton bend from heaven to meet his own,

Sappho is there, crowned with those queenlier flowers

Whose graft outgrew our skies,

His gift: Shakespeare leans earthward from his throne

With hands outstretched. He needs no crown of ours.

IN CLOAK OF GREY

I

Love's a pilgrim, cloaked in grey,

And his feet are pierced and bleeding:

Have ye seen him pass this way

Sorrowfully pleading?

Ye that weep the world away,

Have ye seen King Love to-day?—

II

Yea, we saw him; but he came

Poppy-crowned and white of limb!

Song had touched his lips with flame,

And his eyes were drowsed and dim;

And we kissed the hours away

Till night grew rosier than the day.—

III

Hath he left you?—Yea, he left us

A little while ago,

Of his laughter quite bereft us

And his limbs of snow;

We know not why he went away

Who ruled our revels yesterday.—

IV

Because ye did not understand

Love cometh from afar,

A pilgrim out of Holy Land

Guided by a star:

Last night he came in cloak of grey,

Begging. Ye knew him not: he went his way.

A RIDE FOR THE QUEEN

Queen of queens, oh lady mine,

You who say you love me,

Here's a cup of crimson wine

To the stars above me;

Here's a cup of blood and gall

For a soldier's quaffing!

What's the prize to crown it all?

Death? I'll take it laughing!

I ride for the Queen to-night!

Though I find no knightly fee

Waiting on my lealty,

High upon the gallows-tree

Faithful to my fealty,

What had I but love and youth,

Hope and fame in season?

She has proved that more than truth

Glorifies her treason!

Would that other do as much?

Ah, but if in sorrow

Some forgotten look or touch

Pierce her heart to-morrow

She might love me yet, I think;

So her lie befriends me,

Though I know there's darker drink

Down the road she sends me.

Ay, one more great chance is mine

(Can I faint or falter?)

She shall pour my blood like wine,

Make my heart her altar,

Burn it to the dust! For, there,

What if o'er the embers

She should stoop and—I should hear—

"Hush! Thy love remembers!"

One more chance for every word

Whispered to betray me,

While she buckled on my sword

Smiling to allay me;

One more chance; ah, let me not

Mar her perfect pleasure;

Love shall pay me, jot by jot,

Measure for her measure.

Faith shall think I never knew,

I will be so fervent!

Doubt shall dream I dreamed her true

As her war-worn servant!

Whoso flouts her spotless name

(Love, I wear thy token!)

He shall face one sword of flame

Ere the lie be spoken!

All the world's a-foam with may,

(Fragrant as her bosom!)

Could I find a sweeter way

Through the year's young blossom,

Where her warm red mouth on mine

Woke my soul's desire?...

Hey! The cup of crimson wine,

Blood and gall and fire!

Castle Doom or Gates of Death?

(Smile again for pity!)

"Boot and horse," my lady saith,

"Spur against the City,

Bear this message!" God and she

Still forget the guerdon;

Nay, the rope is on the tree!

That shall bear the burden!

I ride for the Queen to-night!

SONG

I

When that I loved a maiden

My heaven was in her eyes,

And when they bent above me

I knew no deeper skies;

But when her heart forsook me

My spirit broke its bars,

For grief beyond the sunset

And love beyond the stars.

II

When that I loved a maiden

She seemed the world to me:

Now is my soul the universe,

My dreams the sky and sea:

There is no heaven above me,

No glory binds or bars

My grief beyond the sunset,

My love beyond the stars.

III

When that I loved a maiden

I worshipped where she trod;

But, when she clove my heart, the cleft

Set free the imprisoned god:

Then was I king of all the world,

My soul had burst its bars,

For grief beyond the sunset

And love beyond the stars.

THE HIGHWAYMAN

PART ONE

I

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,

The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,

And the highwayman came riding—

Riding—riding—

The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

II

He'd a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,

A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin;

They fitted with never a wrinkle: his boots were up to the thigh!

And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,

His pistol butts a-twinkle,

His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

III

Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard,

And he tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred;

He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there

But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,

Bess, the landlord's daughter,

Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

IV

And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked

Where Tim the ostler listened; his face was white and peaked;

His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,

But he loved the landlord's daughter,

The landlord's red-lipped daughter,

Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say—

V

"One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I'm after a prize to-night,

But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;

Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,

Then look for me by moonlight,

Watch for me by moonlight,

I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way."

VI

He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand,

But she loosened her hair i' the casement! His face burnt like a brand

As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;

And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,

(Oh, sweet black waves in the moonlight!)

Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the West.

PART TWO

I

He did not come in the dawning; he did not come at noon;

And out o' the tawny sunset, before the rise o' the moon,

When the road was a gipsy's ribbon, looping the purple moor,

A red-coat troop came marching—

Marching—marching—

King George's men came marching, up to the old inn-door.

II

They said no word to the landlord, they drank his ale instead,

But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed;

Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!

There was death at every window;

And hell at one dark window;

For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.

III

They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest;

They had bound a musket beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast!

"Now keep good watch!" and they kissed her.

She heard the dead man say—

Look for me by moonlight;

Watch for me by moonlight;

I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!

IV

She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!

She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!

They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years,

Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,

Cold, on the stroke of midnight,

The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!

V

The tip of one finger touched it; she strove no more for the rest!

Up, she stood up to attention, with the barrel beneath her breast,

She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;

For the road lay bare in the moonlight;

Blank and bare in the moonlight;

And the blood of her veins in the moonlight throbbed to her love's refrain.

VI

Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hoofs ringing clear;

Tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?

Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,

The highwayman came riding,

Riding, riding!

The red-coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still!

VII

Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!

Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light!

Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,

Then her finger moved in the moonlight,

Her musket shattered the moonlight,

Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death.

VIII

He turned; he spurred to the West; he did not know who stood

Bowed, with her head o'er the musket, drenched with her own red blood!

Not till the dawn he heard it, his face grew grey to hear

How Bess, the landlord's daughter,

The landlord's black-eyed daughter,

Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.

IX

Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,

With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!

Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,

When they shot him down on the highway,

Down like a dog on the highway,

And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.

*    *    *    *

X

And still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,

When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,

When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,

A highwayman comes riding—

Riding—riding—

A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.

XI

Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard;

He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred;

He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there

But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,

Bess, the landlord's daughter,

Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

THE HAUNTED PALACE

Come to the haunted palace of my dreams,

My crumbling palace by the eternal sea,

Which, like a childless mother, still must croon

Her ancient sorrows to the cold white moon,

Or, ebbing tremulously,

With one pale arm, where the long foam-fringe gleams,

Will gather her rustling garments, for a space

Of muffled weeping, round her dim white face.

A princess dwelt here once: long, long ago

This tower rose in the sunset like a prayer;

And, through the witchery of that casement, rolled

In one soft cataract of faëry gold

Her wonder-woven hair;

Her face leaned out and took the sacred glow

Of evening, like the star that listened, high

Above the gold clouds of the western sky.

Was there no prince behind her in the gloom,

No crimson shadow of his rich array?

Her face leaned down to me: I saw the tears

Bleed through her eyes with the slow pain of years,

And her mouth yearned to say—

"Friend, is there any message, from the tomb

Where love lies buried?" But she only said—

"Oh, friend, canst thou not save me from my dead?

"Canst thou not minister to a soul in pain?

Or hast thou then no comfortable word?

Is there no faith in thee wherewith to atone

For his unfaith who left me here alone,

Heart-sick with hope deferred;

Oh, since my love will never come again,

Bring'st thou no respite through the desolate years,

Respite from these most unavailing tears?"

Then saw I, and mine own tears made response,

Her woman's heart come breaking through her eyes;

And, as I stood beneath the tower's grey wall,

She let the soft waves of her deep hair fall

Like flowers from Paradise

Over my fevered face: then all at once

Pity was passion; and like a sea of bliss

Those waves rolled o'er me drowning for her kiss.

*    *    *    *

Seven years we dwelt together in that tower,

Seven years in that old palace by the sea,

And sitting at that casement, side by side,

She told me all her pain: how love had died

Now for all else but me;

Yet how she had loved that other: like a flower

Her red lips parted and with low sweet moan

She pressed their tender suffering on mine own.

And always with vague eyes she gazed afar,

Out through the casement o'er the changing tide;

And slowly was my heart's hope brought to nought

That some day I should win each wandering thought

And make her my soul's bride:

Still, still she gazed across the cold sea-bar;

Ay; with her hand in mine, still, still and pale,

Waited and watched for the unreturning sail.

And I, too, watched and waited as the years

Rolled on; and slowly was I brought to feel

How on my lips she met her lover's kiss,

How my heart's pulse begat an alien bliss;

And cold and hard as steel

For me those eyes were, though their tender tears

Were salt upon my cheek; and then one night

I saw a sail come through the pale moonlight.

And like an alien ghost I stole away,

And like a breathing lover he returned;

And in the woods I dwelt, or sometimes crept

Out in the grey dawn while the lovers slept

And the great sea-tides yearned

Against the iron shores; and faint and grey

The tower and the shut casement rose above:

And on the earth I sobbed out all my love.

At last, one royal rose-hung night in June,

When the warm air like purple Hippocrene

Brimmed the dim valley and sparkled into stars,

I saw them cross the foam-lit sandy bars

And dark pools, glimmering green,

To bathe beneath the honey-coloured moon:

I saw them swim out from that summer shore,

Kissed by the sea, but they returned no more.

*    *    *    *

And into the dark palace, like a dream

Remembered after long oblivious years,

Through the strange open doors I crept and saw

As some poor pagan might, with reverent awe,

And deep adoring tears,

The moonlight through that painted window stream

Over the soft wave of their vacant bed;

There sank I on my knees and bowed my head,

For as a father by a cradle bows,

Remembering two dead children of his own,

I knelt; and by the cry of the great deep

Their love seemed like a murmuring in their sleep,

A little fevered moan,

A little tossing of childish arms that shows

How dreams go by! "If I were God," I wept,

"I would have pity on children while they slept."

*    *    *    *

The days, the months, the years drift over me;

This is my habitation till I die:

Nothing is changed; they left that open book

Beside the window. Did he sit and look

Up at her face as I

Looked while she read it, and the enchanted sea

With rich eternities of love unknown

Fulfilled the low sweet music of her tone?

So did he listen, looking in her face?

And did she ever pause, remembering so

The heart that bore the whole weight of her pain

Until her own heart's love returned again?

In the still evening glow

I sit and listen in this quiet place,

And only hear—like notes of phantom birds—

Their perished kisses and little broken words.

Come to the haunted palace of my dreams,

My crumbling palace by the eternal sea,

Which, like a childless mother, still must croon

Her ancient sorrows to the cold white moon,

Or, ebbing tremulously,

With one pale arm, where the long foam-fringe gleams,

Will gather her rustling garments, for a space

Of muffled weeping, round her dim white face.

THE SCULPTOR

This is my statue: cold and white

It stands and takes the morning light!

The world may flout my hopes and fears,

Yet was my life's work washed with tears

Of blood when this poor hand last night

Finished the pain of years.

Speak for me, patient lips of stone,

Blind eyes my lips have rested on

So often when the o'er-weary brain

Would grope to human love again,

And found this grave cold mask alone

And the tears fell like rain.

Ay; is this all? Is this the brow

I fondled, never wondering how

It lived—the face of pain and bliss

That through the marble met my kiss?

Oh, though the whole world praise it now,

Let no man dream it is!

They blame; they cannot blame aright

Who never knew what infinite

Deep loss must shame me most of all!

They praise; like earth their praises fall

Into a tomb. The hour of light

Is flown beyond recall.

Yet have I seen, yet have I known,

And oh, not tombed in cold white stone

The dream I lose on earth below;

And I shall come with face aglow

And find and claim it for my own

Before God's throne, I know.

SUMMER

(AN ODE)

Now like a pageant of the Golden Year

In rich memorial pomp the hours go by,

With rose-embroidered flags unfurled

And tasselled bugles calling through the world

Wake, for your hope draws near!

Wake, for in each soft porch of azure sky,

Seen through each arch of pale green leaves, the Gate

Of Eden swings apart for Summer's royal state.

Ah, when the Spirit of the moving scene

Has entered in, the splendour will be spent!

The flutes will cease, the gates will close;

Only the scattered crimson of the rose,

The wild wood's hapless queen,

Dis-kingdomed, will declare the way he went;

And, in a little while, her court will go,

Pass like a cloud and leave no trace on earth below.

Tell us no more of Autumn, the slow gold

Of fruitage ripening in a world's decay,

The falling leaves, the moist rich breath

Of woods that swoon and crumble into death

Over the gorgeous mould:

Give us the flash and scent of keen-edged May

Where wastes that bear no harvest yield their bloom,

Rude crofts of flowering nettle, bents of yellow broom.

The very reeds and sedges of the fen

Open their hearts and blossom to the sky;

The wild thyme on the mountain's knees

Unrolls its purple market to the bees;

Unharvested of men

The Traveller's Joy can only smile and die.

Joy, joy alone the throbbing whitethroats bring,

Joy to themselves and heaven! They were but born to sing!

And see, between the northern-scented pines,

The whole sweet summer sharpens to a glow!

See, as the well-spring plashes cool

Over a shadowy green fern-fretted pool

The mystic sunbeam shines

For one mad moment on a breast of snow

A warm white shoulder and a glowing arm

Up-flung, where some swift Undine sinks in shy alarm.

And if she were not all a dream, and lent

Life for a little to your own desire,

Oh, lover in the hawthorn lane,

Dream not you hold her, or you dream in vain!

The violet, spray-besprent

When from that plunge the rainbows flashed like fire,

Will scarce more swiftly lose its happy dew

Than eyes which Undine haunts will cease to shine on you.

What though the throstle pour his heart away,

A happy spendthrift of uncounted gold,

Swinging upon a blossomed briar

With soft throat lifted in a wild desire

To make the world his may.

Ever the pageant through the gates is rolled

Further away; in vain the rich notes throng

Flooding the mellow noon with wave on wave of song.

The feathery meadows like a lilac sea,

Knee-deep, with honeyed clover, red and white,

Roll billowing: the crisp clouds pass

Trailing their soft blue shadows o'er the grass;

The skylark, mad with glee,

Quivers, up, up, to lose himself in light;

And, through the forest, like a fairy dream

Through some dark mind, the ferns in branching beauty stream.

Enough of joy! A little respite lend,

Summer, fair god that hast so little heed

Of these that serve thee but to die,

Mere trappings of thy tragic pageantry!

Show us the end, the end!

We too, with human hearts that break and bleed,

March to the night that rounds their fleeting hour,

And feel we, too, perchance but serve some loftier Power.

O that our hearts might pass away with thee,

Burning and pierced and full of thy sweet pain,

Burst through the gates with thy swift soul,

Hunt thy most white perfection to the goal,

Nor wait, once more to see

Thy chaliced lilies rotting in the rain,

Thy ragged yellowing banners idly hung

In woods that have forgotten all the songs we sung!

Peace! Like a pageant of the Golden Year

In rich memorial pomp the hours go by,

With rose-embroidered flags unfurled

And tasselled bugles calling through the world

Wake, for your hope draws near!

Wake, for in each soft porch of azure sky,

Seen through each arch of pale green leaves, the Gate

Of Eden swings apart for Summer's royal state.

Not wait! Forgive, forgive that feeble cry

Of blinded passion all unworthy thee!

For here the spirit of man may claim

A loftier vision and a nobler aim

Than e'er was born to die:

Man only, of earth, throned on Eternity,

From his own sure abiding-place can mark

How earth's great golden dreams go past into the dark.

AT DAWN

O Hesper-Phosphor, far away

Shining, the first, the last white star,

Hear'st thou the strange, the ghostly cry,

That moan of an ancient agony

From purple forest to golden sky

Shivering over the breathless bay?

It is not the wind that wakes with the day;

For see, the gulls that wheel and call,

Beyond the tumbling white-topped bar,

Catching the sun-dawn on their wings,

Like snow-flakes or like rose-leaves fall,

Flutter and fall in airy rings;

And drift, like lilies ruffling into blossom

Upon some golden lake's unwrinkled bosom.

Are not the forest's deep-lashed fringes wet

With tears? Is not the voice of all regret

Breaking out of the dark earth's heart?

She too, she too, has loved and lost; and we—

We that remember our lost Aready,

Have we not known, we too,

The primal greenwood's arch of blue,

The radiant clouds at sun-rise curled

Around the brows of the golden world;

The marble temples, washed with dew,

To which with rosy limbs aflame

The violet-eyed Thalassian came,

Came, pitiless, only to display

How soon the youthful splendour dies away;

Came, only to depart

Laughing across the grey-grown bitter sea;

For each man's life is earth's epitome,

And though the years bring more than aught they take,

Yet might his heart and hers well break

Remembering how one prayer must still be vain.

How one fair hope is dead,

One passion quenched, one glory fled

With those first loves that never come again.

How many years, how many generations,

Have heard that sigh in the dawn,

When the dark earth yearns to the unforgotten nations

And the old loves withdrawn,

Old loves, old lovers, wonderful and unnumbered

As waves on the wine-dark sea,

'Neath the tall white towers of Troy and the temples that slumbered

In Thessaly?

From the beautiful palaces, from the miraculous portals,

The swift white feet are flown!

They were taintless of dust, the proud, the peerless Immortals

As they sped to their loftier throne!

Perchance they are there, earth dreams, on the shores of Hesper,

Her rosy-bosomed Hours,

Listening the wild fresh forest's enchanted whisper,

Crowned with its new strange flowers;

Listening the great new ocean's triumphant thunder

On the stainless unknown shore,

While that perilous queen of the world's delight and wonder

Comes white from the foam once more.

When the mists divide with the dawn o'er those glittering waters,

Do they gaze over unoared seas—

Naiad and nymph and the woodland's rose-crowned daughters

And the Oceanides?

Do they sing together, perchance, in that diamond splendour,

That world of dawn and dew,

With eyelids twitching to tears and with eyes grown tender

The sweet old songs they knew,

The songs of Greece? Ah, with harp-strings mute do they falter

As the earth like a small star pales?

When the heroes launch their ship by the smoking altar

Does a memory lure their sails?

Far, far away, do their hearts resume the story

That never on earth was told,

When all those urgent oars on the waste of glory

Cast up its gold?

Are not the forest fringes wet

With tears? Is not the voice of all regret

Breaking out of the dark earth's heart?

She too, she too, has loved and lost; and though

She turned last night in disdain

Away from the sunset-embers,

From her soul she can never depart;

She can never depart from her pain.

Vainly she strives to forget;

Beautiful in her woe,

She awakes in the dawn and remembers.

THE SWIMMER'S RACE

I

Between the clover and the trembling sea

They stand upon the golden-shadowed shore

In naked boyish beauty, a strenuous three,

Hearing the breakers' deep Olympic roar;

Three young athletes poised on a forward limb,

Mirrored like marble in the smooth wet sand,

Three statues moulded by Praxiteles:

The blue horizon rim

Recedes, recedes upon a lovelier land,

And England melts into the skies of Greece.

II

The dome of heaven is like one drop of dew,

Quivering and clear and cloudless but for one

Crisp bouldered Alpine range that blinds the blue

With snowy gorges glittering to the sun:

Forward the runners lean, with outstretched hand

Waiting the word—ah, how the light relieves

The silken rippling muscles as they start

Spurning the yellow sand,

Then skimming lightlier till the goal receives

The winner, head thrown back and lips apart.

III

Now at the sea-marge on the sand they lie

At rest for a moment, panting as they breathe,

And gazing upward at the unbounded sky

While the sand nestles round them from beneath;

And in their hands they gather up the gold

And through their fingers let it lazily stream

Over them, dusking all their limbs' fair white,

Blotting their shape and mould,

Till, mixed into the distant gazer's dream

Of earth and heaven, they seem to sink from sight.

IV

But one, in seeming petulance, oppressed

With heat has cast his brown young body free:

With arms behind his head and heaving breast

He lies and gazes at the cool bright sea;

So young Leander might when in the noon

He panted for the starry eyes of eve

And whispered o'er the waste of wandering waves,

"Hero, bid night come soon!"

Nor knew the nymphs were waiting to receive

And kiss his pale limbs in their cold sea-caves.

V

Now to their feet they leap and, with a shout,

Plunge through the glittering breakers without fear,

Breast the green-arching billows, and still out,

As if each dreamed the arms of Hero near;

Now like three sunbeams on an emerald crest,

Now like three foam-flakes melting out of sight,

They are blent with all the glory of all the sea;

One with the golden West;

Merged in a myriad waves of mystic light

As life is lost in immortality.

THE VENUS OF MILO

I

Backward she leans, as when the rose unblown

Slides white from its warm sheath some morn in May!

Under the sloping waist, aslant, her zone

Clings as it slips in tender disarray;

One knee, out-thrust a little, keeps it so

Lingering ere it fall; her lovely face

Gazes as o'er her own Eternity!

Those armless radiant shoulders, long ago

Perchance held arms out wide with yearning grace

For Adon by the blue Sicilian sea.

II

No; thou eternal fount of these poor gleams,

Bright axle-star of the wheeling temporal skies,

Daughter of blood and foam and deathless dreams,

Mother of flying Love that never dies,

To thee, the topmost and consummate flower,

The last harmonic height, our dull desires

And our tired souls in dreary discord climb;

The flesh forgets its pale and wandering fires;

We gaze through heaven as from an ivory tower

Shining upon the last dark shores of Time.

III

White culmination of the dreams of earth,

Thy splendour beacons to a loftier goal,

Where, slipping earthward from the great new birth,

The shadowy senses leave the essential soul!

Oh, naked loveliness, not yet revealed,

A moment hence that falling robe will show

No prophecy like this, this great new dawn,

The bare bright breasts, each like a soft white shield,

And the firm body like a slope of snow

Out of the slipping dream-stuff half withdrawn.

THE NET OF VULCAN

From peaks that clove the heavens asunder

The hunchback god with sooty claws

Loomed o'er the night, a cloud of thunder,

And hurled the net of mortal laws;

It flew, and all the world grew dimmer;

Its blackness blotted out the stars,

Then fell across the rosy glimmer

That told where Venus couched with Mars.

And, when the steeds that draw the morning

Spurned from their Orient hooves the spray,

All vainly soared the lavrock, warning

Those tangled lovers of the day:

Still with those twin white waves in blossom,

Against the warrior's rock-broad breast,

The netted light of the foam-born bosom

Breathed like a sea at rest.

And light was all that followed after,

Light the derision of the sky,

Light the divine Olympian laughter

Of kindlier gods in days gone by:

Low to her lover whispered Venus,

"The shameless net be praised for this—

When night herself no more could screen us

It snared us one more hour of bliss."

NIOBE

How like the sky she bends above her child,

One with the great horizon of her pain!

No sob from our low seas where woe runs wild,

No weeping cloud, no momentary rain,

Can mar the heaven-high visage of her grief,

That frozen anguish, proud, majestic, dumb.

She stoops in pity above the labouring earth,

Knowing how fond, how brief

Is all its hope, past, present, and to come,

She stoops in pity, and yearns to assuage its dearth.

Through that fair face the whole dark universe

Speaks, as a thorn-tree speaks thro' one white flower;

And all those wrenched Promethean souls that curse

The gods, but cannot die before their hour,

Find utterance in her beauty. That fair head

Bows over all earth's graves. It was her cry

Men heard in Rama when the twisted ways

With children's blood ran red!

Her silence utters all the sea would sigh;

And, in her face, the whole earth's anguish prays.

It is the pity, the pity of human love

That strains her face, upturned to meet the doom,

And her deep bosom, like a snow-white dove

Frozen upon its nest, ne'er to resume

Its happy breathing o'er the golden brace

Whose fostering was her death. Death, death alone

Can break the anguished horror of that spell!

The sorrow on her face

Is sealed: the living flesh is turned to stone;

She knows all, all, that Life and Time can tell.

Ah, yet, her woman's love, so vast, so tender;

Her woman's body, hurt by every dart;

Braving the thunder, still, still hide the slender

Soft frightened child beneath her mighty heart.

She is all one mute immortal cry, one brief

Infinite pang of such victorious pain

That she transcends the heavens and bows them down!

The majesty of grief

Is hers, and her dominion must remain

Eternal. God nor man usurps that crown.

ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE

I

Height over height, the purple pine-woods clung to the rich Arcadian mountains,

Holy-sweet as a sea of incense, under the low dark crimson skies:

Glad were the glens where Eurydice bathed, in the beauty of dawn, at the haunted fountains

Deep in the blue hyacinthine hollows, whence all the rivers of Arcady rise.

Long ago, ah, white as the Huntress, cold and sweet as the petals that crowned her,

Fair and fleet as the fawn that shakes the dew from the fern at break of day,

Wreathed with the clouds of her dusky hair that swept in a sun-bright glory around her,

Down to the valley her light feet stole, ah, soft as the budding of flowers in May.

Down to the valley she came, for far and far below in the dreaming meadows

Pleaded ever the Voice of voices, calling his love by her golden name;

So she arose from her home in the hills, and down through the blossoms that danced with their shadows,

Out of the blue of the dreaming distance, down to the heart of her lover she came.

*    *    *    *

Red were the lips that hovered above her lips in the flowery haze of the June-day:

Red as a rose through the perfumed mist of passion that reeled before her eyes;

Strong the smooth young sunburnt arms that folded her heart to his heart in the noon-day,

Strong and supple with throbbing sunshine under the blinding southern skies.

Ah, the kisses, the little murmurs, mad with pain for their phantom fleetness,

Mad with pain for the passing of love that lives, they dreamed—as we dream—for an hour!

Ah, the sudden tempest of passion, mad with pain, for its over-sweetness,

As petal by petal and pang by pang their love broke out into perfect flower.

Ah, the wonder as once he wakened, out of a dream of remembered blisses,

Couched in the meadows of dreaming blossom to feel, like the touch of a flower on his eyes,

Cool and fresh with the fragment dews of dawn the touch of her light swift kisses,

Shed from the shadowy rose of her face between his face and the warm blue skies.

II

Lost in his new desire

He dreamed away the hours;

His lyre

Lay buried in the flowers:

To whom the King of Heaven,

Apollo, lord of light,

Had given

Beauty and love and might:

Might, if he would, to slay

All evil dreams and pierce

The grey

Veil of the Universe;

With Love that holds in one

Sacred and ancient bond

The sun

And all the vast beyond,

And Beauty to enthrall

The soul of man to heaven:

Yea, all

These gifts to him were given.

Yet in his dream's desire

He drowsed away the hours:

His lyre

Lay buried in the flowers.

Then in his wrath arose

Apollo, lord of light,

That shows

The wrong deed from the right;

And by what radiant laws

O'erruling human needs,

The cause

To consequence proceeds;

How balanced is the sway

He gives each mortal doom:

How day

Demands the atoning gloom:

How all good things await

The soul that pays the price

To Fate

By equal sacrifice;

And how on him that sleeps

For less than labour's sake

There creeps

Uncharmed, the Pythian snake.

III

Lulled by the wash of the feathery grasses, a sea with many a sun-swept billow,

Heart to heart in the heart of the summer, lover by lover asleep they lay,

Hearing only the whirring cicala that chirruped awhile at their poppied pillow

Faint and sweet as the murmur of men that laboured in villages far away.

Was not the menace indeed more silent? Ah, what care for labour and sorrow?

Gods in the meadows of moly and amaranth surely might envy their deep sweet bed

Here where the butterflies troubled the lilies of peace, and took no thought for the morrow,

And golden-girdled bees made feast as over the lotus the soft sun spread.

Nearer, nearer the menace glided, out of the gorgeous gloom around them,

Out of the poppy-haunted shadows deep in the heart of the purple brake;

Till through the hush and the heat as they lay, and their own sweet listless dreams enwound them,—

Mailed and mottled with hues of the grape-bloom suddenly, quietly, glided the snake.

Subtle as jealousy, supple as falsehood, diamond-headed and cruel as pleasure,

Coil by coil he lengthened and glided, straight to the fragrant curve of her throat:

There in the print of the last of the kisses that still glowed red from the sweet long pressure,

Fierce as famine and swift as lightning over the glittering lyre he smote.

IV

And over the cold white body of love and delight

Orpheus arose in the terrible storm of his grief,

With quivering up-clutched hands, deadly and white,

And his whole soul wavered and shook like a wind-swept leaf:

As a leaf that beats on a mountain, his spirit in vain

Assaulted his doom and beat on the Gates of Death:

Then prone with his arms o'er the lyre he sobbed out his pain,

And the tense chords faintly gave voice to the pulse of his breath.

And he heard it and rose, once again, with the lyre in his hand,

And smote out the cry that his white-lipped sorrow denied:

And the grief's mad ecstasy swept o'er the summer-sweet land,

And gathered the tears of all Time in the rush of its tide.

There was never a love forsaken or faith forsworn,

There was never a cry for the living or moan for the slain,

But was voiced in that great consummation of song; ay, and borne

To storm on the Gates of the land whence none cometh again.

Transcending the barriers of earth, comprehending them all

He followed the soul of his loss with the night in his eyes;

And the portals lay bare to him there; and he heard the faint call

Of his love o'er the rabble that wails by the river of sighs.

Yea, there in the mountains before him, he knew it of old,

That portal enormous of gloom, he had seen it in dreams,

When the secrets of Time and of Fate through his harmonies rolled;

And behind it he heard the dead moan by their desolate streams.

And he passed through the Gates with the light and the cloud of his song,

Dry-shod over Lethe he passed to the chasms of hell;

And the hosts of the dead made mock at him, crying, How long

Have we dwelt in the darkness, oh fool, and shall evermore dwell?

Did our lovers not love us? the grey skulls hissed in his face;

Were our lips not red? Were these cavernous eyes not bright?

Yet us, whom the soft flesh clothed with such roseate grace,

Our lovers would loathe if we ever returned to their sight!

Oh then, through the soul of the Singer, a pity so vast

Mixed with his anguish that, smiting anew on his lyre,

He caught up the sorrows of hell in his utterance at last,

Comprehending the need of them all in his own great desire.

V

And they that were dead, in his radiant music, remembered the dawn with its low deep crimson,

Heard the murmur of doves in the pine-wood, heard the moan of the roaming sea,

Heard and remembered the little kisses, in woods where the last of the moon yet swims on

Fragrant, flower-strewn April nights of young-eyed lovers in Arcady;

Saw the soft blue veils of shadow floating over the billowy grasses

Under the crisp white curling clouds that sailed and trailed through the melting blue;

Heard once more the quarrel of lovers above them pass, as a lark-song passes,

Light and bright, till it vanished away in an eye-bright heaven of silvery dew.

Out of the dark, ah, white as the Huntress, cold and sweet as the petals that crowned her,

Fair and fleet as a fawn that shakes the dew from the fern at break of day;

Wreathed with the clouds of her dusky hair that swept in a sun-bright glory around her,

On through the deserts of hell she came, and the brown air bloomed with the light of May.

On through the deserts of hell she came; for over the fierce and frozen meadows

Pleaded ever the Voice of voices, calling his love by her golden name;

So she arose from her grave in the darkness, and up through the wailing fires and shadows,

On by chasm and cliff and cavern, out of the horrors of death she came.

Then had she followed him, then had he won her, striking a chord that should echo for ever,

Had he been steadfast only a little, nor paused in the great transcendent song;

But ere they had won to the glory of day, he came to the brink of the flaming river

And ceased, to look on his love a moment, a little moment, and overlong.

VI

O'er Phlegethon he stood:

Below him roared and flamed

The flood

For utmost anguish named.

And lo, across the night,

The shining form he knew

With light

Swift footsteps upward drew.

Up through the desolate lands

She stole, a ghostly star,

With hands

Outstretched to him afar.

With arms outstretched, she came

In yearning majesty,

The same

Royal Eurydice.

Up through the ghastly dead

She came, with shining eyes

And red

Sweet lips of child-surprise.

Up through the wizened crowds

She stole, as steals the moon

Through clouds

Of flowery mist in June.

He gazed: he ceased to smite

The golden-chorded lyre:

Delight

Consumed his heart with fire.

Though in that deadly land

His task was but half-done,

His hand

Drooped, and the fight half-won.

He saw the breasts that glowed,

The fragrant clouds of hair:

They flowed

Around him like a snare.

O'er Phlegethon he stood,

For utmost anguish named:

The flood

Below him roared and flamed.

Out of his hand the lyre

Suddenly slipped and fell,

The fire

Acclaimed it into hell.

The night grew dark again:

There came a bitter cry

Of pain,

Oh Love, once more I die!

And lo, the earth-dawn broke,

And like a wraith she fled:

He woke

Alone: his love was dead.

He woke on earth: the day

Shone coldly: at his side

There lay

The body of his bride.

VII

Only now when the purple vintage bubbles and winks in the autumn glory,

Only now when the great white oxen drag the weight of the harvest home,

Sunburnt labourers, under the star of the sunset, sing as an old-world story

How two pale and thwarted lovers ever through Arcady still must roam.

Faint as the silvery mists of morning over the peaks that the noonday parches,

On through the haunts of the gloaming musk-rose, down to the rivers that glisten below,

Ever they wander from meadow to pinewood, under the whispering woodbine arches,

Faint as the mists of the dews of the dusk when violets dream and the moon-winds blow.

Though the golden lute of Orpheus gathered the splendours of earth and heaven,

All the golden greenwood notes and all the chimes of the changing sea,

Old men over the fires of winter murmur again that he was not given

The steadfast heart divine to rule that infinite freedom of harmony.

Therefore he failed, say they; but we, that have no wisdom, can only remember

How through the purple perfumed pinewoods white Eurydice roamed and sung:

How through the whispering gold of the wheat, where the poppy burned like a crimson ember,

Down to the valley in beauty she came, and under her feet the flowers upsprung.

Down to the valley she came, for far and far below in the dreaming meadows

Pleaded ever the Voice of voices, calling his love by her golden name;

So she arose from her home in the hills, and down through the blossoms that danced with their shadows,

Out of the blue of the dreaming distance, down to the heart of her lover she came.

FROM THE SHORE

Love, so strangely lost and found,

Love, beyond the seas of death,

Love, immortally re-crowned,

Love, who swayest this mortal breath,

Sweetlier to thy lover's ear

Steals the tale that ne'er was told;

Bright-eyes, ah, thine arms are near,

Nearer now than e'er of old.

When on earth thy hands were mine,

Mine to hold for evermore,

Oft we watched the sunset shine

Lonely from this wave-beat shore;

Pent in prison-cells of clay,

Time had power on thee and me:

Thou and heaven are one to-day,

One with earth and sky and sea;

Indivisible and one!

Beauty hath unlocked the Gate,

Oped the portals of the sun,

Burst the bars of Time and Fate!

Violets in the dawn of Spring

Hold the secret of thine eyes:

Lilies bare their breasts and fling

Scents of thee from Paradise.

Brooklets have thy talk by rote;

Thy farewells array the West;

Fur that clasped thee round the throat

Leaps—a squirrel—to its nest!

Backward from a sparkling eye

Half-forgotten jests return

Where the rabbit lollops by

Hurry-scurry through the fern!

Roses where I lonely pass

Brush my brow and breathe thy kiss:

Zephyrs, whispering through the grass,

Lure me on from bliss to bliss:

Here thy robe is rustling close,

There thy fluttering lace is blown,—

All the tide of beauty flows

Tributary to thine own.

Birds that sleek their shining throats

Capture every curve from thee:

All their golden warbled notes,

Fragments of thy melody,

Crowding, clustering, one by one,

Build it upward, spray by spray,

Till the lavrock in the sun

Pours thy rapture down the day.

Silver birch and purple pine,

Crumpled fern and crimson rose,

Flash to feel their beauty thine,

Clasp and fold thee, warm and close:

Every beat and gleam of wings

Holds thee in its bosom furled;

All that chatters, laughs, and sings,

Darts thy sparkle round the world.

Love, so strangely lost and found,

Love, beyond the seas of death,

Love, immortally re-crowned,

Love, who swayest this mortal breath,

Sweetlier to thy lover's ear

Steals the tale that ne'er was told;

Bright eyes, ah, thine arms are near,

Nearer now than e'er of old.

THE RETURN

O, hedges white with laughing may,

O, meadows where we met,

This heart of mine will break to-day

Unless ye, too, forget.

Breathe not so sweet, breathe not so sweet,

But swiftly let me pass

Across the fields that felt her feet

In the old time that was.

A year ago, but one brief year,

O, happy flowering land,

We wandered here and whispered there,

And hand was warm in hand.

O, crisp white clouds beyond the hill,

O, lavrock in the skies,

Why do ye all remember still

Her bright uplifted eyes.

Red heather on the windy moor,

Wild thyme beside the way,

White jasmine by the cottage door,

Harden your hearts to-day.

Smile not so kind, smile not so kind,

Thou happy haunted place,

Or thou wilt strike these poor eyes blind

With her remembered face.

REMEMBRANCE

O, unforgotten lips, grey haunting eyes,

Soft curving cheeks and heart-remembered brow,

It is all true, the old love never dies;

And, parted, we must meet for ever now.

We did not think it true! We did not think

Love meant this universal cry of pain,

This crown of thorn, this vinegar to drink,

This lonely crucifixion o'er again.

Yet through the darkness of the sleepless night

Your tortured face comes meekly answering mine;

Dumb, but I know why those mute lips are white;

Dark, but I know why those dark lashes shine.

O, love, love, love, what death can set us free

From this implacable ghost of memory?

A PRAYER

Only a little, O Father, only to rest

Or ever the night comes and the eternal sleep,

Only to rest a little, a little to weep

In the dead love's pitiful arms, on the dead love's breast,

A little to loosen the frozen fountains, to free

Rivers of blood and tears that should slacken the pulse

Of this pitiless heart, and appease these pangs that convulse

Body and soul; oh, out of Eternity,

A moment to whisper, only a moment to tell

My dead, my dead, what words are so helpless to say—

The dreams unuttered, the prayers no passion could pray,

And then—the eternal sleep or the pains of hell,

I could welcome them, Father, gladly as ever a child

Laying his head on the pillow might turn to his rest

And remember in dreams, as the hand of the mother is prest

On his hair, how the Pitiful blessed him of old and smiled.

LOVE'S GHOST

I

Thy house is dark and still: I stand once more

Beside the marble door.

It opens as of old: thy pale, pale face

Peers thro' the narrow space:

Thy hands are mine, thy hands are mine to hold,

Just as of old.

II

"Hush! hush! or God will hear us! Ah, speak low

As Love spake long ago."

"Sweet, sweet, are these thine arms, thy breast, thy hair

Assuaging my despair,

Assuaging the long thirst, quenching the tears

Of all these years?

III

"Thy house is deep and still: God cannot hear;

Sweet, have no fear!

Are not thy cold lips crushed against my kiss?

Love gives us this,

Not God;" but "Ah," she moans, "God hears us; speak,

Speak low, hide cheek on cheek."

IV

Oh then what eager whisperings, hoarded long,

Sweeter than any song,

What treasured news to tell, what hopes, what fears,

Gleaned from the barren years,

What raptures wrung from out the heart of pain,

What wild farewells again!

V

Whose pity is this? Ah, quick, one kiss! Once more

Closes the marble door!

I grope here in the darkness all alone.

Across the cold white stone,

Over thy tomb, a sudden starlight gleams:

Death gave me this—in dreams.

ON A RAILWAY PLATFORM

A drizzle of drifting rain

And a blurred white lamp o'erhead,

That shines as my love will shine again

In the world of the dead.

Round me the wet black night,

And, afar in the limitless gloom,

Crimson and green, two blossoms of light,

Two stars of doom.

But the night of death is aflare

With a torch of back-blown fire,

And the coal-black deeps of the quivering air

Rend for my soul's desire.

Leap, heart, for the pulse and the roar

And the lights of the streaming train

That leaps with the heart of thy love once more

Out of the mist and the rain.

Out of the desolate years

The thundering pageant flows;

But I see no more than a window of tears

Which her face has turned to a rose.

OXFORD REVISITED

Changed and estranged, like a ghost, I pass the familiar portals,

Echoing now like a tomb, they accept me no more as of old;

Yet I go wistfully onward, a shade thro' a kingdom of mortals

Wanting a face to greet me, a hand to grasp and to hold.

Hardly I know as I go if the beautiful City is only

Mocking me under the moon, with its streams and its willows agleam,

Whether the City or friends or I that am friendless and lonely,

Whether the boys that go by or the time-worn towers be the dream;

Whether the walls that I know, or the unknown fugitive faces,

Faces like those that I loved, faces that haunt and waylay,

Faces so like and unlike, in the dim unforgettable places,

Startling the heart into sickness that aches with the sweet of the May,—

Whether all these or the world with its wars be the wandering shadows!

Ah, sweet over green-gloomed waters the may hangs, crimson and white;

And quiet canoes creep down by the warm gold dusk of the meadows,

Lapping with little splashes and ripples of silvery light.

Others as I have returned: I shall see the old faces to-morrow,

Down by the gay-coloured barges, alert for the throb of the oars,

Wanting to row once again, or tenderly jesting with sorrow

Up the old stairways and noting the strange new names on the doors.

Is it a dream? And I know not nor care if there be an awaking

Ever at all any more, for the years that have torn us apart,

Few, so few as they are, will ever be rending and breaking:

Sooner by far than I knew have they wrought this change for my heart!

Well; I grow used to it now! Could the dream but remain and for ever,

With the flowers round the grey quadrangle laughing as time grows old!

For the waters go down to the sea, but the sky still gleams on the river!

We plucked them—but there shall be lilies, ivory lilies and gold.

And still, in the beautiful City, the river of life is no duller,

Only a little strange as the eighth hour dreamily chimes,

In the City of friends and echoes, ribbons and music and colour,

Lilac and blossoming chestnut, willows and whispering limes.

Over the Radcliffe Dome the moon as the ghost of a flower

Weary and white awakes in the phantom fields of the sky:

The trustful shepherded clouds are asleep over steeple and tower,

Dark under Magdalen walls the Cher like a dream goes by.

Back, we come wandering back, poor ghosts, to the home that one misses

Out in the shelterless world, the world that was heaven to us then,

Back from the coil and the vastness, the stars and the boundless abysses,

Like monks from a pilgrimage stealing in bliss to their cloisters again.

City of dreams that we lost, accept now the gift we inherit—

Love, such a love as we knew not of old in the blaze of our noon,

We that have found thee at last, half City, half heavenly Spirit,

While over a mist of spires the sunset mellows the moon.

THE THREE SHIPS

(To an old Tune)

I

As I went up the mountain-side,

The sea below me glittered wide,

And, Eastward, far away, I spied

On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day,

The three great ships that take the tide

On Christmas Day in the morning.

II

Ye have heard the song, how these must ply

From the harbours of home to the ports o' the sky!

Do ye dream none knoweth the whither and why

On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day,

The three great ships go sailing by

On Christmas Day in the morning?

III

Yet, as I live, I never knew

That ever a song could ring so true,

Till I saw them break thro' a haze of blue

On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;

And the marvellous ancient flags they flew

On Christmas Day in the morning!

IV

From the heights above the belfried town

I saw that the sails were patched and brown,

But the flags were a-flame with a great renown

On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day,

And on every mast was a golden crown

On Christmas Day in the morning.

V

Most marvellous ancient ships were these!

Were their prows a-plunge to the Chersonese?

For the pomp of Rome or the glory of Greece,

On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day,

Were they out on a quest for the Golden Fleece

On Christmas Day in the morning?

VI

And the sun and the wind they told me there

How goodly a load the three ships bear,

For the first is gold and the second is myrrh

On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;

And the third is frankincense most rare

On Christmas Day in the morning.

VII

They have mixed their shrouds with the golden sky,

They have faded away where the last dreams die ...

Ah yet, will ye watch, when the mist lifts high

On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day?

Will ye see three ships come sailing by

On Christmas Day in the morning?

SLUMBER-SONGS OF THE MADONNA

PRELUDE

Dante saw the great white Rose

Half unclose;

Dante saw the golden bees

Gathering from its heart of gold

Sweets untold,

Love's most honeyed harmonies.

Dante saw the threefold bow

Strangely glow,

Saw the Rainbow Vision rise,

And the Flame that wore the crown

Bending down

O'er the flowers of Paradise.

Something yet remained, it seems;

In his dreams

Dante missed—as angels may

In their white and burning bliss—

Some small kiss

Mortals meet with every day.

Italy in splendour faints

'Neath her saints!

O, her great Madonnas, too,

Faces calm as any moon

Glows in June,

Hooded with the night's deep blue!

What remains? I pass and hear

Everywhere,

Ay, or see in silent eyes

Just the song she still would sing

Thus—a-swing

O'er the cradle where He lies.

I

Sleep, little baby, I love thee.

Sleep, little king, I am bending above thee.

How should I know what to sing

Here in my arms as I swing thee to sleep?

Hushaby low,

Rockaby so,

Kings may have wonderful jewels to bring,

Mother has only a kiss for her king!

Why should my singing so make me to weep?

Only I know that I love thee, I love thee,

Love thee, my little one, sleep.

II

Is it a dream? Ah yet, it seems

Not the same as other dreams!

I can but think that angels sang,

When thou wast born, in the starry sky,

And that their golden harps out-rang

While the silver clouds went by!

The morning sun shuts out the stars,

Which are much loftier than the sun;

But, could we burst our prison-bars

And find the Light whence light begun,

The dreams that heralded thy birth

Were truer than the truths of earth;

And, by that far immortal Gleam,

Soul of my soul, I still would dream!

A ring of light was round thy head,

The great-eyed oxen nigh thy bed

Their cold and innocent noses bowed!

Their sweet breath rose like an incense cloud

In the blurred and mystic lanthorn light.

About the middle of the night

The black door blazed like some great star

With a glory from afar,

Or like some mighty chrysolite

Wherein an angel stood with white

Blinding arrowy bladed wings

Before the throne of the King of kings;

And, through it, I could dimly see

A great steed tethered to a tree.

Then, with crimson gems aflame

Through the door the three kings came,

And the black Ethiop unrolled

The richly broidered cloth of gold,

And pourèd forth before thee there

Gold and frankincense and myrrh!

III

See, what a wonderful smile! Does it mean

That my little one knows of my love?

Was it meant for an angel that passed unseen,

And smiled at us both from above?

Does it mean that he knows of the birds and the flowers

That are waiting to sweeten his childhood's hours,

And the tales I shall tell and the games he will play,

And the songs we shall sing and the prayers we shall pray

In his boyhood's May,

He and I, one day?

IV

For in the warm blue summer weather

We shall laugh and love together:

I shall watch my baby growing,

I shall guide his feet,

When the orange trees are blowing

And the winds are heavy and sweet!

When the orange orchards whiten

I shall see his great eyes brighten

To watch the long-legged camels going

Up the twisted street,

When the orange trees are blowing

And the winds are sweet.

What does it mean? Indeed, it seems

A dream! Yet not like other dreams!

We shall walk in pleasant vales,

Listening to the shepherd's song

I shall tell him lovely tales

All day long:

He shall laugh while mother sings

Tales of fishermen and kings.

He shall see them come and go

O'er the wistful sea,

Where rosy oleanders blow

Round blue Lake Galilee,

Kings with fishers' ragged coats

And silver nets across their boats,

Dipping through the starry glow,

With crowns for him and me!

Ah, no;

Crowns for him, not me!

Rockaby so! Indeed, it seems

A dream! Yet not like other dreams!

V

Ah, see what a wonderful smile again!

Shall I hide it away in my heart,

To remember one day in a world of pain

When the years have torn us apart,

Little babe,

When the years have torn us apart?

Sleep, my little one, sleep,

Child with the wonderful eyes,

Wild miraculous eyes,

Deep as the skies are deep!

What star-bright glory of tears

Waits in you now for the years

That shall bid you waken and weep?

Ah, in that day, could I kiss you to sleep

Then, little lips, little eyes,

Little lips that are lovely and wise,

Little lips that are dreadful and wise!

VI

Clenched little hands like crumpled roses

Dimpled and dear,

Feet like flowers that the dawn uncloses,

What do I fear?

Little hands, will you ever be clenched in anguish?

White little limbs, will you droop and languish?

Nay, what do I hear?

I hear a shouting, far away,

You shall ride on a kingly palm-strewn way

Some day!

But when you are crowned with a golden crown

And throned on a golden throne,

You'll forget the manger of Bethlehem town

And your mother that sits alone

Wondering whether the mighty king

Remembers a song she used to sing,

Long ago,

"Rockaby so,

Kings may have wonderful jewels to bring,

Mother has only a kiss for her king!"...

Ah, see what a wonderful smile, once more!

He opens his great dark eyes!

Little child, little king, nay, hush, it is o'er

My fear of those deep twin skies,—

Little child,

You are all too dreadful and wise!

VII

But now you are mine, all mine,

And your feet can lie in my hand so small,

And your tiny hands in my heart can twine,

And you cannot walk, so you never shall fall,

Or be pierced by the thorns beside the door,

Or the nails that lie upon Joseph's floor;

Through sun and rain, through shadow and shine,

You are mine, all mine!

ENCELADUS

In the Black Country, from a little window,

Before I slept, across the haggard wastes

Of dust and ashes, I saw Titanic shafts

Like shadowy columns of wan-hope arise

To waste, on the blear sky, their slow sad wreaths

Of smoke, their infinitely sad slow prayers.

Then, as night deepened, the blast-furnaces,

Red smears upon the sulphurous blackness, turned

All that sad region to a City of Dis,

Where naked, sweating giants all night long

Bowed their strong necks, melted flesh, blood and bone,

To brim the dry ducts of the gods of gloom

With terrible rivers, branches of living gold.

O, like some tragic gesture of great souls

In agony, those awful columns towered

Against the clouds, that city of ash and slag

Assumed the grandeur of some direr Thebes

Arising to the death-chant of those gods,

A dreadful Order climbing from the dark

Of Chaos and Corruption, threatening to take

Heaven with its vast slow storm.

I slept, and dreamed.

And like the slow beats of some Titan heart

Buried beneath immeasurable woes,

The forging-hammers thudded through the dream:

Huge on a fallen tree,

Lost in the darkness of primeval woods,

Enceladus, earth-born Enceladus,

The naked giant, brooded all alone.

Born of the lower earth, he knew not how,

Born of the mire and clay, he knew not when,

Brought forth in darkness, and he knew not why!

Thus, like a wind, went by a thousand years.

Anhungered, yet no comrade of the wolf,

And cold, but with no power upon the sun,

A master of this world that mastered him!

Thus, like a cloud, went by a thousand years.

Who chained this other giant in his heart

That heaved and burned like Etna? Heavily

He bent his brows and wondered and was dumb.

And, like one wave, a thousand years went by.

He raised his matted head and scanned the stars.

He stood erect! He lifted his uncouth arms!

With inarticulate sounds his uncouth lips

Wrestled and strove—I am full-fed, and yet

I hunger!

Who set this fiercer famine in my maw?

Can I eat moons, gorge on the Milky Way,

Swill sunsets down, or sup the wash of the dawn

Out of the rolling swine-troughs of the sea?

Can I drink oceans, lie beneath the mountains,

And nuzzle their heavy boulders like a cub

Sucking the dark teats of the tigress? Who,

Who set this deeper hunger in my heart?

And the dark forest echoed—Who? Ah, who?

"I hunger!"

And the night-wind answered him,

"Hunt, then, for food."

"I hunger!"

And the sleek gorged lioness

Drew nigh him, dripping freshly from the kill,

Redder her lolling tongue, whiter her fangs,

And gazed with ignorant eyes of golden flame.

"I hunger!"

Like a breaking sea his cry

Swept through the night. Against his swarthy knees

She rubbed the red wet velvet of her ears

With mellow thunders of unweeting bliss,

Purring—Ah, seek, and you shall find.

Ah, seek, and you shall slaughter, gorge, ah seek,

Seek, seek, you shall feed full, ah seek, ah seek.

Enceladus, earth-born Enceladus,

Bewildered like a desert-pilgrim, saw

A rosy City, opening in the clouds,

The hunger-born mirage of his own heart,

Far, far above the world, a home of gods,

Where One, a goddess, veiled in the sleek waves

Of her deep hair, yet glimmering golden through,

Lifted, with radiant arms, ambrosial food

For hunger such as this! Up the dark hills,

He rushed, a thunder-cloud,

Urged by the famine of his heart. He stood

High on the topmost crags, he hailed the gods

In thunder, and the clouds re-echoed it!

He hailed the gods!

And like a sea of thunder round their thrones

Washing, a midnight sea, his earth-born voice

Besieged the halls of heaven! He hailed the gods!

They laughed, he heard them laugh!

With echo and re-echo, far and wide,

A golden sea of mockery, they laughed!

Enceladus, earth-born Enceladus,

Laid hold upon the rosy Gates of Heaven,

And shook them with gigantic sooty hands,

Asking he knew not what, but not for alms;

And the Gates, opened as in jest;

And, like a sooty jest, he stumbled in.

Round him the gods, the young and scornful gods,

Clustered and laughed to mark the ravaged face,

The brutal brows, the deep and dog-like eyes,

The blunt black nails, and back with burdens bowed.

And, when they laughed, he snarled with uncouth lips

And made them laugh again.

"Whence comest thou?"

He could not speak!

How should he speak whose heart within him heaved

And burned like Etna? Through his mouth there came

A sound of ice-bergs in a frozen sea

Of tears, a sullen region of black ice

Rending and breaking, very far away.

They laughed!

He stared at them, bewildered, and they laughed

Again, "Whence comest thou?"

He could not speak!

But through his mouth a moan of midnight woods,

Where wild beasts lay in wait to slaughter and gorge,

A moan of forest-caverns where the wolf

Brought forth her litter, a moan of the wild earth

In travail with strange shapes of mire and clay,

Creatures of clay, clay images of the gods,

That hungered like the gods, the most high gods,

But found no food, and perished like the beasts.

And the gods laughed,—

Art thou, then, such a god? And, like a leaf

Unfolding in dark woods, in his deep brain

A sudden memory woke; and like an ape

He nodded, and all heaven with laughter rocked,

While Artemis cried out with scornful lips,—

Perchance He is the Maker of you all!

Then, piteously outstretching calloused hands,

He sank upon his knees, his huge gnarled knees,

And echoed, falteringly, with slow harsh tongue,—

Perchance, perchance, the Maker of you all.

They wept with laughter! And Aphrodite, she,

With keener mockery than white Artemis

Who smiled aloof, drew nigh him unabashed

In all her blinding beauty. Carelessly,

As o'er the brute brows of a stallèd ox

Across that sooty muzzle and brawny breast,

Contemptuously, she swept her golden hair

In one deep wave, a many-millioned scourge

Intolerable and beautiful as fire;

Then turned and left him, reeling, gasping, dumb,

While heaven re-echoed and re-echoed, See,

Perchance, perchance, the Maker of us all!

Enceladus, earth-born Enceladus,

Rose to his feet, and with one terrible cry

"I hunger," rushed upon the scornful gods

And strove to seize and hold them with his hands,

And still the laughter deepened as they rolled

Their clouds around them, baffling him. But once,

Once with a shout, in his gigantic arms

He crushed a slippery splendour on his breast

And felt on his harsh skin the cool smooth peaks

Of Aphrodite's bosom. One black hand

Slid down the naked snow of her long side

And bruised it where he held her. Then, like snow

Vanishing in a furnace, out of his arms

The splendour suddenly melted, and a roll

Of thunder split the dream, and headlong down

He fell, from heaven to earth; while, overhead

The young and scornful gods—he heard them laugh!—

Toppled the crags down after him. He lay

Supine. They plucked up Etna by the roots

And buried him beneath it. His broad breast

Heaved, like that other giant in his heart,

And through the crater burst his fiery breath,

But could not burst his bonds. And so he lay

Breathing in agony thrice a thousand years.

Then came a Voice, he knew not whence, "Arise,

Enceladus!" And from his heart a crag

Fell, and one arm was free, and one thought free,

And suddenly he awoke, and stood upright,

Shaking the mountains from him like a dream;

And the tremendous light and awful truth

Smote, like the dawn, upon his blinded eyes,

That out of his first wonder at the world,

Out of his own heart's deep humility,

And simple worship, he had fashioned gods

Of cloud, and heaven out of a hollow shell.

And groping now no more in the empty space

Outward, but inward in his own deep heart,

He suddenly felt the secret gates of heaven

Open, and from the infinite heavens of hope

Inward, a voice, from the innermost courts of Love,

Rang—Thou shall have none other gods but Me.

Enceladus, the foul Enceladus,

When the clear light out of that inward heaven

Whose gates are only inward in the soul,

Showed him that one true Kingdom, said,

"I will stretch

My hands out once again. And, as the God

That made me is the Heart within my heart,

So shall my heart be to this dust and earth

A god and a creator. I will strive

With mountains, fires and seas, wrestle and strive,

Fashion and make, and that which I have made

In anguish I shall love as God loves me."

In the Black Country, from a little window,

Waking at dawn, I saw those giant Shafts

—O great dark word out of our elder speech,

Long since the poor man's kingly heritage—

The Shapings, the dim Sceptres of Creation,

The Shafts like columns of wan-hope arise

To waste, on the blear sky, their slow sad wreaths

Of smoke, their infinitely sad slow prayers.

Then, as the dawn crimsoned, the sordid clouds,

The puddling furnaces, the mounds of slag,

The cinders, and the sand-beds and the rows

Of wretched roofs, assumed a majesty

Beyond all majesties of earth or air;

Beauty beyond all beauty, as of a child

In rags, upraised thro' the still gold of heaven,

With wasted arms and hungering eyes, to bring

The armoured seraphim down upon their knees

And teach eternal God humility;

The solemn beauty of the unfulfilled

Moving towards fulfilment on a height

Beyond all heights; the dreadful beauty of hope;

The naked wrestler struggling from the rock

Under the sculptor's chisel; the rough mass

Of clay more glorious for the poor blind face

And bosom that half emerge into the light,

More glorious and august, even in defeat,

Than that too cold dominion God foreswore

To bear this passionate universal load,

This Calvary of Creation, with mankind.

IN THE COOL OF THE EVENING

I

In the cool of the evening, when the low sweet whispers waken,

When the labourers turn them homeward, and the weary have their will,

When the censers of the roses o'er the forest-aisles are shaken,

Is it but the wind that cometh o'er the far green hill?

II

For they say 'tis but the sunset winds that wander through the heather,

Rustle all the meadow-grass and bend the dewy fern;

They say 'tis but the winds that bow the reeds in prayer together,

And fill the shaken pools with fire along the shadowy burn.

III

In the beauty of the twilight, in the Garden that He loveth,

They have veiled His lovely vesture with the darkness of a name!

Thro' His Garden, thro' His Garden it is but the wind that moveth,

No more; but O, the miracle, the miracle is the same!

IV

In the cool of the evening, when the sky is an old story

Slowly dying, but remembered, ay, and loved with passion still,

Hush!... the fringes of His garment, in the fading golden glory,

Softly rustling as He cometh o'er the far green hill.

A ROUNDHEAD'S RALLYING SONG

I

How beautiful is the battle,

How splendid are the spears,

When our banner is the sky

And our watchword Liberty,

And our kingdom lifted high above the years.

II

How purple shall our blood be,

How glorious our scars,

When we lie there in the night

With our faces full of light

And the death upon them smiling at the stars.

III

How golden is our hauberk,

And steel, and steel our sword,

And our shield without a stain

As we take the field again,

We whose armour is the armour of the Lord!

VICISTI, GALILÆE

"The shrines are dust, the gods are dead,"

They cried in ancient Rome!

"Ah yet, the Idalian rose is red,

And bright the Paphian foam:

For all your Galilæan tears

We turn to her," men say ...

But we, we hasten thro' the years

To our own yesterday.

Thro' all the thousand years ye need

To make the lost so fair,

Before ye can award His meed

Of perfect praise and prayer!

Ye liberated souls, the crown

Is yours; and yet, some few

Can hail, as this great Cross goes down

Its distant triumph, too.

Poor scornful Lilliputian souls,

And are ye still too proud

To risk your little aureoles

By kneeling with the crowd?

Do ye still dream ye "stand alone"

So fearless and so strong?

To-day we claim the rebels' throne

And leave you with the throng.

Yes, He has conquered! You at least

The "van-guard" leaves behind

To croon old tales of king and priest

In the ingles of mankind:

The breast of Aphrodite glows,

Apollo's face is fair;

But O, the world's wide anguish knows

No Apollonian prayer.

Not ours to scorn the first white gleam

Of beauty on this earth,

The clouds of dawn, the nectarous dream,

The gods of simpler birth;

But, as ye praise them, your own cry

Is fraught with deeper pain,

And the Compassionate ye deny

Returns, returns again.

O, worshippers of the beautiful,

Is this the end then, this,—

That ye can only see the skull

Beneath the face of bliss?

No monk in the dark years ye scorn

So barren a pathway trod

As ye who, ceasing not to mourn,

Deny the mourner's God.

And, while ye scoff, on every side

Great hints of Him go by,—

Souls that are hourly crucified

On some new Calvary!

O, tortured faces, white and meek,

Half seen amidst the crowd,

Grey suffering lips that never speak,

The Glory in the Cloud!

In flower and dust, in chaff and grain,

He binds Himself and dies!

We live by His eternal pain,

His hourly sacrifice;

The limits of our mortal life

Are His. The whisper thrills

Under the sea's perpetual strife,

And through the sunburnt hills.

Darkly, as in a glass, our sight

Still gropes thro' Time and Space:

We cannot see the Light of Light

With angels, face to face:

Only the tale His martyrs tell

Around the dark earth rings

He died and He went down to hell

And lives—the King of Kings!

And, while ye scoff, from shore to shore,

From sea to moaning sea,

Eloi, Eloi, goes up once more

Lama sabacthani!

The heavens are like a scroll unfurled,

The writing flames above—

This is the King of all the world

Upon His Cross of Love.

DRAKE

DEDICATED TO RUDOLPH CHAMBERS LEHMANN

PROLOGUE TO AMERICAN EDITION

I

England, my mother,

Lift to my western sweetheart

One full cup of English mead, breathing of the may!

Pledge the may-flower in her face that you and ah, none other,

Sent her from the mother-land

Across the dashing spray.

II

Hers and yours the story:

Think of it, oh, think of it—

That immortal dream when El Dorado flushed the skies!

Fill the beaker full and drink to Drake's undying glory,

Yours and hers (Oh, drink of it!)

The dream that never dies.

III

Yours and hers the free-men

Who scanned the stars and westward sung

When a king commanded and the Atlantic thundered "Nay!"

Hers as yours the pride is, for Drake our first of seamen

First upon his bow-sprit hung

That bunch of English may.

IV

Pledge her deep, my mother;

Through her veins thy life-stream runs!

Spare a thought, too, sweetheart, for my mother o'er the sea!

Younger eyes are yours; but ah, those old eyes and none other

Once bedewed the may-flower; once,

As yours, were clear and free.

V

Once! Nay, now as ever

Beats within her ancient heart

All the faith that took you forth to seek your heaven alone:

Shadows come and go; but let no shade of doubt dissever,

Cloak, or cloud, or keep apart

Two souls whose prayer is one.

VI

Sweetheart, ah, be tender—

Tender with her prayer to-night!

Such a goal might yet be ours!—the battle-flags be furled,

All the wars of earth be crushed, if only now your slender

Hand should grasp her gnarled old hand

And federate the world.

VII

Foolish it may seem, sweet!

Still the battle thunder lours:

Darker look the Dreadnoughts as old Europe goes her way!

Yet your hand, your hand, has power to crush that evil dream, sweet;

You, with younger eyes than ours

And brows of English may.

VIII

If a singer cherishes

Idle dreams or idle words,

You shall judge—and you'll forgive: for, far away or nigh,

Still abides that Vision without which a people perishes:

Love will strike the atoning chords!

Hark—there comes a cry!

IX

Over all this earth, sweet,

The poor and weak look up to you—

Lift their burdened shoulders, stretch their fettered hands in prayer:

You, with gentle hands, can bring the world-wide dream to birth, sweet,

While I lift this cup to you

And wonder—will she care?

X

Kindle, eyes, and beat, heart!

Hold the brimming breaker up!

All the may is burgeoning from East to golden West!

England, my mother, greet America, my sweetheart:

—Ah, but ere I drained the cup

I found her on your breast.

EXORDIUM

When on the highest ridge of that strange land,

Under the cloudless blinding tropic blue,

Drake and his band of swarthy seamen stood

With dazed eyes gazing round them, emerald fans

Of palm that fell like fountains over cliffs

Of gorgeous red anana bloom obscured

Their sight on every side. Illustrious gleams

Of rose and green and gold streamed from the plumes

That flashed like living rainbows through the glades.

Piratic glints of musketoon and sword,

The scarlet scarves around the tawny throats,

The bright gold ear-rings in the sun-black ears,

And the calm faces of the negro guides

Opposed their barbarous bravery to the noon;

Yet a deep silence dreadfully besieged

Even those mighty hearts upon the verge

Of the undiscovered world. Behind them lay

The old earth they knew. In front they could not see

What lay beyond the ridge. Only they heard

Cries of the painted birds troubling the heat

And shivering through the woods; till Francis Drake

Plunged through the hush, took hold upon a tree,

The tallest near them, and clomb upward, branch

By branch.

And there, as he swung clear above

The steep-down forest, on his wondering eyes,

Mile upon mile of rugged shimmering gold,

Burst the unknown immeasurable sea.

Then he descended; and with a new voice

Vowed that, God helping, he would one day plough

Those virgin waters with an English keel.

So here before the unattempted task,

Above the Golden Ocean of my dream

I clomb and saw in splendid pageant pass

The wild adventures and heroic deeds

Of England's epic age, a vision lit

With mighty prophecies, fraught with a doom

Worthy the great Homeric roll of song,

Yet all unsung and unrecorded quite

By those who might have touched with Raphael's hand

The large imperial legend of our race,

Ere it brought forth the braggarts of an hour,

Self-worshippers who love their imaged strength,

And as a symbol for their own proud selves

Misuse the sacred name of this dear land,

While England to the Empire of her soul

Like some great Prophet passes through the crowd

That cannot understand; for he must climb

Up to that sovran thunder-smitten peak

Where he shall grave and trench on adamant

The Law that God shall utter by the still

Small voice, not by the whirlwind or the fire.

There labouring for the Highest in himself

He shall achieve the good of all mankind;

And from that lonely Sinai shall return

Triumphant o'er the little gods of gold

That rule their little hour upon the plain.

Oh, thou blind master of these opened eyes

Be near me, therefore, now; for not in pride

I lift lame hands to this imperious theme;

But yearning to a power above mine own

Even as a man might lift his hands in prayer.

Or as a child, perchance, in those dark days

When London lay beleaguered and the axe

Flashed out for a bigot empire; and the blood

Of martyrs made a purple path for Spain

Up to the throne of Mary; as a child

Gathering with friends upon a winter's morn

For some mock fight between the hateful prince

Philip and Thomas Wyatt, all at once

Might see in gorgeous ruffs embastioned

Popinjay plumes and slouching hats of Spain,

Gay shimmering silks and rich encrusted gems,

Gold collars, rare brocades, and sleek trunk-hose

The Ambassador and peacock courtiers come

Strutting along the white snow-strangled street,

A walking plot of scarlet Spanish flowers,

And with one cry a hundred boyish hands

Put them to flight with snowballs, while the wind

All round their Spanish ears hissed like a flight

Of white-winged geese; so may I wage perchance

A mimic war with all my heart in it,

Munitioned with mere perishable snow

Which mightier hands one day will urge with steel.

Yet may they still remember me as I

Remember, with one little laugh of love,

That child's game, this were wealth enough for me.

Mother and love, fair England, hear my prayer;

Help me that I may tell the enduring tale

Of that great seaman, good at need, who first

Sailed round this globe and made one little isle,

One little isle against that huge Empire

Of Spain whose might was paramount on earth,

O'ertopping Babylon, Nineveh, Greece, and Rome,

Carthage and all huge Empires of the past,

He made this little isle, against the world,

Queen of the earth and sea. Nor this alone

The theme; for, in a mightier strife engaged

Even than he knew, he fought for the new faiths,

Championing our manhood as it rose

And cast its feudal chains before the seat

Of kings; nay, in a mightier battle yet

He fought for the soul's freedom, fought the fight

Which, though it still rings in our wondering ears,

Was won then and for ever—that great war,

That last Crusade of Christ against His priests,

Wherein Spain fell behind a thunderous roar

Of ocean triumph over burning ships

And shattered fleets, while England, England rose,

Her white cliffs laughing out across the waves,

Victorious over all her enemies.

And while he won the world for her domain,

Her loins brought forth, her fostering bosom fed

Souls that have swept the spiritual seas

From heaven to hell, and justified her crown.

For round the throne of great Elizabeth

Spenser and Burleigh, Sidney and Verulam,

Clustered like stars, rare Jonson like the crown

Of Cassiopeia, Marlowe ruddy as Mars,

And over all those mighty hearts arose

The soul of Shakespeare brooding far and wide

Beyond our small horizons, like a light

Thrown from a vaster sun that still illumes

Tracts which the arc of our increasing day

Must still leave undiscovered, unexplored.

Mother and love, fair England, hear my prayer,

As thou didst touch the heart and light the flame

Of wonder in those eyes which first awoke

To beauty and the sea's adventurous dream

Three hundred years ago, three hundred years,

And five long decades, in the leafy lanes

Of Devon, where the tallest trees that bore

The raven's matted nest had yielded up

Their booty, while the perilous branches swayed

Beneath the boyish privateer, the king

Of many young companions, Francis Drake;

So hear me, and so help, for more than his

My need is, even than when he first set sail

Upon that wild adventure with three ships

And three-score men from grey old Plymouth Sound,

Not knowing if he went to life or death,

Not caring greatly, so that he were true

To his own sleepless and unfaltering soul

Which could not choose but hear the ringing call

Across the splendours of the Spanish Main

From ever fading, ever new horizons,

And shores beyond the sunset and the sea.

Mother and sweetheart, England; from whose breast,

With all the world before them, they went forth,

Thy seamen, o'er the wide uncharted waste,

Wider than that Ulysses roamed of old,

Even as the wine-dark Mediterranean

Is wider than some wave-relinquished pool

Among its rocks, yet none the less explored

To greater ends than all the pride of Greece

And pomp of Rome achieved; if my poor song

Now spread too wide a sail, forgive thy son

And lover, for thy love was ever wont

To lift men up in pride above themselves

To do great deeds which of themselves alone

They could not; thou hast led the unfaltering feet

Of even thy meanest heroes down to death,

Lifted poor knights to many a great emprise,

Taught them high thoughts, and though they kept their souls

Lowly as little children, bidden them lift

Eyes unappalled by all the myriad stars

That wheel around the great white throne of God.

BOOK I

Now through the great doors of the Council-room

Magnificently streamed in rich array

The peers of England, regal of aspèct

And grave. Their silence waited for the Queen:

And even now she came; and through their midst,

Low as they bowed, she passed without a smile

And took her royal seat. A bodeful hush

Of huge anticipation gripped all hearts,

Compressed all brows, and loaded the broad noon

With gathering thunder: none knew what the hour

Might yet bring forth; but the dark fire of war

Smouldered in every eye; for every day

The Council met debating how to join

Honour with peace, and every day new tales

Of English wrongs received from the red hands

Of that gigantic Empire, insolent

Spain, spurred fiercer resentments up like steeds

Revolting, on the curb, foaming for battle,

In all men's minds, against whatever odds.

On one side of the throne great Walsingham,

A lion of England, couchant, watchful, calm,

Was now the master of opinion: all

Drew to him. Even the hunchback Burleigh smiled

With half-ironic admiration now,

As in the presence of the Queen they met

Amid the sweeping splendours of her court,

A cynic smile that seemed to say, "I, too,

Would fain regain that forthright heart of fire;

Yet statesmanship is but a smoother name

For the superior cunning which ensures

Victory." And the Queen, too, knowing her strength

And weakness, though her woman's heart leaped out

To courage, yet with woman's craft preferred

The subtler strength of Burleigh; for she knew

Mary of Scotland waited for that war

To strike her in the side for Rome; she knew

How many thousands lurked in England still

Remembering Rome and bloody Mary's reign.

France o'er a wall of bleeding Huguenots

Watched for an hour to strike. Against all these

What shield could England raise, this little isle,—

Out-matched, outnumbered, perilously near

Utter destruction?

So the long debate

Proceeded.

All at once there came a cry

Along the streets and at the palace-gates

And at the great doors of the Council-room!

Then through the pikes and halberds a voice rose

Imperative for entrance, and the guards

Made way, and a strange whisper surged around,

And through the peers of England thrilled the blood

Of Agincourt as to the foot of the throne

Came Leicester, for behind him as he came

A seaman stumbled, travel-stained and torn,

Crying for justice, and gasped out his tale.

"The Spaniards," he moaned, "the Inquisition!

They have taken all my comrades, all our crew,

And flung them into dungeons: there they lie

Waiting for England, waiting for their Queen!

Will you not free them? I alone am left!

All London is afire with it, for this

Was one of your chief city merchant's ships—

The Pride of London, one of Osborne's ships!

But there is none to help them! I escaped

With shrieks of torment ringing in these ears,

The glare of torture-chambers in these eyes

That see no faces anywhere but blind

Blind faces, each a bruise of white that smiles

In idiot agony, washed with sweat and blood,

The face of some strange thing that once was man,

And now can only turn from side to side

Babbling like a child, with mouth agape,

And crying for help where there is none to hear

Save those black vizards in the furnace-glow,

Moving like devils at their hellish trade...."

He paused; his memory sickened, his brain swooned

Back into that wild glare of obscene pain!

Once more to his ears and nostrils horribly crept

The hiss and smell of shrivelling human flesh!

His dumb stare told the rest: his head sank down;

He strove in agony

With what all hideous words must leave untold;

While Leicester vouched him, "This man's tale is true!"

But like a gathering storm a low deep moan

Of passion, like a tiger's, slowly crept

From the grey lips of Walsingham. "My Queen,

Will you not free them?"

Then Elizabeth,

Whose name is one for ever with the name

Of England, rose; and in her face the gleam

Of justice that makes anger terrible

Shone, and she stretched her glittering sceptre forth

And spoke, with distant empires in her eyes.

"My lords, this is the last cry they shall wring

From English lips unheeded: we will have

Such remedies for this as all the world

Shall tremble at!"

And, on that night, while Drake

Close in his London lodging lay concealed

Until he knew if it were peace or war

With Spain (for he had struck on the high seas

At Spain; and well he knew if it were peace

His blood would be made witness to that bond,

And he must die a pirate's death or fly

Westward once more), there all alone, he pored

By a struggling rushlight o'er a well-thumbed chart

Of magic islands in the enchanted seas,

Dreaming, as boys and poets only dream

With those that see God's wonders in the deep,

Perilous visions of those palmy keys,

Cocoa-nut islands, parrot-haunted woods,

Crisp coral reefs and blue shark-finned lagoons

Fringed with the creaming foam, mile upon mile

Of mystery. Dream after dream went by,

Colouring the brown air of that London night

With many a mad miraculous romance.

There, suddenly, some augury, some flash

Showed him a coming promise, a strange hint,

Which, though he played with it, he scarce believed;

Strange as in some dark cave the first fierce gleam

Of pirate gold to some forlorn maroon

Who tiptoes to the heap and glances round

Askance, and dreads to hear what erst he longed

To hear—some voice to break the hush; but bathes

Both hands with childish laughter in the gold,

And lets it trickle through his fevered palms,

And begins counting half a hundred times

And loses count each time for sheer delight

And wonder in it; meantime, if he knew,

Passing the cave-mouth, far away, beyond

The still lagoon, the coral reef, the foam

And the white fluttering chatter of the birds,

A sail that might have saved him comes and goes

Unseen across the blue Pacific sea.

So Drake, too, played with fancies; but that sail

Passed not unseen, for suddenly there came

A firm and heavy footstep to the door,

Then a loud knocking: and, at first, he thought

"I am a dead man: there is peace with Spain,

And they are come to lead me to my doom."

But, as he looked across one shoulder, pride

Checking the fuller watch for what he feared,

The door opened; and cold as from the sea

The night rushed in, and there against the gloom,

Clad, as it seemed, with wind and cloud and rain,

There loomed a stately form and high grim face

Loaded with deadly thoughts of iron war—

Walsingham,—in one hand he held a map

Marked with red lines; the other hand held down

The rich encrusted hilt of his great sword.

Then Drake rose, and the other cautiously

Closing the door drew near the flickering light

And spread his map out on the table, saying—

"Mark for me here the points whereat the King

Philip of Spain may best be wounded, mark

The joints of his harness;" and Drake looked at him

Thinking, "If he betray me, I am dead."

But the soldier met his eyes and, with a laugh,

Drake, quivering like a bloodhound in the leash,

Stooped, with his finger pointing thus and thus—

"Here would I guard, here would I lie in wait,

Here would I strike him through the breast and throat."

And as he spoke he kindled, and began

To set forth his great dreams, and high romance

Rose like a moon reflecting the true sun

Unseen; and as the full round moon indeed

Rising behind a mighty mountain-chain

Will shadow forth in outline grim and black

Its vast and ragged edges, so that moon

Of high romance rose greatly shadowing forth

The grandeur of his dreams, until their might

Dawned upon Walsingham, and he, too, saw

For a moment of muffled moonlight and wild cloud

The vision of the imperious years to be!

But suddenly Drake paused as one who strays

Beyond the bounds of caution, paused and cursed

His tongue for prating like a moon-struck boy's.

"I am mad," he cried, "I am mad to babble so!"

Then Walsingham drew near him with strange eyes

And muttered slowly, "Write that madness down;

Ay, write it down, that madman's plan of thine;

Sign it, and let me take it to the Queen."

But the weather-wiser seaman warily

Answered him, "If it please Almighty God

To take away our Queen Elizabeth,

Seeing that she is mortal as ourselves,

England might then be leagued with Spain, and I

Should here have sealed my doom. I will not put

My pen to paper."

So, across the charts

With that dim light on each grim countenance

The seaman and the courtier subtly fenced

With words and thoughts, but neither would betray

His whole heart to the other. At the last

Walsingham gripped the hand of Francis Drake

And left him wondering.

On the third night came

A messenger from Walsingham who bade

Drake to the Palace where, without one word,

The statesman met him in an anteroom

And led him, with flushed cheek and beating heart,

Along a mighty gold-gloomed corridor

Into a high-arched chamber, hung with tall

Curtains of gold-fringed silk and tapestries

From Flanders looms, whereon were flowers and beasts

And forest-work, great knights, with hawk on hand,

Riding for ever on their glimmering steeds

Through bowery glades to some immortal face

Beyond the fairy fringes of the world.

A silver lamp swung softly overhead,

Fed with some perfumed oil that shed abroad

Delicious light and fragrances as rare

As those that stirred faint wings at eventide

Through the King's House in Lebanon of old.

Into a quietness as of fallen bloom

Their feet sank in that chamber; and, all round,

Soft hills of Moorish cushions dimly drowsed

On glimmering crimson couches. Near the lamp

An ebony chess-board stood inlaid with squares

Of ruby and emerald, garnished with cinquefoils

Of silver, bears and ragged staves; the men,

Likewise of precious stones, were all arrayed—

Bishops and knights and elephants and pawns—

As for a game. Sixteen of them were set

In silver white, the other sixteen gilt.

Now, as Drake gazed upon an arras, nigh

The farther doors, whereon was richly wrought

The picture of that grave and lovely queen

Penelope, with cold hands weaving still

The unending web, while in an outer court

The broad-limbed wooers basking in the sun

On purple fleeces took from white-armed girls,

Up-kirtled to the knee, the crimson wine;

There, as he gazed and thought, "Is this not like

Our Queen Elizabeth who waits and weaves,

Penelope of England, her dark web

Unendingly till England's Empire come;"

There, as he gazed, for a moment, he could vow

The pictured arras moved. Well had it been

Had he drawn sword and pierced it through and through;

But he suspected nothing and said nought

To Walsingham; for thereupon they heard

The sound of a low lute and a sweet voice

Carolling like a gold-caged nightingale,

Caught by the fowlers ere he found his mate,

And singing all his heart out evermore

To the unknown forest-love he ne'er should see.

And Walsingham smiled sadly to himself,

Knowing the weary queen had bidden some maid

Sing to her, even as David sang to Saul;

Since all her heart was bitter with her love

Or so it was breathed (and there the chess-board stood,

Her love's device upon it), though she still,

For England's sake, must keep great foreign kings

Her suitors, wedding no man till she died.

Nor did she know how, in her happiest hour

Remembered now most sorrowfully, the moon,

Vicegerent of the sky, through summer dews,

As that sweet ballad tells in plaintive rhyme,

Silvering the grey old Cumnor towers and all

The hollow haunted oaks that grew thereby,

Gleamed on a casement whence the pure white face

Of Amy Robsart, wife of Leicester, wife

Unknown of the Queen's lover, a frail bar

To that proud Earl's ambition, quietly gazed

And heard the night-owl hoot a dark presage

Of murder through her timid shuddering heart.

But of that deed Elizabeth knew nought;

Nay, white as Amy Robsart in her dream

Of love she listened to the sobbing lute,

Bitterly happy, proudly desolate;

So heavy are all earth's crowns and sharp with thorns!

But tenderly that high-born maiden sang.

SONG

Now the purple night is past,

Now the moon more faintly glows,

Dawn has through thy casement cast

Roses on thy breast, a rose;

Now the kisses are all done,

Now the world awakes anew,

Now the charmed hour is gone,

Let not love go, too.

When old winter, creeping nigh,

Sprinkles raven hair with white,

Dims the brightly glancing eye,

Laughs away the dancing light,

Roses may forget their sun,

Lilies may forget their dew,

Beauties perish, one by one,

Let not love go, too.

Palaces and towers of pride

Crumble year by year away;

Creeds like robes are laid aside,

Even our very tombs decay!

When the all-conquering moth and rust

Gnaw the goodly garment through,

When the dust returns to dust,

Let not love go, too.

Kingdoms melt away like snow,

Gods are spent like wasting flames,

Hardly the new peoples know

Their divine thrice-worshipped names!

At the last great hour of all,

When thou makest all things new,

Father, hear Thy children call,

Let not love go, too.

The song ceased: all was still; and now it seemed

Power brooded on the silence, and Drake saw

A woman come to meet him,—tall and pale

And proud she seemed: behind her head two wings

As of some mighty phantom butterfly

Glimmered with jewel-sparks in the gold gloom.

Her small, pure, grey-eyed face above her ruff

Was chiselled like an agate; and he knew

It was the Queen. Low bent he o'er her hand;

And "Ah," she said, "Sir Francis Walsingham

Hath told me what an English heart beats here!

Know you what injuries the King of Spain

Hath done us?" Drake looked up at her: she smiled,

"We find you apt! Will you not be our knight

For we are helpless"—witchingly she smiled—

"We are not ripe for war; our policy

Must still be to uphold the velvet cloak

Of peace; but I would have it mask the hand

That holds the dagger! Will you not unfold

Your scheme to us?" And then with a low bow

Walsingham, at a signal from the Queen,

Withdrew; and she looked down at Drake and smiled;

And in his great simplicity the man

Spake all his heart out like some youthful knight

Before his Gloriana: his heart burned,

Knowing he talked with England, face to face;

And suddenly the Queen bent down to him,

England bent down to him, and his heart reeled

With the beauty of her presence—for indeed

Women alone have royal power like this

Within their very selves enthroned and shrined

To draw men's hearts out! Royal she bent down

And touched his hand for a moment. "Friend," she said,

Looking into his face with subtle eyes,

"I have searched thy soul to-night and know full well

How I can trust thee! Canst thou think that I,

The daughter of my royal father, lack

The fire which every boor in England feels

Burning within him as the bloody score

Which Spain writes on the flesh of Englishmen

Mounts higher day by day? Am I not Tudor?

I am not deaf or blind; nor yet a king!

I am a woman and a queen, and where

Kings would have plunged into their red revenge

Or set their throne up on this temporal shore,

As flatterers bade that wiser king Canúte,

Thence to command the advancing tides of battle

Till one ensanguined sea whelm throne and king

And kingdom, friend, I take my woman's way,

Smile in mine enemies' faces with a heart

All hell, and undermine them hour by hour!

This island scarce can fend herself from France,

And now Spain holds the keys of all the world,

How should we fight her, save that my poor wit

Hath won the key to Philip? Oh, I know

His treacherous lecherous heart, and hour by hour

My nets are drawing round him. I, that starve

My public armies, feed his private foes,

Nourish his rebels in the Netherlands,

Nay, sacrifice mine own poor woman's heart

To keep him mine, and surely now stands Fate

With hand uplifted by the doors of Spain

Ready to knock: the time is close at hand

When I shall strike, once, and no second stroke.

Remember, friend, though kings have fought for her,

This England, with the trident in her grasp,

Was ever woman; and she waits her throne;

And thou canst speed it. Furnish thee with ships,

Gather thy gentleman adventurers,

And be assured thy parsimonious queen—

Oh ay, she knows that chattering of the world—

Will find thee wealth enough. Then put to sea,

Fly the black flag of piracy awhile

Against these blackest foes of all mankind.

Nay; what hast thou to do with piracy?

Hostis humani generis indeed

Is Spain: she dwells beyond the bounds of law;

Thine is no piracy, whate'er men say,

Thou art a knight on Gloriana's quest.

Oh, lay that golden unction to thy soul,

This is no piracy, but glorious war,

Waged for thy country and for all mankind,

Therefore put out to sea without one fear,

Ransack their El Dorados of the West,

Pillage their golden galleons, sap their strength

Even at its utmost fountains; let them know

That there is blood, not water, in our veins.

Sail on, my captain, to the glorious end,

And, though at first thou needs must sail alone

And undefended, ere that end be reached,

When I shall give the word, nay, but one word,

All England shall be up and after thee,

The sword of England shall shine over thee,

And round about thee like a guardian fire;

All the great soul of England shall be there;

Her mighty dead shall at that cry of doom

Rise from their graves and in God's panoply

Plunge with our standards through immortal storms

When Drake rides out across the wreck of Rome.

As yet we must be cautious; let no breath

Escape thee, save to thy most trusted friends;

For now, if my lord Burleigh heard one word

Of all thou hast in mind, he is so much

The friend of caution and the beaten road,

He would not rest till he had spilled thy hopes

And sealed thy doom! Go now, fit out thy ships.

Walsingham is empowered to give thee gold

Immediately, but look to him for more

As thou shalt need it, gold and gold to spare,

My golden-hearted pilot to the shores

Of victory—so farewell;" and through the gloom

She vanished as she came; and Drake groped, dazed,

Out through the doors, and found great Walsingham

Awaiting him with gold.

But in the room

Where Drake had held his converse with the Queen

The embroidered arras moved, and a lean face,

White with its long eavesdropping upon death,

Crept out and peered as a venomous adder peers

From out dark ferns, then as the reptile flashes

Along a path between two banks of flowers

Almost too swift for sight, a stealthy form

—One of the fifty spies whom Burleigh paid—

Passed down the gold-gloomed corridor to seek

His master, whom among great books he found,

Calm, like a mountain brooding o'er the sea.

Nor did he break that calm for all these winds

Of rumour that now burst from out the sky.

His brow bent like a cliff over his thoughts,

And the spy watched him half resentfully,

Thinking his news well worth a blacker frown.

At last the statesman smiled and answered, "Go;

Fetch Thomas Doughty, Leicester's secretary."

Few suns had risen and set ere Francis Drake

Had furnished forth his ships with guns and men,

Tried seamen that he knew in storms of old,—

Will Harvest, who could haul the ropes and fight

All day, and sing a foc'sle song to cheer

Sea-weary hearts at night; brave old Tom Moone

The carpenter, whose faithful soul looked up

To Drake's large mastery with a mastiff's eyes;

And three-score trusty mariners, all scarred

And weather-beaten. After these there came

Some two-score gentleman adventurers,

Gay college lads or lawyers that had grown

Sick of the dusty Temple, and were fired

With tales of the rich Indies and those tall

Enchanted galleons drifting through the West,

Laden with ingots and broad bars of gold.

Already some had bought at a great price

Green birds of Guatemala, which they wore

On their slouched hats, tasting the high romance

And new-found colours of the world like wine.

By night they gathered in a marvellous inn

Beside the black and secret flowing Thames;

And joyously they tossed the magic phrase

"Pieces of eight" from mouth to mouth, and laughed

And held the red wine up, night after night,

Around their tables, toasting Francis Drake.

Among these came a courtier, and none knew

Or asked by whose approval, for each thought

Some other brought him; yet he made his way

Cautiously, being a man with a smooth tongue,

The secretary of Leicester; and his name

Was Thomas Doughty. Most of all with Drake

He won his way to friendship, till at last

There seemed one heart between them and one soul.

BOOK II

So on a misty grey December morn

Five ships put out from calm old Plymouth Sound;

Five little ships, the largest not so large

As many a coasting yacht or fishing-trawl

To-day; yet these must brave uncharted seas

Of unimagined terrors, haunted glooms,

And shadowy horrors of an unknown world

Wild as primeval chaos. In the first,

The Golden Hynde, a ship of eighteen guns,

Drake sailed: John Wynter, a queen's captain, next

Brought out the Elizabeth, a stout new ship

Of sixteen guns. The pinnace Christopher

Came next, in staunch command of old Tom Moone

Who, five years back, with reeking powder grimed,

Off Cartagena fought against the stars

All night, and, as the sun arose in blood,

Knee-deep in blood and brine, stood in the dark

Perilous hold and scuttled his own ship

The Swan, bidding her down to God's great deep

Rather than yield her up a prize to Spain.

Lastly two gentleman-adventurers

Brought out the new Swan and the Marygold.

Their crews, all told, were eight score men and boys.

Not only terrors of the deep they braved,

Bodiless witchcrafts of the black abyss,

Red gaping mouths of hell and gulfs of fire

That yawned for all who passed the tropic line;

But death lurked round them from their setting forth.

Mendoza, plenipotentiary of Spain,

By spies informed, had swiftly warned his king,

Who sent out mandates through his huge empire

From Gaudalchiber to the golden West

For the instant sinking of all English ships

And the instant execution of their crews

Who durst appear in the Caribbean sea.

Moreover, in the pith of their emprise

A peril lurked—Burleigh's emissaries,

The smooth-tongued Thomas Doughty, who had brought

His brother—unacquitted of that charge

Of poisoning, raised against him by the friends

Of Essex, but in luckless time released

Lately for lack of proof, on no strong plea.

These two wound through them like two snakes at ease

In Eden, waiting for their venomous hour.

Especially did Thomas Doughty toil

With soft and flowery tongue to win his way;

And Drake, whose rich imagination craved

For something more than simple seaman's talk,

Was marvellously drawn to this new friend

Who with the scholar's mind, the courtier's gloss,

The lawyer's wit, the adventurer's romance,

Gold honey from the blooms of Euphues,

Rare flashes from the Mermaid and sweet smiles

Copied from Sidney's self, even to the glance

Of sudden, liquid sympathy, gave Drake

That banquet of the soul he ne'er had known

Nor needed till he knew, but needed now.

So to the light of Doughty's answering eyes

He poured his inmost thoughts out, hour by hour;

And Doughty coiled up in the heart of Drake.

Against such odds the tiny fleet set sail;

Yet gallantly and with heroic pride,

Escutcheoned pavisades, emblazoned poops,

Banners and painted shields and close-fights hung

With scarlet broideries. Every polished gun

Grinned through the jaws of some heraldic beast,

Gilded and carven and gleaming with all hues;

While in the cabin of the Golden Hynde

Rich perfumes floated, given by the great Queen

Herself to Drake as Captain-General;

So that it seemed her soul was with the fleet,

A presence to remind him, far away,

Of how he talked with England, face to face,—

No pirate he, but Gloriana's knight.

Silver and gold his table furniture,

Engraved and richly chased, lavishly gleamed

While, fanned by favouring airs, the ships advanced

With streaming flags and ensigns and sweet chords

Of music struck by skilled musicians

Whom Drake brought with him, not from vanity,

But knowing how the pulse of men beats high

To music; and the hearts of men like these

Were open to the high romance of earth,

And they that dwelt so near God's mystery

Were proud of their own manhood. They went out

To danger, as to a sweetheart, far away.

Light as the sea-birds dipping their white wings

In foam before the gently heaving prows

Each heart beat, while the low soft lapping splash

Of water racing past them ripped and tore

Whiter and faster, and the bellying sails

Filled out, and the chalk cliffs of England sank

Dwindling behind the broad grey plains of sea.

Meekly content and tamely stay-at-home

The sea-birds seemed that piped across the waves;

And Drake, be-mused, leaned smiling to his friend

Doughty and said, "Is it not strange to know

When we return yon speckled herring-gulls

Will still be wheeling, dipping, flashing there?

We shall not find a fairer land afar

Than those thyme-scented hills we leave behind!

Soon the young lambs will bleat across the combes,

And breezes will bring puffs of hawthorn scent

Down Devon lanes; over the purple moors

Lavrocks will carol; and on the village greens

Around the May-pole, while the moon hangs low,

The boys and girls of England merrily swing

In country footing through the morrice dance.

But many of us indeed shall not return."

Then the other with a laugh, "Nay, like the man

Who slept a hundred years we shall return

And find our England strange: there are great storms

Brewing; God only knows what we shall find—

Perchance a Spanish king upon the throne!

What then?" And Drake, "I should put down my helm,

And out once more to the unknown golden West

To die, as I have lived, in a free land."

So said he, while the white cliffs dwindled down,

Faded, and vanished; but the prosperous wind

Carried the five ships onward over the swell

Of swinging, sweeping seas, till the sun sank,

And height o'er height the chaos of the skies

Broke out into the miracle of the stars.

Frostily glittering, all the Milky Way

Lay bare like diamond-dust upon the robe

Of some great king. Orion and the Plough

Glimmered through drifting gulfs of silver fleece,

And, far away, in Italy, that night

Young Galileo, looking upward, heard

The self-same whisper through that wild abyss

Which now called Drake out to the unknown West.

But, after supper, Drake came up on deck

With Doughty, and on the cold poop as they leaned

And gazed across the rolling gleam and gloom

Of mighty muffled seas, began to give

Voices to those lovely captives of the brain

Which, like princesses in some forest-tower,

Still yearn for the delivering prince, the sweet

Far bugle-note that calls from answering minds.

He told him how, in those dark days which now

Seemed like an evil dream, when the Princess

Elizabeth even trembled for her life

And read there, by the gleam of Smithfield fires,

Those cunning lessons of diplomacy

Which saved her then and now for England's sake,

He passed his youth. 'Twas when the power of Spain

Began to light the gloom, with that great glare

Of martyrdom which, while the stars endure,

Bears witness how men overcame the world,

Trod the red flames beneath their feet like flowers,

And cast aside the blackening robe of flesh,

While with a crown of joy upon their heads,

Even as into a palace, they passed through

The portals of the tomb to prove their love

Stronger at least than death: and, in those days

A Puritan, with iron in his soul,

Having in earlier manhood occupied

His business in great waters and beheld

The bloody cowls of the Inquisition pass

Before the midnight moon as he kept watch;

And having then forsworn the steely sea

To dwell at home in England with his love

At Tavistock in Devon, Edmund Drake

Began, albeit too near the Abbey walls,

To speak too staunchly for his ancient faith;

And with his young child Francis, had to flee

By night at last for shelter to the coast.

Little the boy remembered of that flight,

Pillioned behind his father, save the clang

And clatter of the hoofs on stony ground

Striking a sharp blue fire, while country tales

Of highwaymen kindled his reckless heart

As the great steed went shouldering through the night.

There Francis, laying a little sunburnt hand

On the big bolstered pistol at each side,

Dreamed with his wide grey eyes that he himself

Was riding out on some freebooting quest,

And felt himself heroic. League by league

The magic world rolled past him as they rode,

Leaving him nothing but a memory

Of his own making. Vaguely he perceived

A thousand meadows darkly streaming by

With clouds of perfume from their secret flowers,

A wayside cottage-window pointing out

A golden finger o'er the purple road;

A puff of garden roses or a waft

Of honeysuckle blown along a wood,

While overhead that silver ship, the moon,

Sailed slowly down the gulfs of glittering stars,

Till, at the last, a buffet of fresh wind

Fierce with sharp savours of the stinging brine

Against his dreaming face brought up a roar

Of mystic welcome from the Channel seas.

And there Drake paused for a moment, as a song

Stole o'er the waters from the Marygold

Where some musician, striking luscious chords

Of sweet-stringed music, freed his heart's desire

In symbols of the moment, which the rest,

And Doughty among them, scarce could understand.

SONG

The moon is up: the stars are bright:

The wind is fresh and free!

We're out to seek for gold to-night

Across the silver sea!

The world was growing grey and old;

Break out the sails again!

We're out to seek a Realm of Gold

Beyond the Spanish Main.

We're sick of all the cringing knees,

The courtly smiles and lies.

God, let Thy singing Channel breeze

Lighten our hearts and eyes!

Let love no more be bought and sold

For earthly loss or gain.

We're out to seek an Age of Gold

Beyond the Spanish Main.

Beyond the light of far Cathay,

Beyond all mortal dreams,

Beyond the reach of night and day

Our El Dorado gleams,

Revealing—as the skies unfold—

A star without a stain,

The Glory of the Gates of Gold

Beyond the Spanish Main.

And, as the skilled musician made the words

Of momentary meaning still simply

His own eternal hope and heart's desire,

Without belief, perchance, in Drake's own quest—

To Drake's own greater mind the eternal glory

Seemed to transfigure his immediate hope.

But Doughty only heard a sweet concourse

Of sounds. They ceased. And Drake resumed his tale

Of that strange flight in boyhood to the sea.

Next, the red-curtained inn and kindly hands

Of Protestant Plymouth held his memory long;

Often in strange and distant dreams he saw

That scene which now he tenderly portrayed

To Doughty's half-ironic smiling lips,

Half-sympathetic eyes; he saw again

That small inn parlour with the homely fare

Set forth upon the table, saw the gang

Of seamen dripping from the spray come in,

Like great new thoughts to some adventurous brain.

Feeding his wide grey eyes he saw them stand

Around the crimson fire and stamp their feet

And scatter the salt drops from their big sea-boots;

And all that night he lay awake and heard

Mysterious thunderings of eternal tides

Moaning out of a cold and houseless gloom

Beyond the world, that made it seem most sweet

To slumber in a little four-walled inn

Immune from all that vastness. But at dawn

He woke, he leapt from bed, he ran and lookt,

There, through the tiny high bright casement, there,—

O, fairy vision of that small boy's face

Peeping at daybreak through the diamond pane!—

There first he saw the wondrous new-born world,

And round its princely shoulders wildly flowing,

Gemmed with a myriad clusters of the sun,

The magic azure mantle of the sea.

And, afterwards, there came those marvellous days

When, on that battleship, a disused hulk

Rotting to death in Chatham Reach, they found

Sanctuary and a dwelling-place at last.

For, Hawkins, that great ship-man, being their friend,

A Protestant, with power on Plymouth town,

Nigh half whereof he owned, made Edmund Drake

Reader of prayer to all the ships of war

That lay therein. So there the dreaming boy,

Francis, grew up in that grim nursery

Among the ropes and masts and great dumb mouths

Of idle ordnance. In that hulk he heard

Many a time his father and his friends

Over some wild-eyed troop of refugees

Thunder against the powers of Spain and Rome,

"Idolaters who defiled the House of God

In England;" and all round them, as he heard,

The clang and clatter of shipwright hammers rang,

And hour by hour upon his vision rose,

In solid oak reality, new ships,

As Ilion rose to music, ships of war,

The visible shapes and symbols of his dream,

Unconscious yet, but growing as they grew,

A wondrous incarnation, hour by hour,

Till with their towering masts they stood complete,

Embodied thoughts, in God's own dockyards built,

For Drake ere long to lead against the world.

There, as to round the tale with ringing gold,

Across the waters from the full-plumed Swan

The music of a Mermaid roundelay—

Our Lady of the Sea, a Dorian theme

Tuned to the soul of England—charmed the moon.

SONG

I

Queen Venus wandered away with a cry,—

N'oserez vous, mon bel ami?—

For the purple wound in Adon's thigh;

Je vous en prie, pity me;

With a bitter farewell from sky to sky,

And a moan, a moan, from sea to sea;

N'oserez vous, mon bel, mon bel,

N'oserez vous, mon bel ami?

II

The soft Ægean heard her sigh,—

N'oserez vous, mon bel ami?—

Heard the Spartan hills reply,

Je vous en prie, pity me;

Spain was aware of her drawing nigh

Foot-gilt from the blossoms of Italy;

N'oserez vous, mon bel, mon bel,

N'oserez vous, mon bel ami?

III

In France they heard her voice go by,—

N'oserez vous, mon bel ami?

—And on the May-wind droop and die,

Je vous en prie, pity me;

Your maidens choose their loves, but I—

White as I came from the foam-white sea,

N'oserez vous, mon bel, mon bel,

N'oserez vous, mon bel ami?—

IV

The warm red-meal-winged butterfly,—

N'oserez vous, mon bel ami?—

Beat on her breast in the golden rye,—

Je vous en prie, pity me,—

Stained her breast with a dusty dye

Red as the print of a kiss might be!

N'oserez vous, mon bel, mon bel,

N'oserez vous, mon bel ami?

V

Is there no land, afar or nigh—

N'oserez vous, mon bel ami?—

But dreads the kiss o' the sea? Ah, why—

Je vous en prie, pity me!—

Why will ye cling to the loves that die?

Is earth all Adon to my plea?

N'oserez vous, mon bel, mon bel,

N'oserez vous, mon bel ami?

VI

Under the warm blue summer sky,—

N'oserez vous, mon bel ami?

With outstretched arms and a low long sigh,—

Je vous en prie, pity me;—

Over the Channel they saw her fly

To the white-cliffed island that crowns the sea,

N'oserez vous, mon bel, mon bel,

N'oserez vous, mon bel ami?

VII

England laughed as her queen drew nigh,—

N'oserez vous, mon bel ami?

To the white-walled cottages gleaming high,

Je vous en prie, pity me!

They drew her in with a joyful cry

To the hearth where she sits with a babe on her knee,

She has turned her moan to a lullaby.

She is nursing a son to the kings of the sea,

N'oserez vous, mon bel, mon bel,

N'oserez vous, mon bel ami?

Such memories, on the plunging Golden Hynde,

Under the stars, Drake drew before his friend,

Clomb for a moment to that peak of vision,

That purple peak of Darien, laughing aloud

O'er those wild exploits down to Rio Grande

Which even now had made his fierce renown

Terrible to all lonely ships of Spain.

E'en now, indeed, that poet of Portugal,

Lope de Vega, filled with this new fear

Began to meditate his epic muse

Till, like a cry of panic from his lips,

He shrilled the faint Dragontea forth, wherein

Drake is that Dragon of the Apocalypse,

The dread Antagonist of God and Man.

Well had it been for Doughty on that night

Had he not heard what followed; for, indeed,

When two minds clash, not often does the less

Conquer the greater; but, without one thought

Of evil, seeing they now were safe at sea,

Drake told him, only somewhat, yet too much,

Of that close conference with the Queen. And lo,

The face of Doughty blanched with a slow thought

That crept like a cold worm through all his brain,

"Thus much I knew, though secretly, before;

But here he freely tells me as his friend;

If I be false and he be what they say,

His knowledge of my knowledge will mean death."

But Drake looked round at Doughty with a smile

And said, "Forgive me now: thou art not used

To these cold nights at sea! thou tremblest, friend;

Let us go down and drink a cup of sack

To our return!" And at that kindly smile

Doughty shook off his nightmare mood, and thought,

"The yard-arm is for dogs, not gentlemen!

Even Drake would not misuse a man of birth!"

And in the cabin of the Golden Hynde

Revolving subtle treacheries he sat.

There with the sugared phrases of the court

Bartering beads for gold, he drew out all

The simple Devon seaman's inmost heart,

And coiled up in the soul of Francis Drake.

There in the solemn night they interchanged

Lies for sweet confidences. From one wall

The picture of Drake's love looked down on him;

And, like a bashful schoolboy's, that bronzed face

Flushed as he blurted out with brightening eyes

And quickening breath how he had seen her first,

Crowned on the village green, a Queen of May.

Her name, too, was Elizabeth, he said,

As if it proved that she, too, was a queen,

Though crowned with milk-white Devon may alone,

And queen but of one plot of meadow-sweet.

As yet, he said, he had only kissed her hand,

Smiled in her eyes and—there Drake also flinched,

Thinking, "I ne'er may see her face again."

And Doughty comforted his own dark heart

Thinking, "I need not fear so soft a soul

As this"; and yet, he wondered how the man,

Seeing his love so gripped him, none the less

Could leave her, thus to follow after dreams;

For faith to Doughty was an unknown word,

And trustfulness the property of fools.

At length they parted, each to his own couch,

Doughty with half a chuckle, Francis Drake

With one old-fashioned richly grateful prayer

Blessing all those he loved, as he had learnt

Beside his mother's knee in Devon days.

So all night long they sailed; but when a rift

Of orchard crimson broke the yellowing gloom

And barred the closely clouded East with dawn,

Behold, a giant galleon, overhead,

Lifting its huge black shining sides on high,

Loomed like some misty monster of the deep:

And, sullenly rolling out great gorgeous folds,

Over her rumbled like a thunder-cloud

The heavy flag of Spain. The splendid poop,

Mistily lustrous as a dragon's hoard

Seen in some magic cave-mouth o'er the sea

Through shimmering April sunlight after rain,

Blazed to the morning; and her port-holes grinned

With row on row of cannon. There at once

One sharp shrill whistle sounded, and those five

Small ships, mere minnows clinging to the flanks

Of that Leviathan, unseen, unheard,

Undreamt of, grappled her. She seemed asleep,

Swinging at ease with great half-slackened sails,

Majestically careless of the dawn.

There in the very native seas of Spain,

There with the yeast and foam of her proud cliffs,

Her own blue coasts, in sight across the waves,

Up her Titanic sides without a sound

The naked-footed British seamen swarmed

With knives between their teeth: then on her decks

They dropped like panthers, and the softly fierce

Black-bearded watch, of Spaniards, all amazed,

Rubbing their eyes as if at a wild dream,

Upraised a sudden shout, El Draque! El Draque!

And flashed their weapons out, but all too late;

For, ere their sleeping comrades reached the deck,

The little watch, out-numbered and out-matched,

Lay bound, and o'er the hatches everywhere

The points of naked cutlasses on guard

Gleamed, and without a struggle those below

Gave up their arms, their poignards jewelled thick

With rubies, and their blades of Spanish steel.

Then onward o'er the great grey gleaming sea

They swept with their rich booty, night and day.

Five other prizes, one for every ship,

Out of the seas of Spain they suddenly caught

And carried with them, laughing as they went—

"Now, now indeed the Rubicon is crossed;

Now have we singed the eyelids and the beard

Of Spain; now have we roused the hornet's nest;

Now shall we sail against a world in arms;

Now we have nought between us and black death

But our own hands, five ships, and three score guns."

So laughed they, plunging through the bay of storms,

Biscay, and past Gibraltar, not yet clothed

With British thunder, though, as one might dream,

Gazing in dim prophetic grandeur out

Across the waves while that small fleet went by,

Or watching them with love's most wistful fear

As they plunged Southward to the lonely coasts

Of Africa, till right in front up-soared,

Tremendous over ocean, Teneriffe,

Cloud-robed, but crowned with colours of the dawn.

Already those two traitors were at work,

Doughty and his false brother, among the crews,

Who knew not yet the vastness of their quest,

Nor dreamed of aught beyond the accustomed world;

For Drake had kept it secret, and the thoughts

Of some that he had shipped before the mast

Set sail scarce farther than for Mogadore

In West Morocco, or at the utmost mark

For northern Egypt, by the midnight woods

And crystal palace roofed with chrysoprase

Where Prester John had reigned five hundred years,

And Sydon, river of jewels, through the dark

Enchanted gorges rolled its rays along!

Some thought of Rio Grande; but scarce to ten

The true intent was known; while to divert

The rest from care the skilled musicians played.

But those two Doughtys cunningly devised

By chance-dropt words to breathe a hint abroad;

And through the foc'sles crept a grisly fear

Of things that lay beyond the bourne of earth,

Till even those hardy seamen almost quailed;

And now, at any whisper, they might turn

With terror in their eyes. They might refuse

To sail into that fabled burning Void

Or brave that primum mobile which drew

O'er-daring ships into the jaws of hell

Beyond the Pole Antarticke, where the sea

Rushed down through fiery mountains, and no sail

Could e'er return against its roaring stream.

Now down the coast of Barbary they cruised

Till Christmas Eve embraced them in the heart

Of summer. In a bay of mellow calm

They moored, and as the fragrant twilight brought

The stars, the sound of song and dance arose;

And down the shores in stealthy silence crept,

Out of the massy forest's emerald gloom,

The naked, dark-limbed children of the night,

Unseen, to gaze upon the floating glare

Of revelry; unheard, to hear that strange

New music of the gods, where o'er the soft

Ripple and wash of the lanthorn-crimsoned tide

Will Harvest's voice above the chorus rang.

SONG

In Devonshire, now, the Christmas chime

Is carolling over the lea;

And the sexton shovels away the snow

From the old church porch, maybe;

And the waifs with their lanthorns and noses a-glow

Come round for their Christmas fee;

But, as in old England it's Christmas-time,

Why, so is it here at sea,

My lads,

Why, so is it here at sea!

When the ship comes home, from turret to poop

Filled full with Spanish gold,

There'll be many a country dance and joke,

And many a tale to be told;

Every old woman shall have a red cloak

To fend her against the cold;

And every old man shall have a big round stoup

Of jolly good ale and old,

My lads,

Jolly good ale and old!

But on the morrow came a prosperous wind

Whereof they took advantage, and shook out

The flashing sails, and held their Christmas feast

Upon the swirling ridges of the sea:

And, sweeping Southward with full many a rouse

And shout of laughter, at the fall of day,

While the black prows drove, leapt, and plunged, and ploughed

Through the broad dazzle of sunset-coloured tides,

Outside the cabin of the Golden Hynde,

Where Drake and his chief captains dined in state,

The skilled musicians made a great new song.

SONG

I

Happy by the hearth sit the lasses and the lads, now,

Roasting of their chestnuts, toasting of their toes!

When the door is opened to a blithe new-comer,

Stamping like a ploughman to shuffle off the snows;

Rosy flower-like faces through the soft red firelight

Float as if to greet us, far away at sea,

Sigh as they remember, and turn the sigh to laughter,

Kiss beneath the mistletoe and wonder at their glee.

With their "heigh ho, the holly!

This life is most jolly!"

Christmas-time is kissing-time,

Away with melancholy!

II

Ah, the Yule of England, the happy Yule of England,

Yule of berried holly and the merry mistletoe;

The boar's head, the brown ale, the blue snapdragon,

Yule of groaning tables and the crimson log aglow!

Yule, the golden bugle to the scattered old companions,

Ringing as with laughter, shining as through tears!

Loved of little children, oh guard the holy Yuletide.

Guard it, men of England, for the child beyond the years.

With its "heigh ho, the holly!"

Away with melancholy!

Christmas-time is kissing-time,

"This life is most jolly!"

Now to the Fortunate Islands of old time

They came, and found no glory as of old

Encircling them, no red ineffable calm

Of sunset round crowned faces pale with bliss

Like evening stars. Rugged and desolate

Those isles were when they neared them, though afar

They beautifully smouldered in the sun

Like dusky purple jewels fringed and frayed

With silver foam across that ancient sea.

Of wonder. On the largest of the seven

Drake landed Doughty with his musketeers

To exercise their weapons and to seek

Supplies among the matted uncouth huts

Which, as the ships drew round each ragged cliff,

Crept like remembered misery into sight;

Oh, like the strange dull waking from a dream

They blotted out the rosy courts and fair

Imagined marble thresholds of the King

Achilles and the heroes that were gone.

But Drake cared nought for these things. Such a heart

He had, to make each utmost ancient bourne

Of man's imagination but a point

Of new departure for his Golden Dream.

But Doughty with his men ashore, alone,

Among the sparse wind-bitten groves of palm,

Kindled their fears of all they must endure

On that immense adventure. Nay, sometimes

He hinted of a voyage far beyond

All history and fable, far beyond

Even that Void whence only two returned,—

Columbus, with his men in mutiny;

Magellan, who could only hound his crew

Onward by threats of death, until they turned

In horror from the Threat that lay before,

Preferring to be hanged as mutineers

Rather than venture farther. Nor indeed

Did even Magellan at the last return;

But, with all hell around him, in the clutch

Of devils died upon some savage isle

By poisonous black enchantment. Not in vain

Were Doughty's words on that volcanic shore

Among the stunted dark acacia trees,

Whose heads, all bent one way by the trade-wind,

Pointed North-east by North, South-west by West

Ambiguous sibyls that with wizened arms

Mysteriously declared a twofold path,

Homeward or onward. But aboard the ships,

Among the hardier seamen, old Tom Moone,

With one or two stout comrades, overbore

All doubts and questionings with blither tales

Of how they sailed to Darien and heard

Nightingales in November all night long

As down a coast like Paradise they cruised

Through seas of lasting summer, Eden isles,

Where birds like rainbows, butterflies like gems,

And flowers like coloured fires o'er fairy creeks

Floated and flashed beneath the shadowy palms;

While ever and anon a bark canoe

With naked Indian maidens flower-festooned

Put out from shadowy coves, laden with fruit

Ambrosial o'er the silken shimmering sea.

And once a troop of nut-brown maidens came—

So said Tom Moone, a twinkle in his eye—

Swimming to meet them through the warm blue waves

And wantoned through the water, like those nymphs

Which one green April at the Mermaid Inn

Should hear Kit Marlowe mightily portray,

Among his boon companions, in a song

Of Love that swam the sparkling Hellespont

Upheld by nymphs, not lovelier than these,—

Though whiter yet not lovelier than these—

For those like flowers, but these like rounded fruit

Rosily ripening through the clear tides tossed

From nut-brown breast and arm all round the ship

The thousand-coloured spray. Shapely of limb

They were; but as they laid their small brown hands

Upon the ropes we cast them, Captain Drake

Suddenly thundered at them and bade them pack

For a troop of naughty wenches! At that tale

A tempest of fierce laughter rolled around

The foc'sle; but one boy from London town,

A pale-faced prentice, run-away to sea,

Asking why Drake had bidden them pack so soon,

Tom Moone turned to him with his deep-sea growl,

"Because our Captain is no pink-eyed boy

Nor soft-limbed Spaniard, but a staunch-souled Man,

Full-blooded; nerved like iron; with a girl

He loves at home in Devon; and a mind

For ever bent upon some mighty goal,

I know not what—but 'tis enough for me

To know my Captain knows." And then he told

How sometimes o'er the gorgeous forest gloom

Some marble city, rich, mysterious, white,

An ancient treasure-house of Aztec kings,

Or palace of forgotten Incas gleamed;

And in their dim rich lofty cellars gold,

Beyond all wildest dreams, great bars of gold,

Like pillars, tossed in mighty chaos, gold

And precious stones, agate and emerald,

Diamond, sapphire, ruby, and sardonyx.

So said he, as they waited the return

Of Doughty, resting in the foc'sle gloom,

Or idly couched about the sun-swept decks

On sails or coils of rope, while overhead

Some boy would climb the rigging and look out,

Arching his hand to see if Doughty came.

But when he came, he came with a strange face

Of feigned despair; and with a stammering tongue

He vowed he could not find those poor supplies

Which Drake himself in other days had found

Upon that self-same island. But, perchance,

This was a barren year, he said. And Drake

Looked at him, suddenly, and at the musketeers.

Their eyes were strained; their faces wore a cloud.

That night he said no more; but on the morn,

Mistrusting nothing, Drake with subtle sense

Of weather-wisdom, through that little fleet

Distributed his crews anew. And all

The prisoners and the prizes at those isles

They left behind them, taking what they would

From out their carven cabins,—glimmering silks,

Chiselled Toledo blades, and broad doubloons.

And lo, as they weighed anchor, far away

Behind them on the blue horizon line

It seemed a city of towering masts arose;

And from the crow's nest of the Golden Hynde

A seaman cried, "By God; the hunt is up!"

And like a tide of triumph through their veins

The red rejoicing blood began to race

As there they saw the avenging ships of Spain,

Eight mighty galleons, nosing out their trail.

And Drake growled, "Oh, my lads of Bideford,

It cuts my heart to show the hounds our heels;

But we must not emperil our great quest!

Such fights as that must wait—as our reward

When we return. Yet I will not put on

One stitch of sail. So, lest they are not too slow

To catch us, clear the decks. God, I would like

To fight them!" So the little fleet advanced

With decks all cleared and shotted guns and men

Bare-armed beside them, hungering to be caught,

And quite distracted from their former doubts;

For danger, in that kind, they never feared.

But soon the heavy Spaniards dropped behind;

And not in vain had Thomas Doughty sown

The seeds of doubt; for many a brow grew black

With sullen-seeming care that erst was gay.

But happily and in good time there came,

Not from behind them now, but right in front,

On the first sun-down of their quest renewed,

Just as the sea grew dark around their ships,

A chance that loosed heart-gnawing doubt in deeds.

For through a mighty zone of golden haze

Blotting the purple of the gathering night

A galleon like a floating mountain moved

To meet them, clad with sunset and with dreams.

Her masts and spars immense in jewelled mist

Shimmered: her rigging, like an emerald web

Of golden spiders, tangled half the stars!

Embodied sunset, dragging the soft sky

O'er dazzled ocean, through the night she drew

Out of the unknown lands; and round a prow

That jutted like a moving promontory

Over a cloven wilderness of foam,

Upon a lofty blazoned scroll her name

San Salvador challenged obsequious isles

Where'er she rode; who kneeling like dark slaves

Before some great Sultàn must lavish forth

From golden cornucopias, East and West,

Red streams of rubies, cataracts of pearl.

But, at a signal from their admiral, all

Those five small ships lay silent in the gloom

Which, just as if some god were on their side,

Covered them in the dark troughs of the waves,

Letting her pass to leeward. On she came,

Blazing with lights, a City of the Sea,

Belted with crowding towers and clouds of sail,

And round her bows a long-drawn thunder rolled

Splendid with foam; but ere she passed them by

Drake gave the word, and with one crimson flash

Two hundred yards of black and hidden sea

Leaped into sight between them as the roar

Of twenty British cannon shattered the night.

Then after her they drove, like black sea-wolves

Behind some royal high-branched stag of ten,

Hanging upon those bleeding foam-flecked flanks,

Leaping, snarling, worrying, as they went

In full flight down the wind; for those light ships

Much speedier than their huge antagonist,

Keeping to windward, worked their will with her.

In vain she burnt wild lights and strove to scan

The darkening deep. Her musketeers in vain

Provoked the crackling night with random fires:

In vain her broadside bellowings burst at large

As if the Gates of Erebus unrolled.

For ever and anon the deep-sea gloom

From some new quarter, like a dragon's mouth

Opened and belched forth crimson flames and tore

Her sides as if with iron claws unseen;

Till, all at once, rough voices close at hand

Out of the darkness thundered, "Grapple her!"

And, falling on their knees, the Spaniards knew

The Dragon of that red Apocalypse.

There with one awful cry, El Draque! El Draque!

They cast their weapons from them; for the moon

Rose, eastward, and, against her rising, black

Over the bloody bulwarks, Francis Drake,

Grasping the great hilt of his naked sword,

Towered for a moment to their startled eyes

Through all the zenith like the King of Hell.

Then he leaped down upon their shining decks,

And after him swarmed and towered and leapt in haste

A brawny band of three score Englishmen,

Gigantic as they loomed against the sky

And risen, it seemed, by miracle from the sea.

So small were those five ships below the walls

Of that huge floating mountain. Royally

Drake, from the swart commander's trembling hands

Took the surrendered sword, and bade his men

Gather the fallen weapons on an heap,

And placed a guard about them, while the moon

Silvering the rolling seas for many a mile

Glanced on the huddled Spaniards' rich attire,

As like one picture of despair they grouped

Under the splintered main-mast's creaking shrouds,

And the great swinging shadows of the sails

Mysteriously swept the gleaming decks;

Where many a butt of useless cannon gloomed

Along the accoutred bulwarks or upturned,

As the ship wallowed in the heaving deep,

Dumb mouths of empty menace to the stars.

Then Drake appointed Doughty, with a guard,

To sail the prize on to the next dim isle

Where they might leave her, taking aught they would

From out her carven cabins and rich holds.

And Doughty's heart leaped in him as he thought,

"I have my chance at last"; but Drake, who still

Trusted the man, made surety doubly sure,

And in his wary weather-wisdom sent

—Even as a breathing type of friendship, sent—

His brother, Thomas Drake, aboard the prize;

But set his brother, his own flesh and blood,

Beneath the man, as if to say, "I give

My loyal friend dominion over me."

So courteously he dealt with him; but he,

Seeing his chance once more slipping away,

Raged inwardly and, from his own false heart

Imputing his own evil, he contrived

A cunning charge that night; and when they came

Next day, at noon, upon the destined isle,

He suddenly spat the secret venom forth,

With such fierce wrath in his defeated soul

That he himself almost believed the charge.

For when Drake stepped on the San Salvador

To order all things duly about the prize,

What booty they must keep and what let go,

Doughty received him with a blustering voice

Of red mock-righteous wrath, "Is this the way

Englishmen play the pirate, Francis Drake?

While thou wast dreaming of thy hero's crown—

God save the mark!—thy brother, nay, thy spy,

Must play the common pilferer, must convert

The cargo to his uses, rob us all

Of what we risked our necks to win: he wears

The ransom of an emperor round his throat

That might enrich us all. Who saw him wear

That chain of rubies ere last night?"

And Drake,

"Answer him, brother;" and his brother smiled

And answered, "Nay, I never wore this chain

Before last night; but Doughty knows, indeed,

For he was with me—and none else was there

But Doughty—'tis my word against his word,

That close on midnight we were summoned down

To an English seaman who lay dying below

Unknown to any of us, a prisoner

In chains, that had been captured none knew where,

For all his mind was far from Darien,

And wandering evermore through Devon lanes

At home; whom we released; and from his waist

He took this hidden chain and gave it me,

Begging me that if ever I returned

To Bideford in Devon I would go

With whatsoever wealth it might produce

To his old mother who, with wrinkled hands

In some small white-washed cottage o'er the sea,

Where wall-flowers bloom in April, even now

Is turning pages of the well-worn Book

And praying for her son's return, nor knows

That he lies cold upon the heaving main.

But this he asked; and this in all good faith

I swore to do; and even now he died,

And hurrying hither from his side I clasped

His chain of rubies round my neck awhile,

In full sight of the sun. I have no more

To say." Then up spoke Hatton's trumpeter:

"But I have more to say. Last night I saw

Doughty, but not in full sight of the sun,

Nor once, nor twice, but three times at the least,

Carrying chains of gold, clusters of gems,

And whatsoever wealth he could convey

Into his cabin and smuggle in smallest space."

"Nay," Doughty stammered, mixing sneer and lie,

Yet bolstering up his courage with the thought

That being what courtiers called a gentleman

He ranked above the rude sea-discipline,

"Nay, they were free gifts from the Spanish crew

Because I treated them with courtesy."

Then bluff Will Harvest, "That perchance were true,

For he hath been close closeted for hours

With their chief officers, drinking their health

In our own war-bought wine, while down below

Their captured English seaman groaned his last."

Then Drake, whose utter silence, with a sense

Of infinite power and justice, ruled their hearts,

Suddenly thundered—and the traitor blanched

And quailed before him. "This my flesh and blood

I placed beneath thee as my dearer self!

But thou, in trampling on him, shalt not say

I charged thy brother. Nay, thou chargest me!

Against me only hast thou stirred this strife;

And now, by God, shalt thou learn, once for all,

That I, thy captain for this voyage, hold

The supreme power of judgment in my hands.

Get thee aboard my flagship! When I come

I shall have more to say to thee; but thou,

My brother, take this galleon in thy charge;

For, as I see, she holdeth all the stores

Which Doughty failed to find. She shall return

With us to that New World from which she came.

But now let these our prisoners all embark

In yonder pinnace; let them all go free.

I care not to be cumbered on my way

Through dead Magellan's unattempted dream

With chains and prisoners. In that Golden World

Which means much more to me than I can speak,

Much more, much more than I can speak or breathe,

Being, behind whatever name it bears—

Earthly Paradise, Island of the Saints,

Cathay, or Zipangu, or Hy Brasil—

The eternal symbol of my soul's desire,

A sacred country shining on the sea,

That Vision without which, the wise king said,

A people perishes; in that place of hope,

That Tirn'an Og, that land of lasting youth,

Where whosoever sails with me shall drink

Fountains of immortality and dwell

Beyond the fear of death for evermore,

There shall we see the dust of battle dance

Everywhere in the sunbeam of God's peace!

Oh, in the new Atlantis of my soul

There are no captives: there the wind blows free;

And, as in sleep, I have heard the marching song

Of mighty peoples rising in the West,

Wonderful cities that shall set their foot

Upon the throat of all old tyrannies;

And on the West wind I have heard a cry,

The shoreless cry of the prophetic sea

Heralding through that golden wilderness

The Soul whose path our task is to make straight,

Freedom, the last great Saviour of mankind.

I know not what I know: these are wild words,

Which, as the sun draws out earth's morning mists

Over dim fields where careless cattle sleep,

Some visionary Light, unknown, afar,

Draws from my darkling soul. Why should we drag

Thither this Old-World weight of utter gloom,

Or with the ballast of these heavy hearts

Make sail in sorrow for Pacific Seas?

Let us leave chains and prisoners to Spain;

But set these free to make their own way home!"

So said he, groping blindly towards the truth,

And heavy with the treason of his friend.

His face was like a king's face as he spake,

For sorrows that strike deep reveal the deep;

And through the gateways of a raggèd wound

Sometimes a god will drive his chariot wheels

From some deep heaven within the hearts of men.

Nevertheless, the immediate seamen there

Knowing how great a ransom they might ask

For some among their prisoners, men of wealth

And high degree, scarce liked to free them thus;

And only saw in Drake's conflicting moods

The moment's whim. "For little will he care,"

They muttered, "when we reach those fabled shores,

Whether his cannon break their golden peace."

Yet to his face they murmured not at all;

Because his eyes compelled them like a law.

So there they freed the prisoners and set sail

Across the earth-shaking shoulders of the broad

Atlantic, and the great grey slumbrous waves

Triumphantly swelled up to meet the keels.

BOOK III

Now in the cabin of the Golden Hynde

At dusk, Drake sent for Doughty. From one wall

The picture of his love looked down on him;

And on the table lay the magic chart,

Drawn on a buffalo horn, all small peaked isles,

Dwarf promontories, tiny twisted creeks,

And fairy harbours under elfin hills,

With marvellous inscriptions lined in red,—

As Here is Gold, or Many Rubies Here,

Or Ware Witch-crafte, or Here is Cannibals.

For in his great simplicity the man

Delighted in it, with the adventurous heart

Of boyhood poring o'er some well-thumbed tale

On blue Twelfth Night beside the crimson fire;

And o'er him, like a vision of a boy

In his first knighthood when, upon some hill

Washed by the silver fringes of the sea,

Amidst the purple heather he lies and reads

Of Arthur and Avilion, like a star

His love's pure face looked down. There Doughty came,

Half fearful, half defiant, with a crowd

Of jostling half-excuses on his lips,

And one dark swarm of adders in his heart.

For now what light of chivalry remained

In Doughty's mind was thickening with a plot,

Subtler and deadlier than the serpent's first

Attempt on our first sire in Eden bower.

Drake, with a countenance open as the sun,

Received him, saying: "Forgive me, friend, for I

Was hasty with thee. I well nigh forgot

Those large and liberal nights we two have passed

In this old cabin, telling all our dreams

And hopes, in friendship, o'er and o'er again.

But Vicary, thy friend hath talked with me,

And now—I understand. Thou shalt no more

Be vexed with a divided mastership.

Indeed, I trust thee, Doughty. Wilt thou not

Be friends with me? For now in ample proof

Thou shalt take charge of this my Golden Hynde

In all things, save of seamanship, which rests

With the ship's master under my command.

But I myself will sail upon the prize."

And with the word he gathered up the chart,

Took down his lady's picture with a smile,

Gripped Doughty's hand and left him, staring, sheer

Bewildered with that magnanimity

Of faith, throughout all shadows, in some light

Unseen behind the shadows. Thus did Drake

Give up his own fair cabin which he loved;

Being, it seemed, a little travelling home,

Fragrant with memories,—gave it, as he thought,

In recompense to one whom he had wronged.

For even as his mind must ever yearn

To shores beyond the sunset, even so

He yearned through all dark shadows to his friend,

And with his greater nature striving still

To comprehend the lesser, as the sky

Embraces our low earth, he would adduce

Justifications, thus: "These men of law

Are trained to plead for any and every cause,

To feign an indignation, or to prove

The worse is better and that black is white!

Small wonder that their passion goes astray:

There is one prayer, one prayer for all of us—

Enter not into judgment with Thy servant!"

Yet as his boat pulled tow'rd the Spanish prize

Leaving the Golden Hynde, far off he heard

A voice that chilled him, as the voice of Fate

Crying like some old Bellman through the world.

SONG

Yes; oh, yes; if any seek

Laughter flown or lost delight,

Glancing eye or rosy cheek,

Love shall claim his own to-night!

Say, hath any lost a friend?

Yes; oh, yes!

Let his distress

In my ditty find its end.

Yes; oh, yes; here all is found!

Kingly palaces await

Each its rightful owner, crowned

King and consecrate,

Under the wet and wintry ground!

Yes; oh, yes!

There sure redress

Lies where all is lost and found.

And Doughty, though Drake's deed of kindness flashed

A moment's kind contrition through his heart,

Immediately, with all his lawyer's wit

True to the cause that hired him, laughed it by,

And straight began to weave the treacherous web

Of soft intrigue wherein he meant to snare

The passions of his comrades. Night and day,

As that small fleet drove onward o'er the deep,

Cleaving the sunset with their bright black prows

Or hunted by the red pursuing Dawn,

He stirred between the high-born gentlemen

(Whose white and jewelled hands, gallant in fight,

And hearts remembering Crécy and Poictiers,

Were of scant use in common seamanship),

Between these and the men whose rough tarred arms

Were good at equal need in storm or war

Yet took a poorer portion of the prize,

He stirred a subtle jealousy and fanned

A fire that swiftly grew almost to hate.

For when the seamen must take precedence

Of loiterers on the deck—through half a word,

Small, with intense device, like some fierce lens,

He magnified their rude and blustering mode;

Or urged some scented fop, whose idle brain

Busied itself with momentary whims,

To bid the master alter here a sail,

Or there a rope; and, if the man refused,

Doughty, at night, across the wine-cups, raved

Against the rising insolence of the mob;

And hinted Drake himself was half to blame,

In words that seemed to say, "I am his friend,

Or I should bid you think him all to blame."

So fierce indeed the strife became that once,

While Chester, Doughty's catspaw, played with fire,

The grim ship-master growled between his teeth,

"Remember, sir, remember, ere too late,

Magellan's mutinous vice-admiral's end."

And Doughty heard, and with a boisterous laugh

Slapped the old sea-dog on the back and said,

"The gallows are for dogs, not gentlemen!"

Meanwhile his brother, sly John Doughty, sought

To fan the seamen's fear of the unknown world

With whispers and conjectures; and, at night,

He brought old books of Greek and Hebrew down

Into the foc'sle, claiming by their aid

A knowledge of Black Art, and power to tell

The future, which he dreadfully displayed

There in the flickering light of the oily lamp,

Bending above their huge and swarthy palms

And tracing them to many a grisly doom.

So many a night and day westward they plunged.

The half-moon ripened to its mellow round,

Dwindled again and ripened yet again,

And there was nought around them but the grey

Ruin and roar of huge Atlantic seas.

And only like a memory of the world

They left behind them rose the same great sun,

And daily rolled his chariot through their sky,

Whereof the skilled musicians made a song.

SONG

The same sun is o'er us,

The same Love shall find us,

The same and none other,

Wherever we be;

With the same goal before us,

The same home behind us,

England, our mother,

Ringed round with the sea.

When the breakers charged thundering

In thousands all round us

With a lightning of lances

Uphurtled on high,

When the stout ships were sundering

A rapture hath crowned us,

Like the wild light that dances

On the crests that flash by.

When the waters lay breathless

Gazing at Hesper

Guarding the golden

Fruit of the tree,

Heard we the deathless

Wonderful whisper

Wafting the olden

Dream of the sea.

No land in the ring of it

Now, all around us

Only the splendid

Resurging unknown!

How should we sing of it?—

This that hath found us

By the great sun attended

In splendour, alone.

Ah! the broad miles of it,

White with the onset

Of waves without number

Warring for glee.

Ah! the soft smiles of it

Down to the sunset,

Holy for slumber,

The peace of the sea.

The wave's heart, exalted,

Leaps forward to meet us,

The sun on the sea-wave

Lies white as the moon:

The soft sapphire-vaulted

Deep heaven smiles to greet us,

Free sons of the free-wave

All singing one tune.

The same sun is o'er us,

The same Love shall find us,

The same and none other,

Wherever we be;

With the same goal before us,

The same home behind us,

England, our mother,

Queen of the sea.

At last a faint-flushed April Dawn arose

With milk-white arms up-binding golden clouds

Of fragrant hair behind her lovely head;

And lo, before the bright black plunging prows

The whole sea suddenly shattered into shoals

Of rolling porpoises. Everywhere they tore

The glittering water. Like a moving crowd

Of black bright rocks washed smooth by foaming tides,

They thrilled the unconscious fancy of the crews

With subtle, wild, and living hints of land.

And soon Columbus' happy signals came,

The signs that saved him when his mutineers

Despaired at last and clamoured to return,—

And there, with awe triumphant in their eyes,

They saw, lazily tossing on the tide,

A drift of seaweed, and a berried branch,

Which silenced them as if they had seen a Hand

Writing with fiery letters on the deep,

Then a black cormorant, vulture of the sea,

With neck outstretched and one long ominous honk,

Went hurtling past them to its unknown bourne.

A mighty white-winged albatross came next;

Then flight on flight of clamorous clanging gulls;

And last, a wild and sudden shout of "Land!"

Echoed from crew to crew across the waves.

Then, dumb upon the rigging as they hung

Staring at it, a menace chilled their blood.

For like Il Gran Nemico of Dante, dark,

Ay, coloured like a thunder-cloud, from North

To South, in front, there slowly rose to sight

A country like a dragon fast asleep

Along the West, with wrinkled, purple wings

Ending in ragged forests o'er its spine;

And with great craggy claws out-thrust, that turned

(As the dire distances dissolved their veils)

To promontories bounding a huge bay.

There o'er the hushed and ever shallower tide

The staring ships drew nigh and thought, "Is this

The Dragon of our Golden Apple Tree,

The guardian of the fruit of our desire

Which grows in gardens of the Hesperides

Where those three sisters weave a white-armed dance

Around it everlastingly, and sing

Strange songs in a strange tongue that still convey

Warning to heedful souls?" Nearer they drew,

And now, indeed, from out a soft blue-grey

Mingling of colours on that coast's deep flank

There crept a garden of enchantment, height

O'er height, a garden sloping from the hills,

Wooded as with Aladdin's trees that bore

All-coloured clustering gems instead of fruit;

Now vaster as it grew upon their eyes,

And like some Roman amphitheatre

Cirque above mighty cirque all round the bay,

With jewels and flowers ablaze on women's breasts

Innumerably confounded and confused;

While lovely faces flushed with lust of blood,

Rank above rank upon their tawny thrones

In soft barbaric splendour lapped, and lulled

By the low thunderings of a thousand lions,

Luxuriously smiled as they bent down

Over the scarlet-splashed and steaming sands

To watch the white-limbed gladiators die.

Such fears and dreams for Francis Drake, at least,

Rose and dissolved in his nigh fevered brain

As they drew near that equatorial shore;

For rumours had been borne to him; and now

He knew not whether to impute the wrong

To his untrustful mind or to believe

Doughty a traitorous liar; yet there seemed

Proof and to spare. A thousand shadows rose

To mock him with their veiled indicative hands.

And each alone he laid and exorcised

But for each doubt he banished, one returned

From darker depths to mock him o'er again.

So, in that bay, the little fleet sank sail

And anchored; and the wild reality

Behind those dreams towered round them on the hills,

Or so it seemed. And Drake bade lower a boat,

And went ashore with sixteen men to seek

Water; and, as they neared the embowered beach,

Over the green translucent tide there came,

A hundred yards from land, a drowsy sound

Immeasurably repeated and prolonged,

As of innumerable elfin drums

Dreamily mustering in the tropic bloom.

This from without they heard, across the waves;

But when they glided into a flowery creek

Under the sharp black shadows of the trees—

Jaca and Mango and Palm and red festoons

Of garlanded Liana wreaths—it ebbed

Into the murmur of the mighty fronds,

Prodigious leaves whose veinings bore the fresh

Impression of the finger-prints of God.

There humming-birds, like flakes of purple fire

Upon some passing seraph's plumage, beat

And quivered in blinding blots of golden light

Between the embattled cactus and cardoon;

While one huge whisper of primeval awe

Seemed to await the cool green eventide

When God should walk His Garden as of old.

Now as the boats were plying to and fro

Between the ships and that enchanted shore,

Drake bade his comrades tarry a little and went

Apart, alone, into the trackless woods.

Tormented with his thoughts, he saw all round

Once more the battling image of his mind,

Where there was nought of man, only the vast

Unending silent struggle of Titan trees,

Large internecine twistings of the world,

The hushed death-grapple and the still intense

Locked anguish of Laocoons that gripped

Death by the throat for thrice three hundred years,

Once, like a subtle mockery overhead,

Some black-armed chattering ape swung swiftly by,

But he strode onward, thinking—"Was it false,

False all that kind outreaching of the hands?

False? Was there nothing certain, nothing sure

In those divinest aisles and towers of Time

Wherein we took sweet counsel? Is there nought

Sure but the solid dust beneath our feet?

Must all those lovelier fabrics of the soul,

Being so divinely bright and delicate,

Waver and shine no longer than some poor

Prismatic aery bubble? Ay, they burst,

And all their glory shrinks into one tear

No bitterer than some idle love-lorn maid

Sheds for her dead canary. God, it hurts,

This, this hurts most, to think how we must miss

What might have been, for nothing but a breath,

A babbling of the tongue, an argument,

Or such a poor contention as involves

The thrones and dominations of this earth,—

How many of us, like seed on barren ground,

Must miss the flower and harvest of their prayers,

The living light of friendship and the grasp

Which for its very meaning once implied

Eternities of utterance and the life

Immortal of two souls beyond the grave?"

Now, wandering upward ever, he reached and clomb

The slope side of a fern-fringed precipice,

And, at the summit, found an opening glade,

Whence, looking o'er the forest, he beheld

The sea; and, in the land-locked bay below,

Far, far below, his elfin-tiny ships,

All six at anchor on the crawling tide!

Then onward, upward, through the woods once more

He plunged with bursting heart and burning brow;

And, once again, like madness, the black shapes

Of doubt swung through his brain and chattered and laughed,

Till he upstretched his arms in agony

And cursed the name of Doughty, cursed the day

They met, cursed his false face and courtier smiles,

"For oh," he cried, "how easy a thing it were

For truth to wear the garb of truth! This proves

His treachery!" And there, at once, his thoughts

Tore him another way, as thus, "And yet

If he were false, is he not subtle enough

To hide it? Why, this proves his innocence—

This very courtly carelessness which I,

Black-hearted evil-thinker as I am,

In my own clumsier spirit so misjudge!

These children of the court are butterflies

Fluttering hither and thither, and I—poor fool—

Would fix them to a stem and call them flowers,

Nay, bid them grasp the ground like towering oaks

And shadow all the zenith;" and yet again

The madness of distrustful friendship gleamed

From his fierce eyes, "Oh villain, damnèd villain,

God's murrain on his heart! I know full well

He hides what he can hide! He wears no fault

Upon the gloss and frippery of his breast!

It is not that! It is the hidden things,

Unseizable, the things I do not know,

Ay, it is these, these, these and these alone

That I mistrust."

And, as he walked, the skies

Grew full of threats, and now enormous clouds

Rose mammoth-like above the ensanguined deep,

Trampling the daylight out; and, with its death

Dyed purple, rushed along as if they meant

To obliterate the world. He took no heed.

Though that strange blackness brimmed the branching aisles

With horror, he strode on till in the gloom,

Just as his winding way came out once more

Over a precipice that o'erlooked the bay,

There, as he went, not gazing down, but up,

He saw what seemed a ponderous granite cliff,

A huge ribbed shell upon a lonely shore

Left by forgotten mountains when they sank

Back to earth's breast like billows on a sea.

A tall and whispering crowd of tree-ferns waved

Mysterious fringes round it. In their midst

He flung himself at its broad base, with one

Sharp shivering cry of pain, "Show me Thy ways,

O God, teach me Thy paths! I am in the dark!

Lighten my darkness!"

Almost as he spoke

There swept across the forest, far and wide,

Gathering power and volume as it came,

A sound as of a rushing mighty wind;

And, overhead, like great black gouts of blood

Wrung from the awful forehead of the Night

The first drops fell and ceased. Then, suddenly,

Out of the darkness, earth with all her seas,

Her little ships at anchor in the bay

(Five ebony ships upon a sheet of silver,

Drake saw not that, indeed, Drake saw not that!),

Her woods, her boughs, her leaves, her tiniest twigs.

Leapt like a hunted stag through one immense

Lightning of revelation into the murk

Of Erebus: then heaven o'er rending heaven

Shattered and crashed down ruin over the world.

But, in that deeper darkness, Francis Drake

Stood upright now, and with blind outstretched arms

Groped at that strange forgotten cliff and shell

Of mystery; for in that flash of light

Æons had passed; and now the Thing in front

Made his blood freeze with memories that lay

Behind his Memory. In the gloom he groped,

And with dark hands that knew not what they knew,

As one that shelters in the night, unknowing,

Beneath a stranded shipwreck, with a cry

He touched the enormous rain-washed belted ribs

And bones like battlements of some Mastodon

Embedded there until the trump of doom.

After long years, long centuries, perchance,

Triumphantly some other pioneer

Would stand where Drake now stood and read the tale

Of ages where he only felt the cold

Touch in the dark of some huge mystery;

Yet Drake might still be nearer to the light

Who now was whispering from his great deep heart,

"Show me Thy ways, O God, teach me Thy paths!"

And there by some strange instinct, oh, he felt

God's answer there, as if he grasped a hand

Across a gulf of twice ten thousand years;

And he regained his lost magnificence

Of faith in that great Harmony which resolves

Our discords, faith through all the ruthless laws

Of nature in their lovely pitilessness,

Faith in that Love which outwardly must wear,

Through all the sorrows of eternal change,

The splendour of the indifference of God.

All round him through the heavy purple gloom

Sloped the soft rush of silver-arrowed rain,

Loosening the skies' hard anguish, as with tears.

Once more he felt his unity with all

The vast composure of the universe,

And drank deep at the fountains of that peace

Which comprehends the tumult of our days.

But with that peace the power to act returned;

And, with his back against the Mastodon,

He stared through the great darkness tow'rds the sea.

The rain ceased for a moment: only the slow

Drip of the dim droop-feathered palms all round

Deepened the hush.

Then, out of the gloom once more

The whole earth leapt to sight with all her woods,

Her boughs, her leaves, her tiniest twigs distinct

For one wild moment; but Drake only saw

The white flash of her seas and there, oh there

That land-locked bay with those five elfin ships,

Five elfin ebony ships upon a sheet

Of wrinkled silver! Then, as the thunder followed,

One thought burst through his brain—

One ship was gone!

Over the grim precipitous edge he hung,

An eagle waiting for the lightning now

To swoop upon his prey. One iron hand

Gripped a rough tree-root like a bunch of snakes;

And, as the rain rushed round him, far away

He saw to northward yet another flash,

A scribble of God's finger in the sky

Over a waste of white stampeding waves.

His eye flashed like a falchion as he saw it,

And from his lips there burst the sea-king's laugh;

For there, with a fierce joy he knew, he knew

Doughty, at last—an open mutineer!

An open foe to fight! Ay, there she went,—

His Golden Hynde, his little Golden Hynde

A wild deserter scudding to the North.

And, almost ere the lightning, Drake had gone

Crashing down the face of the precipice,

By a narrow water-gully, and through the huge

Forest he tore the straight and perilous way

Down to the shore; while, three miles to the North,

Upon the wet poop of the Golden Hynde

Doughty stood smiling. Scarce would he have smiled

Knowing that Drake had seen him from that tower

Amidst the thunders; but, indeed, he thought

He had escaped unseen amidst the storm.

Many a day he had worked upon the crew,

Fanning their fears and doubts until he won

The more part to his side. And when they reached

That coast, he showed them how Drake meant to sail

Southward, into that unknown Void; but he

Would have them suddenly slip by stealth away

Northward to Darien, showing them what a life

Of roystering glory waited for them there,

If, laying aside this empty quest, they joined

The merry feasters round those island fires

Which over many a dark-blue creek illumed

Buccaneer camps in scarlet logwood groves,

Fringing the Gulf of Mexico, till dawn

Summoned the Black Flags out to sweep the sea.

But when Drake reached the flower-embowered boat

And found the men awaiting his return

There, in a sheltering grove of bread-fruit trees

Beneath great eaves of leafage that obscured

Their sight, but kept the storm out, as they tossed

Pieces of eight or rattled the bone dice,

His voice went through them like a thunderbolt,

For none of them had seen the Golden Hynde

Steal from the bay; and now the billows burst

Like cannon down the coast; and they had thought

Their boat could not be launched until the storm

Abated. Under Drake's compelling eyes,

Nevertheless, they poled her down the creek

Without one word, waiting their chance. Then all

Together with their brandished oars they thrust,

And on the fierce white out-draught of a wave

They shot up, up and over the toppling crest

Of the next, and plunged crashing into the trough

Behind it: then they settled at their thwarts,

And the fierce water boiled before their blades

As, with Drake's iron hand upon the helm,

They soared and crashed across the rolling seas.

Not for the Spanish prize did Drake now steer,

But for that little ship the Marygold,

Swiftest of sail, next to the Golden Hynde,

And, in the hands of Francis Drake, indeed

Swiftest of all; and ere the seamen knew

What power, as of a wind, bore them along,

Anchor was up, their hands were on the sheets,

The sails were broken out, the Marygold

Was flying like a storm-cloud to the North,

And on her poop an iron statue still

As death stood Francis Drake.

One hour they rushed

Northward, with green seas washing o'er the deck

And buffeted with splendour; then they saw

The Golden Hynde like some wing-broken gull

With torn mismanaged plumes beating the air

In peril of utter shipwreck; saw her fly

Half-mast, a feeble signal of distress

Despite all Doughty's curses; for her crew

Wild with divisions torn amongst themselves

Most gladly now surrendered in their hearts,

As close alongside grandly onward swept

The Marygold, with canvas trim and taut

Magnificently drawing the full wind,

Her gunners waiting at their loaded guns

Bare-armed and silent; and that iron soul

Alone, upon her silent quarter-deck.

There they hauled up into the wind and lay

Rocking, while Drake, alone, without a guard,

Boarding the runaway, dismissed his boat

Back to the Marygold. Then his voice out-rang

Trumpet-like o'er the trembling mutineers,

And clearly, as if they were but busied still

About the day's routine. They hid their shame,

As men that would propitiate a god,

By flying to fulfil his lightest word;

And ere they knew what power, as of a wind,

Impelled them—that half wreck was trim and taut,

Her sails all drawing and her bows afoam;

And, creeping past the Marygold once more,

She led their Southward way! And not till then

Did Drake vouchsafe one word to the white face

Of Doughty, as he furtively slunk nigh

With some new lie upon his fear-parched lips

Thirsting for utterance in his crackling laugh

Of deprecation; and with one ruffling puff

Of pigeon courage in his blinded soul—

"I am no sea-dog—even Francis Drake

Would scarce misuse a gentleman."

Then Drake turned

And summoned four swart seamen out by name.

His words went like a cold wind through their flesh

As with a passionless voice he slowly said,

"Take ye this fellow: bind him to the mast

Until what time I shall decide his fate."

And Doughty gasped as at the world's blank end,—

"Nay, Francis," cried he, "wilt thou thus misuse

A gentleman?" But as the seamen gripped

His arms he struggled vainly and furiously

To throw them off; and in his impotence

Let slip the whole of his treacherous cause and hope

In empty wrath,—"Fore God," he foamed and snarled,

"Ye shall all smart for this when we return!

Unhand me, dogs! I have Lord Burleigh's power

Behind me. There is nothing I have done

Without his warrant! Ye shall smart for this!

Unhand me, I say, unhand me!"

And in one flash

Drake saw the truth, and Doughty saw his eyes

Lighten upon him; and his false heart quailed

Once more; and he suddenly suffered himself

Quietly, strangely, to be led away

And bound without a murmur to the mast.

And strangely Drake remembered, as those words,

"Ye shall all smart for this when we return,"

Yelped at his faith, how while the Dover cliffs

Faded from sight he leaned to his new friend

Doughty and said: "I blame them not who stay!

I blame them not at all who cling to home,

For many of us, indeed, shall not return,

Nor ever know that sweetness any more."

And when they had reached their anchorage anew,

Drake, having now resolved to bring his fleet

Beneath a more compact control, at once

Took all the men and the chief guns and stores

From out the Spanish prize; and sent Tom Moone

To set the hulk afire. Also he bade

Unbind the traitor and ordered him aboard

The pinnace Christopher. John Doughty, too,

He ordered thither, into the grim charge

Of old Tom Moone, thinking it best to keep

The poisonous leaven carefully apart

Until they had won well Southward, to a place

Where, finally committed to their quest,

They might arraign the traitor without fear

Or favour, and acquit him or condemn.

But those two brothers, doubting as the false

Are damned to doubt, saw murder in his eyes,

And thought "He means to sink the smack one night."

And they refused to go, till Drake abruptly

Ordered them straightway to be slung on board

With ropes.

The daylight waned; but ere the sun

Sank, the five ships were plunging to the South;

For Drake would halt no longer, least the crows

Also should halt betwixt two purposes.

He took the tide of fortune at the flood;

And onward through the now subsiding storm,

Ere they could think what power as of a wind

Impelled them, he had swept them on their way.

Far, far into the night they saw the blaze

That leapt in crimson o'er the abandoned hulk

Behind them, like a mighty hecatomb

Marking the path of some Titanic will.

Many a night and day they Southward drove.

Sometimes at midnight round them all the sea

Quivered with witches' oils and water snakes,

Green, blue, and red, with lambent tongues of fire.

Mile upon mile about the blurred black hulls

A cauldron of tempestuous colour coiled.

On every mast mysterious meteors burned,

And from the shores a bellowing rose and fell

As of great bestial gods that walked all night

Through some wild hell unknown, too vast for men;

But when the silver and crimson of the dawn

Broke out, they saw the tropic shores anew,

The fair white foam, and, round about the rocks,

Weird troops of tusked sea-lions; and the world

Mixed with their dreams and made them stranger still.

And, once, so fierce a tempest scattered the fleet

That even the hardiest souls began to think

There was a Jonah with them; for the seas

Rose round them like green mountains, peaked and rigged

With heights of Alpine snow amongst the clouds;

And many a league to Southward, when the ships

Gathered again amidst the sinking waves

Four only met. The ship of Thomas Drake

Was missing; and some thought it had gone down

With all hands in the storm. But Francis Drake

Held on his way, learning from hour to hour

To merge himself in immortality;

Learning the secrets of those pitiless laws

Which dwarf all mortal grief, all human pain,

To something less than nothing by the side

Of that eternal travail dimly guessed,

Since first he felt in the miraculous dark

The great bones of the Mastodon, that hulk

Of immemorial death. He learned to judge

The passing pageant of this outward world

As by the touch-stone of that memory;

Even as in that country which some said

Lay now not far, the great Tezcucan king,

Resting his jewelled hand upon a skull,

And on a smouldering glory of jewels throned

There in his temple of the Unknown God

Over the host of Aztec princes, clad

In golden hauberks gleaming under soft

Surcoats of green or scarlet feather-work,

Could in the presence of a mightier power

Than life or death, give up his guilty sons,

His only sons, to the sacrificial sword.

And hour by hour the soul of Francis Drake,

Unconscious as an oak-tree of its growth,

Increased in strength and stature as he drew

Earth, heaven, and hell within him, more and more.

For as the dream we call our world, with all

Its hues is but a picture in the brain,

So did his soul enfold the universe

With gradual sense of superhuman power,

While every visible shape within the vast

Horizon seemed the symbol of some, thought

Waiting for utterance. He had found indeed

God's own Nirvana, not of empty dream,

But of intensest life. Nor did he think

Aught of all this; but, as the rustic deems

The colours that he carries in his brain

Are somehow all outside him while he peers

Unaltered through two windows in his face,

Drake only knew that as the four ships plunged

Southward, the world mysteriously grew

More like a prophet's vision, hour by hour,

Fraught with dark omens and significances,

A world of hieroglyphs and sacred signs

Wherein he seemed to read the truth that lay

Hid from the Roman augurs when of old

They told the future from the flight of birds.

How vivid with disaster seemed the flight

Of those blood-red flamingoes o'er the dim

Blue steaming forest, like two terrible thoughts

Flashing, unapprehended, through his brain!

And now, as they drove Southward, day and night,

Through storm and calm, the shores that fleeted by

Grew wilder, grander, with his growing soul,

And pregnant with the approaching mystery.

And now along the Patagonian coast

They cruised, and in the solemn midnight saw

Wildernesses of shaggy barren marl,

Petrified seas of lava, league on league,

Craters and bouldered slopes and granite cliffs

With ragged rents, grim gorges, deep ravines,

And precipice on precipice up-piled

Innumerable to those dim distances

Where, over valleys hanging in the clouds,

Gigantic mountains and volcanic peaks

Catching the wefts of cirrus fleece appeared

To smoke against the sky, though all was now

Dead as that frozen chaos of the moon,

Or some huge passion of a slaughtered soul

Prostrate under the marching of the stars.

At last, and in a silver dawn, they came

Suddenly on a broad-winged estuary,

And, in the midst of it, an island lay,

There they found shelter, on its leeward side,

And Drake convened upon the Golden Hynde

His dread court-martial. Two long hours he heard

Defence and accusation, then broke up

The conclave, and, with burning heart and brain,

Feverishly seeking everywhere some sign

To guide him, went ashore upon that isle,

And lo, turning a rugged point of rock,

He rubbed his eyes to find out if he dreamed,

For there—a Crusoe's wonder, a miracle,

A sign—before him stood on that lone strand

Stark, with a stern arm pointing out his way

And jangling still one withered skeleton,

The grim black gallows where Magellan hanged

His mutineers. Its base was white with bones

Picked by the gulls, and crumbling o'er the sand

A dread sea-salt, dry from the tides of time.

There, on that lonely shore, Death's finger-post

Stood like some old forgotten truth made strange

By the long lapse of many memories,

All starting up in resurrection now

As at the trump of doom, heroic ghosts

Out of the cells and graves of his deep brain

Reproaching him. "Were this man not thy friend,

Ere now he should have died the traitor's death.

What wilt thou say to others if they, too,

Prove false? Or wilt thou slay the lesser and save

The greater sinner? Nay, if thy right hand

Offend thee, cut it off!" And, in one flash,

Drake saw his path and chose it.

With a voice

Low as the passionless anguished voice of Fate

That comprehends all pain, but girds it round

With iron, lest some random cry break out

For man's misguidance, he drew all his men

Around him, saying, "Ye all know how I loved

Doughty, who hath betrayed me twice and thrice,

For I still trusted him: he was no felon

That I should turn my heart away from him.

He is the type and image of man's laws;

While I—am lawless as the soul that still

Must sail and seek a world beyond the worlds,

A law behind earth's laws. I dare not judge!

But ye—who know the mighty goal we seek,

Who have seen him sap our courage, hour by hour,

Till God Himself almost appeared a dream

Behind his technicalities and doubts

Of aught he could not touch or handle: ye

Who have seen him stir up jealousy and strife

Between our seamen and our gentlemen,

Even as the world stirs up continual strife,

Bidding the man forget he is a man

With God's own patent of nobility;

Ye who have seen him strike this last sharp blow—

Sharper than any enemy hath struck,—

He whom I trusted, he alone could strike—

So sharply, for indeed I loved this man.

Judge ye—for see, I cannot. Do not doubt

I loved this man!

But now, if ye will let him have his life,

Oh, speak! But, if ye think it must be death,

Hold up your hands in silence!" His voice dropped,

And eagerly he whispered forth one word

Beyond the scope of Fate—

"I would not have him die!" There was no sound

Save the long thunder of eternal seas,—

Drake bowed his head and waited.

Suddenly,

One man upheld his hand; then, all at once,

A brawny forest of brown arms arose

In silence, and the great sea whispered Death.

*    *    *    *

There, with one big swift impulse, Francis Drake

Held out his right sun-blackened hand and gripped

The hand that Doughty proffered him; and lo,

Doughty laughed out and said, "Since I must die,

Let us have one more hour of comradeship,

One hour as old companions. Let us make

A feast here, on this island, ere I go

Where there is no more feasting." So they made

A great and solemn banquet as the day

Decreased; and Doughty bade them all unlock

Their sea-chests and bring out their rich array.

There, by that wondering ocean of the West,

In crimson doublets, lined and slashed with gold,

In broidered lace and double golden chains

Embossed with rubies and great cloudy pearls

They feasted, gentlemen adventurers,

Drinking old malmsey, as the sun sank down.

Now Doughty, fronting the rich death of day,

And flourishing a silver pouncet-box

With many a courtly jest and rare conceit,

There as he sat in rich attire, out-braved

The rest. Though darker-hued, yet richer far,

His murrey-coloured doublet double-piled

Of Genoa velvet, puffed with ciprus, shone;

For over its grave hues the gems that bossed

His golden collar, wondrously relieved,

Blazed lustrous to the West like stars. But Drake

Was clad in black, with midnight silver slashed,

And, at his side, a great two-handed sword.

At last they rose, just as the sun's last rays

Rested upon the heaving molten gold

Immeasurable. The long slow sigh of the waves

That creamed across the lonely time-worn reef

All round the island seemed the very voice

Of the Everlasting: black against the sea

The gallows of Magellan stretched its arm

With the gaunt skeleton and its rusty chain

Creaking and swinging in the solemn breath

Of eventide like some strange pendulum

Measuring out the moments that remained.

There did they take the holy sacrament

Of Jesus' body and blood. Then Doughty and Drake

Kissed each other, as brothers, on the cheek;

And Doughty knelt. And Drake, without one word,

Leaning upon the two-edged naked sword

Stood at his side, with iron lips, and eyes

Full of the sunset; while the doomed man bowed

His head upon a rock. The great sun dropped

Suddenly, and the land and sea were dark;

And as it were a sign, Drake lifted up

The gleaming sword. It seemed to sweep the heavens

Down in its arc as he smote, once, and no more.

Then, for a moment, silence froze their veins,

Till one fierce seamen stooped with a hoarse cry;

And, like an eagle clutching up its prey,

His arm swooped down and bore the head aloft,

Gorily streaming, by the long dark hair;

And a great shout went up, "So perish all

Traitors to God and England." Then Drake turned

And bade them to their ships; and, wondering,

They left him. As the boats thrust out from shore

Brave old Tom Moone looked back with faithful eyes

Like a great mastiff to his master's face.

He, looming larger from his loftier ground

Clad with the slowly gathering night of stars

And gazing seaward o'er his quiet dead,

Seemed like some Titan bronze in grandeur based

Unshakeable until the crash of doom

Shatter the black foundations of the world.

BOOK IV

Dawn, everlasting and almighty Dawn,

Hailed by ten thousand names of death and birth,

Who, chiefly by thy name of Sorrow, seem'st

To half the world a sunset, God's great Dawn,

Fair light of all earth's partings till we meet

Where dawn and sunset, mingling East and West,

Shall make in some deep Orient of the soul

One radiant Rose of Love for evermore;

Teach me, oh teach to bear thy broadening light,

Thy deepening wonder, lest as old dreams fade

With love's unfaith, like wasted hours of youth,

And dim illusions vanish in thy beam,

Their rapture and their anguish break that heart

Which loved them, and must love for ever now.

Let thy great sphere of splendour, ring by ring

For ever widening, draw new seas, new skies,

Within my ken; yet, as I still must bear

This love, help me to grow in spirit with thee.

Dawn on my song which trembles like a cloud

Pierced with thy beauty. Rise, shine, as of old

Across the wondering ocean in the sight

Of those world-wandering mariners, when earth

Rolled flat up to the Gates of Paradise,

And each slow mist that curled its gold away

From each new sea they furrowed into pearl

Might bring before their blinded mortal eyes

God and the Glory. Lighten as on the soul

Of him that all night long in torment dire,

Anguish and thirst unceasing for thy ray

Upon that lonely Patagonian shore

Had lain as on the bitterest coasts of Hell.

For all night long, mocked by the dreadful peace

Of world-wide seas that darkly heaved and sank

With cold recurrence, like the slow sad breath

Of a fallen Titan dying all alone

In lands beyond all human loneliness,

While far and wide glimmers that broken targe

Hurled from tremendous battle with the gods,

And, as he breathes in pain, the chain-mail rings

Round his broad breast a muffled rattling make

For many a league, so seemed the sound of waves

Upon those beaches—there, be-mocked all night,

Beneath Magellan's gallows, Drake had watched

Beside his dead; and over him the stars

Paled as the silver chariot of the moon

Drove, and her white steeds ramped in a fury of foam

On splendid peaks of cloud. The Golden Hynde

Slept with those other shadows on the bay.

Between him and his home the Atlantic heaved;

And, on the darker side, across the strait

Of starry sheen that softly rippled and flowed

Betwixt the mainland and his isle, it seemed

Death's Gates indeed burst open. The night yawned

Like a foul wound. Black shapes of the outer dark

Poured out of forests older than the world;

And, just as reptiles that take form and hue,

Speckle and blotch, in strange assimilation

From thorn and scrub and stone and the waste earth

Through which they crawl, so that almost they seem

The incarnate spirits of their wilderness,

Were these most horrible kindred of the night.

Æonian glooms unfathomable, grim aisles,

Grotesque, distorted boughs and dancing shades

Out-belched their dusky brood on the dim shore;

Monsters with sooty limbs, red-raddled eyes,

And faces painted yellow, women and men;

Fierce naked giants howling to the moon,

And loathlier Gorgons with long snaky tresses

Pouring vile purple over pendulous breasts

Like wine-bags. On the mainland beach they lit

A brushwood fire that reddened creek and cove

And lapped their swarthy limbs with hideous tongues

Of flame; so near that by their light Drake saw

The blood upon the dead man's long black hair

Clotting corruption. The fierce funeral pyre

Of all things fair seemed rolling on that shore;

And in that dull red battle of smoke and flame,

While the sea crunched the pebbles, and dark drums

Rumbled out of the gloom as if this earth

Had some Titanic tigress for a soul

Purring in forests of Eternity

Over her own grim dreams, his lonely spirit

Passed through the circles of a world-wide waste

Darker than ever Dante roamed. No gulf

Was this of fierce harmonious reward,

Where Evil moans in anguish after death,

Where all men reap as they have sown, where gluttons

Gorge upon toads and usurers gulp hot streams

Of molten gold. This was that Malebolge

Which hath no harmony to mortal ears,

But seems the reeling and tremendous dream

Of some omnipotent madman. There he saw

The naked giants dragging to the flames

Young captives hideous with a new despair:

He saw great craggy blood-stained stones upheaved

To slaughter, saw through mists of blood and fire

The cannibal feast prepared, saw filthy hands

Rend limb from limb, and almost dreamed he saw

Foul mouths a-drip with quivering human flesh

And horrible laughter in the crimson storm

That clomb and leapt and stabbed at the high heaven

Till the whole night seemed saturate with red.

And all night long upon the Golden Hynde,

A cloud upon the waters, brave Tom Moone

Watched o'er the bulwarks for some dusky plunge

To warn him if that savage crew should mark

His captain and swim over to his isle.

Whistle in hand he watched, his boat well ready,

His men low-crouched around him, swarthy faces

Grim-chinned upon the taffrail, muttering oaths

That trampled down the fear i' their bristly throats,

While at their sides a dreadful hint of steel

Sent stray gleams to the stars. But little heed

Had Drake of all that menaced him, though oft

Some wandering giant, belching from the feast,

All blood-besmeared, would come so near he heard

His heavy breathing o'er the narrow strait.

Yet little care had Drake, for though he sat

Bowed in the body above his quiet dead,

His burning spirit wandered through the wastes,

Wandered through hells behind the apparent hell,

Horrors immeasurable, clutching at dreams

Found fair of old, but now most foul. The world

Leered at him through its old remembered mask

Of beauty: the green grass that clothed the fields

Of England (shallow, shallow fairy dream!)

What was it but the hair of dead men's graves.

Rooted in death, enriched with all decay?

And like a leprosy the hawthorn bloom

Crawled o'er the whitening bosom of the spring;

And bird and beast and insect, ay and man,

How fat they fed on one another's blood!

And Love, what faith in Love, when spirit and flesh

Are found of such a filthy composition?

And Knowledge, God, his mind went reeling back

To that dark voyage on the deadly coast

Of Panama, where one by one his men

Sickened and died of some unknown disease,

Till Joseph, his own brother, in his arms

Died; and Drake trampled down all tender thought,

All human grief, and sought to find the cause,

For his crew's sake, the ravenous unknown cause

Of that fell scourge. There, in his own dark cabin,

Lit by the wild light of the swinging lanthorn,

He laid the naked body on that board

Where they had supped together. He took the knife

From the ague-stricken surgeon's palsied hands,

And while the ship rocked in the eternal seas

And dark waves lapped against the rolling hulk

Making the silence terrible with voices,

He opened his own brother's cold white corse,

That pale deserted mansion of a soul,

Bidding the surgeon mark, with his own eyes,

While yet he had strength to use them, the foul spots,

The swollen liver, the strange sodden heart,

The yellow intestines. Yea, his dry lips hissed

There in the stark face of Eternity,

"Seëst thou? Seëst thou? Knowest thou what it means?"

Then, like a dream up-surged the belfried night

Of Saint Bartholomew, the scented palaces

Whence harlots leered out on the twisted streets

Of Paris, choked with slaughter! Europe flamed

With human torches, living altar candles,

Lighted before the Cross where men had hanged

The Christ of little children. Cirque by cirque

The world-wide hell reeled round him, East and West,

To where the tortured Indians worked the will

Of lordly Spain in golden-famed Peru.

"God, is thy world a madman's dream?" he groaned:

And suddenly, the clamour on the shore

Sank and that savage horde melted away

Into the midnight forest as it came,

Leaving no sign, save where the brushwood fire

Still smouldered like a ruby in the gloom;

And into the inmost caverns of his mind

That other clamour sank, and there was peace.

"A madman's dream," he whispered, "Ay, to me

A madman's dream," but better, better far

Than that which bears upon its awful gates,

Gates of a hell defined, unalterable,

Abandon hope all ye who enter here!

Here, here at least the dawn hath power to bring

New light, new hope, new battles. Men may fight

And sweep away that evil, if no more,

At least from the small circle of their swords;

Then die, content if they have struck one stroke

For freedom, knowledge, brotherhood; one stroke

To hasten that great kingdom God proclaims

Each morning through the trumpets of the Dawn.

And far away, in Italy, that night

Young Galileo, gazing upward, heard

The self-same whisper from the abyss of stars

Which lured the soul of Shakespeare as he lay

Dreaming in may-sweet England, even now,

And with its infinite music called once more

The soul of Drake out to the unknown West.

Now like a wild rose in the fields of heaven

Slipt forth the slender fingers of the Dawn,

And drew the great grey Eastern curtains back

From the ivory saffroned couch. Rosily slid

One shining foot and one warm rounded knee

From silken coverlets of the tossed-back clouds.

Then, like the meeting after desolate years,

Face to remembered face, Drake saw the Dawn

Step forth in naked splendour o'er the sea;

Dawn, bearing still her rich divine increase

Of beauty, love, and wisdom round the world;

The same, yet not the same. So strangely gleamed

Her pearl and rose across the sapphire waves

That scarce he knew the dead man at his feet.

His world was made anew. Strangely his voice

Rang through that solemn Eden of the morn

Calling his men, and stranger than a dream

Their boats black-blurred against the crimson East,

Or flashing misty sheen where'er the light

Smote on their smooth wet sides, like seraph ships

Moved in a dewy glory towards the land;

Their oars of glittering diamond broke the sea

As by enchantment into burning jewels

And scattered rainbows from their flaming blades.

The clear green water lapping round their prows,

The words of sharp command as now the keels

Crunched on his lonely shore, and the following wave

Leapt slapping o'er the sterns, in that new light

Were more than any miracle. At last

Drake, as they grouped a little way below

The crumbling sandy cliff whereon he stood,

Seeming to overshadow them as he loomed

A cloud of black against the crimson sky,

Spoke, as a man may hardly speak but once:

"My seamen, oh my friends, companions, kings;

For I am least among you, being your captain;

And ye are men, and all men born are kings,

By right divine, and I the least of these

Because I must usurp the throne of God

And sit in judgment, even till I have set

My seal upon the red wax of this blood,

This blood of my dead friend, ere it grow cold.

Not all the waters of that mighty sea

Could wash my hands of sin if I should now

Falter upon my path. But look to it, you,

Whose word was doom last night to this dead man;

Look to it, I say, look to it! Brave men might shrink

From this great voyage; but the heart of him

Who dares turn backward now must be so hardy

That God might make a thousand millstones of it

To hang about the necks of those that hurt

Some little child, and cast them in the sea.

Yet if ye will be found so more than bold,

Speak now, and I will hear you; God will judge.

But ye shall take four ships of these my five,

Tear out the lions from their painted shields,

And speed you homeward. Leave me but one ship,

My Golden Hynde, and five good friends, nay one,

To watch when I must sleep, and I will prove

This judgment just against all winds that blow.

Now ye that will return, speak, let me know you,

Or be for ever silent, for I swear

Over this butchered body, if any swerve

Hereafter from the straight and perilous way,

He shall not die alone. What? Will none speak?

My comrades and my friends! Yet ye must learn,

Mark me, my friends, I'd have you all to know

That ye are kings. I'll have no jealousies

Aboard my fleet. I'll have the gentleman

To pull and haul wi' the seaman. I'll not have

That canker of the Spaniards in my fleet.

Ye that were captains, I cashier you all.

I'll have no captains; I'll have nought but seamen,

Obedient to my will, because I serve

England. What, will ye murmur? Have a care,

Lest I should bid you homeward all alone,

You whose white hands are found too delicate

For aught but dallying with your jewelled swords!

And thou, too, master Fletcher, my ship's chaplain,

Mark me, I'll have no priest-craft. I have heard

Overmuch talk of judgment from thy lips,

God's judgment here, God's judgment there, upon us!

Whene'er the winds are contrary, thou takest

Their powers upon thee for thy moment's end.

Thou art God's minister, not God's oracle:

Chain up thy tongue a little, or, by His wounds,

If thou canst read this wide world like a book,

Thou hast so little to fear, I'll set thee adrift

On God's great sea to find thine own way home.

Why, 'tis these very tyrannies o' the soul

We strike at when we strike at Spain for England;

And shall we here, in this great wilderness,

Ungrappled and unchallenged, out of sight,

Alone, without one struggle, sink that flag

Which, when the cannon thundered, could but stream

Triumphant over all the storms of death.

Nay, master Wynter and my gallant captains,

I see ye are tamed. Take up your ranks again

In humbleness, remembering ye are kings,

Kings for the sake and by the will of England,

Therefore her servants till your lives' last end.

Comrades, mistake not this, our little fleet

Is freighted with the golden heart of England,

And, if we fail, that golden heart will break.

The world's wide eyes are on us, and our souls

Are woven together into one great flag

Of England. Shall we strike it? Shall it be rent

Asunder with small discord, party strife,

Ephemeral conflict of contemptible tongues,

Or shall it be blazoned, blazoned evermore

On the most heaven-wide page of history?

This is that hour, I know it in my soul,

When we must choose for England. Ye are kings,

And sons of Vikings, exiled from your throne.

Have ye forgotten? Nay, your blood remembers!

There is your kingdom, Vikings, that great ocean

Whose tang is in your nostrils. Ye must choose

Whether to re-assume it now for England,

To claim its thunders for her panoply,

To lay its lightnings in her sovereign hands,

Win her the great commandment of the sea

And let its glory roll with her dominion

Round the wide world for ever, sweeping back

All evil deeds and dreams, or whether to yield

For evermore that kinghood. Ye must learn

Here in this golden dawn our great emprise

Is greater than we knew. Eye hath not seen,

Ear hath not heard what came across the dark

Last night, as there anointed with that blood

I knelt and saw the wonder that should be.

I saw new heavens of freedom, a new earth

Released from all old tyrannies. I saw

The brotherhood of man, for which we rode,

Most ignorant of the splendour of our spears,

Against the crimson dynasties of Spain.

Mother of freedom, home and hope and love,

Our little island, far, how far away,

I saw thee shatter the whole world of hate,

I saw the sunrise on thy helmet flame

With new-born hope for all the world in thee!

Come now, to sea, to sea!"

And ere they knew

What power impelled them, with one mighty cry

They lifted up their hearts to the new dawn

And hastened down the shores and launched the boats,

And in the fierce white out-draught of the waves

Thrust with their brandished oars and the boats leapt

Out, and they settled at the groaning thwarts,

And the white water boiled before their blades,

As, with Drake's iron hand upon the helm,

His own boat led the way; and ere they knew

What power as of a wind bore them along,

Anchor was up, their hands were on the sheets,

The sails were broken out and that small squadron

Was flying like a sea-bird to the South.

Now to the strait Magellanus they came,

And entered in with ringing shouts of joy.

Nor did they think there, was a fairer strait

In all the world than this which lay so calm

Between great silent mountains crowned with snow,

Unutterably lonely. Marvellous

The pomp of dawn and sunset on those heights,

And like a strange new sacrilege the advance

Of prows that ploughed that time-forgotten tide.

But soon rude flaws, cross currents, tortuous channels

Bewildered them, and many a league they drove

As down some vaster Acheron, while the coasts

With wailing voices cursed them all night long,

And once again the hideous fires leapt red

By many a grim wrenched crag and gaunt ravine.

So for a hundred leagues of whirling spume

They groped, till suddenly, far away, they saw

Full of the sunset, like a cup of gold,

The purple Westward portals of the strait.

Onward o'er roughening waves they plunged and reached

Capo Desiderato, where they saw

What seemed stupendous in that lonely place,—

Gaunt, black, and sharp as death against the sky

The Cross, the great black Cross on Cape Desire,

Which dead Magellan raised upon the height

To guide, or so he thought, his wandering ships,

Not knowing they had left him to his doom,

Not knowing how with tears, with tears of joy,

Rapture, and terrible triumph, and deep awe,

Another should come voyaging and read

Unutterable glories in that sign;

While his rough seamen raised their mighty shout

And, once again, before his wondering eyes,

League upon league of awful burnished gold,

Rolled the unknown immeasurable sea.

Now, in those days, as even Magellan held,

Men thought that Southward of the strait there swept

Firm land up to the white Antarticke Pole,

Which now not far they deemed. But when Drake passed

From out the strait to take his Northward way

Up the Pacific coast, a great head-wind

Suddenly smote them; and the heaving seas

Bulged all around them into billowy hills,

Dark rolling mountains, whose majestic crests

Like wild white flames far-blown and savagely flickering

Swept through the clouds; and on their sullen slopes

Like wind-whipt withered leaves those little ships,

Now hurtled to the Zenith and now plunged

Down into bottomless gulfs, were suddenly scattered

And whirled away. Drake, on the Golden Hynde,

One moment saw them near him, soaring up

Above him on the huge o'erhanging billows

As if to crash down on his poop; the next,

A mile of howling sea had swept between

Each of those wind-whipt straws, and they were gone

Through roaring deserts of embattled death,

Where, like a hundred thousand chariots charged

With lightnings and with thunders, one great wave

Leading the unleashed ocean down the storm

Hurled them away to Southward.

One last glimpse

Drake caught o' the Marygold, when some mighty vortex

Wide as the circle of the wide sea-line

Swept them together again. He saw her staggering

With mast snapt short and wreckage-tangled deck

Where men like insects clung. He saw the waves

Leap over her mangled hulk, like wild white wolves,

Volleying out of the clouds down dismal steeps

Of green-black water. Like a wounded steed

Quivering upon its haunches, up she heaved

Her head to throw them off. Then, in one mass

Of fury crashed the great deep over her,

Trampling her down, down into the nethermost pit,

As with a madman's wrath. She rose no more,

And in the stream of the ocean's hurricane laughter

The Golden Hynde went hurtling to the South,

With sails rent into ribbons and her mast

Snapt like a twig. Yea, where Magellan thought

Firm land had been, the little Golden Hynde

Whirled like an autumn leaf through league on league

Of bursting seas, chaos on crashing chaos,

A rolling wilderness of charging Alps

That shook the world with their tremendous war;

Grim beetling cliffs that grappled with clamorous gulfs,

Valleys that yawned to swallow the wide heaven;

Immense white-flowering fluctuant precipices,

And hills that swooped down at the throat of hell;

From Pole to Pole, one blanching bursting storm

Of world-wide oceans, where the huge Pacific

Roared greetings to the Atlantic and both swept

In broad white cataracts, league on struggling league,

Pursuing and pursued, immeasurable,

With Titan hands grasping the rent black sky

East, West, North, South. Then, then was battle indeed

Of midget men upon that wisp of grass

The Golden Hynde, who, as her masts crashed, hung

Clearing the tiny wreckage from small decks

With ant-like weapons. Not their captain's voice

Availed them now amidst the deafening thunder

Of seas that felt the heavy hand of God,

Only they saw across the blinding spume

In steely flashes, grand and grim, a face,

Like the last glimmer of faith among mankind,

Calm in this warring universe, where Drake

Stood, lashed to his post, beside the helm. Black seas

Buffeted him. Half-stunned he dashed away

The sharp brine from his eagle eyes and turned

To watch some mountain-range come rushing down

As if to o'erwhelm them utterly. Once, indeed,

Welkin and sea were one black wave, white-fanged,

White-crested, and up-heaped so mightily

That, though it coursed more swiftly than a herd

Of Titan steeds upon some terrible plain

Nigh the huge City of Ombos, yet it seemed

Most strangely slow, with all those crumbling crests

Each like a cataract on a mountain-side,

And moved with the steady majesty of doom

High over him. One moment's flash of fear,

And yet not fear, but rather life's regret,

Felt Drake, then laughed a low deep laugh of joy

Such as men taste in battle; yea, 'twas good

To grapple thus with death; one low deep laugh,

One mutter as of a lion about to spring,

Then burst that thunder o'er him. Height o'er height

The heavens rolled down, and waves were all the world.

Meanwhile, in England, dreaming of her sailor,

Far off, his heart's bride waited, of a proud

And stubborn house the bright and gracious flower.

Whom oft her father urged with scanty grace

That Drake was dead and she had best forget

The fellow, he grunted. For her father's heart

Was fettered with small memories, mocked by all

The greater world's traditions and the trace

Of earth's low pedigree among the suns,

Ringed with the terrible twilight of the Gods,

Ringed with the blood-red dusk of dying nations,

His faith was in his grandam's mighty skirt,

And, in that awful consciousness of power,

Had it not been that even in this he feared

To sully her silken flounce or farthingale

Wi' the white dust on his hands, he would have chalked

To his own shame, thinking it shame, the word

Nearest to God in its divine embrace

Of agonies and glories, the dread word

Demos across that door in Nazareth

Whence came the prentice carpenter whose voice

Hath shaken kingdoms down, whose menial gibbet

Rises triumphant o'er the wreck of Empires

And stretches out its arms amongst the Stars.

But she, his daughter, only let her heart

Loveably forge a charter for her love,

Cheat her false creed with faithful faery dreams

That wrapt her love in mystery; thought, perchance,

He came of some unhappy noble race

Ruined in battle for some lost high cause.

And, in the general mixture of men's blood,

Her dream was truer than his whose bloodless pride

Urged her to wed the chinless moon-struck fool

Sprung from five hundred years of idiocy

Who now besought her hand; would force her bear

Some heir to a calf's tongue and a coronet,

Whose cherished taints of blood will please his friends

With "Yea, Sir William's first-born hath the freak,

The family freak, being embryonic. Yea,

And with a fine half-wittedness, forsooth.

Praise God, our children's children yet shall see

The lord o' the manor muttering to himself

At midnight by the gryphon-guarded gates,

Or gnawing his nails in desolate corridors,

Or pacing moonlit halls, dagger in hand,

Waiting to stab his father's pitiless ghost."

So she—the girl—Sweet Bess of Sydenham,

Most innocently proud, was prouder yet

Than thus to let her heart stoop to the lure

Of lording lovers, though her unstained soul

Slumbered amidst those dreams as in old tales

The princess in the enchanted forest sleeps

Till the prince wakes her with a kiss and draws

The far-flung hues o' the gleaming magic web

Into one heart of flame. And now, for Drake,

She slept like Brynhild in a ring of fire

Which he must pass to win her. For the wrath

Of Spain now flamed, awaiting his return,

All round the seas of home; and even the Queen

Elizabeth flinched, as that tremendous Power

Menaced the heart of England, flinched and vowed

Drake's head to Spain's ambassadors, though still

By subtlety she hoped to find some way

Later to save or warn him ere he came.

Perchance too, nay, most like, he will be slain

Or even now lies dead, out in the West,

She thought, and then the promise works no harm.

But, day by day, there came as on the wings

Of startled winds from o'er the Spanish Main,

Strange echoes as of sacked and clamouring ports

And battered gates of fabulous golden cities,

A murmur out of the sunset of Peru,

A sea-bird's wail from Lima. While no less

The wrathful menace gathered up its might

All round our little isle; till now the King

Philip of Spain half secretly decreed

The building of huge docks from which to launch

A Fleet Invincible that should sweep the seas

Of all the world, throttle with one broad grasp

All Protestant rebellion, having stablished

His red feet in the Netherlands, thence to hurl

His whole World-Empire at this little isle,

England, our mother, home and hope and love,

And bend her neck beneath his yoke. For now

No half surrender sought he. At his back,

Robed with the scarlet of a thousand martyrs,

Admonishing him, stood Rome, and, in her hand,

Grasping the Cross of Christ by its great hilt,

She pointed it, like a dagger, tow'rds the throat

Of England.

One long year, two years had passed

Since Drake set sail from grey old Plymouth Sound;

And in those woods of faery wonder still

Slumbered his love in steadfast faith. But now

With louder lungs her father urged—"He is dead:

Forget him. There is one that loves you, seeks

Your hand in marriage, and he is a goodly match

E'en for my daughter. You shall wed him, Bess!"

But when the new-found lover came to woo,

Glancing in summer silks and radiant hose,

Whipt doublet and enormous pointed shoon,

She played him like a fish and sent him home

Spluttering with dismay, a stickleback

Discoloured, a male minnow of dimpled streams

With all his rainbows paling in the prime,

To hide amongst his lilies, while once more

She took her casement seat that overlooked

The sea and read in Master Spenser's book,

Which Francis gave "To my dear lady and queen

Bess," that most rare processional of love—

"Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song!"

Yet did her father urge her day by day,

And day by day her mother dinned her ears

With petty saws, as—"When I was a girl,"

And "I remember what my father said,"

And "Love, oh feather-fancies plucked from geese

You call your poets!" Yet she hardly meant

To slight true love, save in her daughter's heart;

For the old folk ever find it hard to see

The passion of their children. When it wakes,

The child becomes a stranger. So with Bess;

But since her soul still slumbered, and the moons

Rolled on and blurred her soul's particular love

With the vague unknown impulse of her youth,

Her brave resistance often melted now

In tears, and her will weakened day by day;

Till on a dreadful summer morn there came,

Borne by a wintry flaw, home to the Thames,

A bruised and battered ship, all that was left,

So said her crew, of Drake's ill-fated fleet.

John Wynter, her commander, told the tale

Of how the Golden Hynde and Marygold

Had by the wind Euroclydon been driven

Sheer o'er the howling edges of the world;

Of how himself by God's good providence

Was hurled into the strait Magellanus;

Of how on the horrible frontiers of the Void

He had watched in vain, lit red with beacon-fires

The desperate coasts o' the black abyss, whence none

Ever returned, though many a week he watched

Beneath the Cross; and only saw God's wrath

Burn through the heavens and devastate the mountains,

And hurl unheard of oceans roaring down

After the lost ships in one cataract

Of thunder and splendour and fury and rolling doom.

Then, with a bitter triumph in his face,

As if this were the natural end of all

Such vile plebeians, as if he had foreseen it,

As if himself had breathed a tactful hint

Into the aristocratic ears of God,

Her father broke the last frail barriers down,

Broke the poor listless will o' the lonely girl,

Who careless now of aught but misery

Promised to wed their lordling. Mighty speed

They made to press that loveless marriage on;

And ere the May had mellowed into June

Her marriage eve had come. Her cold hands held

Drake's gift. She scarce could see her name, writ broad

By that strong hand as it was, To my queen Bess.

She looked out through her casement o'er the sea,

Listening its old enchanted moan, which seemed

Striving to speak, she knew not what. Its breath

Fluttered the roses round the grey old walls,

And shook the ghostly jasmine. A great moon

Hung like a red lamp in the sycamore.

A corn-crake in the hay-fields far away

Chirped like a cricket, and the night-jar churred

His passionate love-song. Soft-winged moths besieged

Her lantern. Under many a star-stabbed elm

The nightingale began his golden song,

Whose warm thick notes are each a drop of blood

From that small throbbing breast against the thorn

Pressed close to turn the white rose into red;

Even as her lawn-clad may-white bosom pressed

Quivering against the bars, while her dark hair

Streamed round her shoulders and her small bare feet

Gleamed in the dusk. Then spake she to her maid—

"I cannot sleep, I cannot sleep to-night.

Bring thy lute hither and sing. Alison, think you

The dead can watch us from their distant world?

Can our dead friends be near us when we weep?

I wish 'twere so! for then my love would come,

No matter then how far, my love would come,

And he'd forgive me."

Then Bess bowed down her lovely head: her breast

Heaved with short sobs, sickening at the heart,

She grasped the casement moaning, "Love, Love, Love,

Come quickly, come, before it is too late,

Come quickly, oh come quickly."

Then her maid

Slipped a soft arm around her and gently drew

The supple quivering body, shaken with sobs,

And all that firm young, sweetness to her breast,

And led her to her couch, and all night long

She watched beside her, till the marriage morn

Blushed in the heartless East. Then swiftly flew

The pitiless moments, till—as in a dream—

And borne along by dreams, or like a lily

Cut from its anchorage in the stream to glide

Down the smooth bosom of an unknown world

Through fields of unknown blossom, so moved Bess

Amongst her maids, as the procession passed

Forth to the little church upon the cliffs,

And, as in those days was the bridal mode,

Her lustrous hair in billowing beauty streamed

Dishevelled o'er her shoulders, while the sun

Caressed her bent and glossy head, and shone

Over the deep blue, white-flaked, wrinkled sea,

On full-blown rosy-petalled sails that flashed

Like flying blossoms fallen from her crown.

BOOK V

I

With the fruit of Aladdin's garden clustering thick in her hold,

With rubies awash in her scuppers and her bilge ablaze with gold,

A world in arms behind her to sever her heart from home,

The Golden Hynde drove onward over the glittering foam.

II

If we go as we came, by the Southward, we meet wi' the fleets of Spain!

'Tis a thousand to one against us: we'll turn to the West again!

We have captured a China pilot, his charts and his golden keys:

We'll sail to the golden Gateway, over the golden seas.

Over the immeasurable molten gold

Wrapped in a golden haze, onward they drew;

And now they saw the tiny purple quay

Grow larger and darker and brighten into brown

Across the swelling sparkle of the waves.

Brown on the quay, a train of tethered mules

Munched at the nose-bags, while a Spaniard drowsed

On guard beside what seemed at first a heap

Of fish, then slowly turned to silver bars

Up-piled and glistering in the enchanted sun.

Nor did that sentry wake as, like a dream,

The Golden Hynde divided the soft sleep

Of warm green lapping water, sidled up,

Sank sail, and moored beside the quay. But Drake,

Lightly leaping ashore and stealing nigh,

Picked up the Spaniard's long gay-ribboned gun

Close to his ear. At once, without a sound,

The watchman opened his dark eyes and stared

As at strange men who suddenly had come,

Borne by some magic carpet, from the stars;

Then, with a courtly bow, his right hand thrust

Within the lace embroideries of his breast.

Politely Drake, with pained apologies

For this disturbance of a cavalier

Napping on guard, straightway resolved to make

Complete amends, by now relieving him

Of these—which doubtless troubled his repose—

These anxious bars of silver. With that word

Two seamen leaped ashore and, gathering up

The bars in a stout old patch of tawny sail,

Slung them aboard. No sooner this was done

Than out o' the valley, like a foolish jest

Out of the mouth of some great John-a-dreams,

In soft procession of buffoonery

A woolly train of llamas proudly came

Stepping by two and two along the quay,

Laden with pack on pack of silver bars

And driven by a Spaniard. His amaze

The seamen greeted with profuser thanks

For his most punctual thought and opportune

Courtesy. None the less they must avouch

It pained them much to see a cavalier

Turned carrier; and, at once, they must insist

On easing him of that too sordid care.

*    *    *    *

Then out from Tarapaca once again

They sailed, their hold a glimmering mine of wealth,

Towards Arica and Lima, where they deemed

The prize of prizes waited unaware.

For every year a gorgeous galleon sailed

With all the harvest of Potosi's mines

And precious stones from dead king's diadems,

Aztecs' and Incas' gem-encrusted crowns,

Pearls from the glimmering Temples of the Moon,

Rich opals with their milky rainbow-clouds,

White diamonds from the Temples of the Sun,

Carbuncles flaming scarlet, amethysts,

Rubies, and sapphires; these to Spain she brought

To glut her priestly coffers. Now not far

Ahead they deemed she lay upon that coast,

Crammed with the lustrous Indies, wrung with threat

And torture from the naked Indian slaves.

To him that spied her top-sails first a prize

Drake offered of the wondrous chain he wore;

And every seaman, every ship-boy, watched

Not only for the prize, but for their friends,

If haply these had weathered through the storm.

Nor did they know their friends had homeward turned,

Bearing to England and to England's Queen,

And his heart's queen, the tale that Drake was dead.

Northward they cruised along a warm, wild coast

That like a most luxurious goddess drowsed

Supine to heaven, her arms behind her head,

One knee up-thrust to make a mountain-peak,

Her rosy breasts up-heaving their soft snow

In distant Andes, and her naked side

With one rich curve for half a hundred leagues

Bathed by the creaming foam; her heavy hair

Fraught with the perfume of a thousand forests

Tossed round about her beauty: and her mouth

A scarlet mystery of distant flower

Up-turned to take the kisses of the sun.

But like a troop of boys let loose from school

The adventurers went by, startling the stillness

Of that voluptuous dream-encumbered shore

With echoing shouts of laughter and alien song.

But as they came to Arica, from afar

They heard the clash of bells upon the breeze,

And knew that Rumour with her thousand wings

Had rushed before them. Horsemen in the night

Had galloped through the white coast-villages

And spread the dreadful cry "El Draque!" abroad,

And when the gay adventurers drew nigh

They found the quays deserted, and the ships

All flown, except one little fishing-boat

Wherein an old man like a tortoise moved

A wrinkled head above the rusty net

His crawling hands repaired. He seemed to dwell

Outside the world of war and peace, outside

Everything save his daily task, and cared

No whit who else might win or lose; for all

The pilot asked of him without demur

He answered, scarcely looking from his work.

A galleon laden with eight hundred bars

Of silver, not three hours ago had flown

Northward, he muttered. Ere the words were out,

The will of Drake thrilled through the Golden Hynde

Like one sharp trumpet-call, and ere they knew

What power impelled them, crowding on all sail

Northward they surged, and roaring down the wind

At Chiuli, port of Arequipa, saw

The chase at anchor. Wondering they came

With all the gunners waiting at their guns

Bare-armed and silent—nearer, nearer yet,—

Close to the enemy. But no sight or sound

Of living creature stirred upon her decks.

Only a great grey cat lay in the sun

Upon a warm smooth cannon-butt. A chill

Ran through the veins of even the boldest there

At that too peaceful silence. Cautiously

Drake neared her in his pinnace: cautiously,

Cutlass in hand, up that mysterious hull

He clomb, and wondered, as he climbed, to breathe

The friendly smell o' the pitch and hear the waves

With their incessant old familiar sound

Crackling and slapping against her windward flank.

A ship of dreams was that; for when they reached

The silent deck, they saw no crouching forms,

They heard no sound of life. Only the hot

Creak of the cordage whispered in the sun.

The cat stood up and yawned, and slunk away

Slowly, with furtive glances. The great hold

Was empty, and the rich cabin stripped and bare.

Suddenly one of the seamen with a cry

Pointed where, close inshore, a little boat

Stole towards the town; and, with a louder cry,

Drake bade his men aboard the Golden Hynde.

Scarce had they pulled two hundred yards away

When, with a roar that seemed to buffet the heavens

And rip the heart of the sea out, one red flame

Blackened with fragments, the great galleon burst

Asunder! All the startled waves were strewn

With wreckage; and Drake laughed—

"My lads, we have diced

With death to-day, and won! My merry lads,

It seems that Spain is bolting with the stakes!

Now, if I have to stretch the skies for sails

And summon the blasts of God up from the South

To fill my canvas, I will overhaul

Those dusky devils with the treasure-ship

That holds our hard-earned booty. Pull hard all,

Hard for the Golden Hynde."

*    *    *    *

And so they came

At dead of night on Callao de Lima!

They saw the harbour lights across the waves

Glittering, and the shadowy hulks of ships

Gathered together like a flock of sheep

Within the port. With shouts and clink of chains

A shadowy ship was entering from the North,

And like the shadow of that shadow slipped

The Golden Hynde beside her thro' the gloom;

And side by side they anchored in the port

Amidst the shipping! Over the dark tide

A small boat from the customs-house drew near.

A sleepy, yawning, gold-laced officer

Boarded the Golden Hynde, and with a cry,

Stumbling against a cannon-butt, he saw

The bare-armed British seamen in the gloom

All waiting by their guns. Wildly he plunged

Over the side and urged his boat away,

Crying, "El Draque! El Draque!" At that dread word

The darkness filled with clamour, and the ships,

Cutting their cables, drifted here and there

In mad attempts to seek the open sea.

Wild lights burnt hither and thither, and all the port,

One furnace of confusion, heaved and seethed

In terror; for each shadow of the night,

Nay, the great night itself, was all El Draque.

The Dragon's wings were spread from quay to quay,

The very lights that burnt from mast to mast

And flared across the tide kindled his breath

To fire; while here and there a British pinnace

Slipped softly thro' the roaring gloom and glare,

Ransacking ship by ship; for each one thought

A fleet had come upon them. Each gave up

The struggle as each was boarded; while, elsewhere,

Cannon to cannon, friends bombarded friends.

Yet not one ounce of treasure in Callao

They found; for, fourteen days before they came,

That greatest treasure-ship of Spain, with all

The gorgeous harvest of that year, had sailed

For Panama: her ballast—silver bars;

Her cargo—rubies, emeralds, and gold.

Out through the clamour and the darkness, out,

Out to the harbour mouth, the Golden Hynde,

Steered by the iron soul of Drake, returned:

And where the way was blocked, her cannon clove

A crimson highway to the midnight sea.

Then Northward, Northward, o'er the jewelled main,

Under the white moon like a storm they drove

In quest of the Cacafuego. Fourteen days

Her start was; and at dawn the fair wind sank,

And chafing lay the Golden Hynde, becalmed;

While, on the hills, the Viceroy of Peru

Marched down from Lima with two thousand men,

And sent out four huge ships of war to sink

Or capture the fierce Dragon. Loud laughed Drake

To see them creeping nigh, urged with great oars,

Then suddenly pause; for none would be the first

To close with him. And, ere they had steeled their hearts

To battle, a fair breeze broke out anew,

And Northward sped the little Golden Hynde

In quest of the lordliest treasure-ship of Spain.

*    *    *    *

Behind her lay a world in arms; for now

Wrath and confusion clamoured for revenge

From sea to sea. Spain claimed the pirate's head

From England, and awaited his return

With all her tortures. And where'er he passed

He sowed the dragon's teeth, and everywhere

Cadmean broods of armèd men arose

And followed, followed on his fiery trail.

Men toiled at Lima to fit out a fleet

Grim enough to destroy him. All night long

The flare went up from cities on the coast

Where men like naked devils toiled to cast

Cannon that might have overwhelmed the powers

Of Michael when he drave that hideous rout

Through livid chaos to the black abyss.

Small hope indeed there seemed of safe return;

But Northward sped the little Golden Hynde,

The world-watched midget ship of eighteen guns,

Undaunted; and upon the second dawn

Sighted a galleon, not indeed the chase,

Yet worth a pause; for out of her they took—

Embossed with emeralds large as pigeon's eggs—

A golden crucifix, with eighty pounds

In weight of gold. The rest they left behind;

And onward, onward, to the North they flew—

A score of golden miles, a score of green,

An hundred miles, eight hundred miles of foam,

Rainbows and fire, ransacking as they went

Ship after ship for news o' the chase and gold;

Learning from every capture that they drew

Nearer and nearer. At Truxillo, dim

And dreaming city, a-drowse with purple flowers,

She had paused, ay, paused to take a freight of gold!

At Paita—she had passed two days in front,

Only two days, two days ahead; nay, one!

At Quito, close inshore, a youthful page,

Bright-eyed, ran up the rigging and cried, "A sail!

A sail! The Cacafuego! And the chain

Is mine!" And by the strange cut of her sails,

Whereof they had been told in Callao,

They knew her!

Heavily laden with her gems,

Lazily drifting with her golden fruitage,

Over the magic seas they saw her hull

Loom as they onward drew; but Drake, for fear

The prey might take alarm and run ashore,

Trailed wine-skins, filled with water, over the side

To hold his ship back, till the darkness fell,

And with the night the off-shore wind arose.

At last the sun sank down, the rosy light

Faded from Andes' peaked and bosomed snow:

The night-wind rose: the wine-skins were up-hauled;

And, like a hound unleashed, the Golden Hynde

Leapt forward thro' the gloom.

A cable's length

Divided them. The Cacafuego heard

A rough voice in the darkness bidding her

Heave to! She held her course. Drake gave the word.

A broadside shattered the night, and over her side

Her main-yard clattered like a broken wing!

On to her decks the British sea-dogs swarmed,

Cutlass in hand: that fight was at an end.

The ship was cleared, a prize crew placed a-board,

Then both ships turned their heads to the open sea.

At dawn, being out of sight of land, they 'gan

Examine the great prize. None ever knew

Save Drake and Gloriana what wild wealth

They had captured there. Thus much at least was known:

An hundredweight of gold, and twenty tons

Of silver bullion; thirteen chests of coins;

Nuggets of gold unnumbered; countless pearls,

Diamonds, emeralds; but the worth of these

Was past all reckoning. In the crimson dawn,

Ringed with the lonely pomp of sea and sky,

The naked-footed seamen bathed knee-deep

In gold and gathered up Aladdin's fruit—

All-colored gems—and tossed them in the sun.

The hold like one great elfin orchard gleamed

With dusky globes and tawny glories piled,

Hesperian apples, heap on mellow heap,

Rich with the hues of sunset, rich and ripe

And ready for the enchanted cider-press;

An Emperor's ransom in each burning orb;

A kingdom's purchase in each clustered bough;

The freedom of all slaves in every chain.

BOOK VI

Now like the soul of Ophir on the sea

Glittered the Golden Hynde, and all her heart

Turned home to England. As a child that finds

A ruby ring upon the highway, straight

Homeward desires to run with it, so she

Yearned for her home and country. Yet the world

Was all in arms behind her. Fleet on fleet

Awaited her return. Along the coast

The very churches melted down their chimes

And cast them into cannon. To the South

A thousand cannon watched Magellan's straits,

And fleets were scouring all the sea like hounds,

With orders that where'er they came on Drake,

Although he were the Dragon of their dreams,

They should out-blast his thunders and convey,

Dead or alive, his body back to Spain.

And Drake laughed out and said, "My trusty lads

Of Devon, you have made the wide world ring

With England's name; you have swept one half the seas

From sky to sky; and in our oaken hold

You have packed the gorgeous Indies. We shall sail

But slowly with such wealth. If we return,

We are one against ten thousand! We will seek

The fabled Northern passage, take our gold

Safe home; then out to sea again and try

Our guns against their guns."

*    *    *    *

And as they sailed

Northward, they swooped on warm blue Guatulco

For food and water. Nigh the dreaming port

The grand alcaldes in high conclave sat,

Blazing with gold and scarlet, as they tried

A batch of negro slaves upon the charge

Of idleness in Spanish mines; dumb slaves,

With bare scarred backs and labour-broken knees,

And sorrowful eyes like those of wearied kine

Spent from the ploughing. Even as the judge

Rose to condemn them to the knotted lash

The British boat's crew, quiet and compact,

Entered the court. The grim judicial glare

Grew wider with amazement, and the judge

Staggered against his gilded throne.

"I thank

Almighty God," cried Drake, "who hath given me this

—That I who once, in ignorance, procured

Slaves for the golden bawdy-house of Spain,

May now, in England's name, help to requite

That wrong. For now I say in England's name,

Where'er her standard flies, the slave shall stand

Upright, the shackles fall from off his limbs.

Unyoke the prisoners: tell them they are men

Once more, not beasts of burden. Set them free;

But take these gold and scarlet popinjays

Aboard my Golden Hynde; and let them write

An order that their town shall now provide

My boats with food and water."

This being done,

The slaves being placed in safety on the prize,

The Golden Hynde revictualled and the casks

Replenished with fresh water, Drake set free

The judges and swept Northward once again;

And, off the coast of Nicaragua, found

A sudden treasure better than all gold;

For on the track of the China trade they caught

A ship whereon two China pilots sailed,

And in their cabin lay the secret charts,

Red hieroglyphs of Empire, unknown charts

Of silken sea-roads down the golden West

Where all roads meet and East and West are one.

And, with that mystery stirring in their hearts

Like a strange cry from home, Northward they swept

And Northward, till the soft luxurious coasts

Hardened, the winds grew bleak, the great green waves

Loomed high like mountains round them, and the spray

Froze on their spars and yards. Fresh from the warmth

Of tropic seas the men could hardly brook

That cold; and when the floating hills of ice

Like huge green shadows crowned with ghostly snow

Went past them with strange whispers in the gloom,

Or took mysterious colours in the dawn,

Their hearts misgave them, and they found no way;

But all was iron shore and icy sea.

And one by one the crew fell sick to death

In that fierce winter, and the land still ran

Westward and showed no passage. Tossed with storms,

Onward they plunged, or furrowed gentler tides

Of ice-lit emerald that made the prow

A faery beak of some enchanted ship

Flinging wild rainbows round her as she drove

Thro' seas unsailed by mortal mariners,

Past isles unhailed of any human voice,

Where sound and silence mingled in one song

Of utter solitude. Ever as they went

The flag of England blazoned the broad breeze,

Northward, where never ship had sailed before,

Northward, till lost in helpless wonderment,

Dazed as a soul awakening from the dream

Of death to some wild dawn in Paradise

(Yet burnt with cold as they whose very tears

Freeze on their faces where Cocytus wails)

All world-worn, bruised, wing-broken, wracked, and wrenched,

Blackened with lightning, scarred as with evil deeds,

But all embalmed in beauty by that sun

Which never sets, bosomed in peace at last

The Golden Hynde rocked on a glittering calm.

Seas that no ship had ever sailed, from sky

To glistening sky, swept round them. Glory and gleam,

Glamour and lucid rapture and diamond air

Embraced her broken spars, begrimed with gold

Her gloomy hull, rocking upon a sphere

New made, it seemed, mysterious with the first

Mystery of the world, where holy sky

And sacred sea shone like the primal Light

Of God, a-stir with whispering sea-bird's wings

And glorious with clouds. Only, all day,

All night, the rhythmic utterance of His will

In the deep sigh of seas that washed His throne,

Rose and relapsed across Eternity,

Timed to the pulse of æons. All their world

Seemed strange as unto us the great new heavens

And glittering shores, if on some aery bark

To Saturn's coasts we came and traced no more

The tiny gleam of our familiar earth

Far off, but heard tremendous oceans roll

Round unimagined continents, and saw

Terrible mountains unto which our Alps

Were less than mole-hills, and such gaunt ravines

Cleaving them and such cataracts roaring down

As burst the gates of our earth-moulded senses,

Pour the eternal glory on our souls,

And, while ten thousand chariots bring the dawn,

Hurl us poor midgets trembling to our knees.

Glory and glamour and rapture of lucid air,

Ice cold, with subtle colours of the sky

Embraced her broken spars, belted her hulk

With brilliance, while she dipped her jacinth beak

In waves of mounded splendour, and sometimes

A great ice-mountain flashed and floated by

Throned on the waters, pinnacled and crowned

With all the smouldering jewels in the world;

Or in the darkness, glimmering berg on berg,

All emerald to the moon, went by like ghosts

Whispering to the South.

There, as they lay,

Waiting a wind to fill the stiffened sails,

Their hearts remembered that in England now

The Spring was nigh, and in that lonely sea

The skilled musicians filled their eyes with home.

SONG

I

It is the Spring-tide now!

Under the hawthorn-bough

The milkmaid goes:

Her eyes are violets blue

Washed with the morning dew,

Her mouth a rose.

It is the Spring-tide now.

II

The lanes are growing sweet,

The lambkins frisk and bleat

In all the meadows:

The glossy dappled kine

Blink in the warm sunshine,

Cooling their shadows.

It is the Spring-tide now.

III

Soon hand in sunburnt hand

Thro' God's green fairyland,

England, our home,

Whispering as they stray

Adown the primrose way,

Lovers will roam.

It is the Spring-tide now.

And then, with many a chain of linkèd sweetness,

Harmonious gold, they drew their hearts and souls

Back, back to England, thoughts of wife and child,

Mother and sweetheart and the old companions,

The twisted streets of London and the deep

Delight of Devon lanes, all softly voiced

In words or cadences, made them breathe hard

And gaze across the everlasting sea,

Craving for that small isle so far away.

SONG

I

O, you beautiful land,

Deep-bosomed with beeches and bright

With the flowery largesse of May

Sweet from the palm of her hand

Out-flung, till the hedges grew white

As the green-arched billows with spray.

II

White from the fall of her feet

The daisies awake in the sun!

Cliff-side and valley and plain

With the breath of the thyme growing sweet

Laugh, for the Spring is begun;

And Love hath turned homeward again.

O, you beautiful land!

III

Where should the home be of Love,

But there, where the hawthorn-tree blows,

And the milkmaid trips out with her pail,

And the skylark in heaven above

Sings, till the West is a rose

And the East is a nightingale?

O, you beautiful land!

IV

There where the sycamore trees

Are shading the satin-skinned kine,

And oaks, whose brethren of old

Conquered the strength of the seas,

Grow broad in the sunlight and shine

Crowned with their cressets of gold;

O, you beautiful land!

V

Deep-bosomed with beeches and bright

With rose-coloured cloudlets above;

Billowing broad and grand

Where the meadows with blossom are white

For the foot-fall, the foot-fall of Love.

O, you beautiful land!

VI

How should we sing of thy beauty,

England, mother of men,

We that can look in thine eyes

And see there the splendour of duty

Deep as the depth of their ken,

Wide as the ring of thy skies.

VII

O, you beautiful land,

Deep-bosomed with beeches and bright

With the flowery largesse of May

Sweet from the palm of her hand

Out-flung, till the hedges grew white

As the green-arched billows with spray,

O, you beautiful land!

And when a fair wind rose again, there seemed

No hope of passage by that fabled way

Northward, and suddenly Drake put down his helm

And, with some wondrous purpose in his eyes,

Turned Southward once again, until he found

A lonely natural harbour on the coast

Near San Francisco, where the cliffs were white

Like those of England, and the soft soil teemed

With gold. There they careened the Golden Hynde—

Her keel being thick with barnacles and weeds—

And built a fort and dockyard to refit

Their little wandering home, not half so large

As many a coasting barque to-day that scarce

Would cross the Channel, yet she had swept the seas

Of half the world, and even now prepared

For new adventures greater than them all.

And as the sound of chisel and hammer broke

The stillness of that shore, shy figures came,

Keen-faced and grave-eyed Indians, from the woods

To bow before the strange white-faced newcomers

As gods. Whereat the chaplain all aghast

Persuaded them with signs and broken words

And grunts that even Drake was but a man,

Whom none the less the savages would crown

With woven flowers and barbarous ritual

King of New Albion—so the seamen called

That land, remembering the white cliffs of home.

Much they implored, with many a sign and cry,

Which by the rescued slaves upon the prize

Were part interpreted, that Drake would stay

And rule them; and the vision of the great

Empire of Englishmen arose and flashed

A moment round them, on that lonely shore.

A small and weather-beaten band they stood,

Bronzed seamen by the laughing rescued slaves,

Ringed with gigantic loneliness and saw

An Empire that should liberate the world;

A Power before the lightning of whose arms

Darkness should die and all oppression cease;

A Federation of the strong and weak,

Whereby the weak were strengthened and the strong

Made stronger in the increasing good of all;

A gathering up of one another's loads;

A turning of the wasteful rage of war

To accomplish large and fruitful tasks of peace,

Even as the strength of some great stream is turned

To grind the corn for bread. E'en thus on England

That splendour dawned which those in dreams foresaw

And saw not with their living eyes, but thou,

England, mayst lift up eyes at last and see,

Who, like that angel of the Apocalypse

Hast set one foot upon thy sea-girt isle,

The other upon the waters, and canst raise

Now, if thou wilt, above the assembled nations,

The trumpet of deliverance to thy lips.

*    *    *    *

At last their task was done, the Golden Hynde

Undocked, her white wings hoisted; and away

Westward they swiftly glided from the shore

Where, with a wild lament, their Indian friends,

Knee-deep i' the creaming foam, all stood at gaze,

Like men that for one moment in their lives

Have seen a mighty drama cross their path

And played upon the stage of vast events

Knowing, henceforward, all their life is nought.

But Westward sped the little Golden Hynde

Across the uncharted ocean, with no guide

But that great homing cry of all their hearts.

Far out of sight of land they steered, straight out

Across the great Pacific, in those days

When even the compass proved no trusty guide,

Straight out they struck in that small bark, straight out

Week after week, without one glimpse of aught

But heaving seas, across the uncharted waste

Straight to the sunset. Laughingly they sailed,

With all that gorgeous booty in their holds,

A splendour dragging deep through seas of doom,

A prey to the first great hurricane that blew

Except their God averted it. And still

Their skilled musicians cheered the way along

To shores beyond the sunset and the sea.

And oft at nights, the yellow fo'c'sle lanthorn

Swung over swarthy singing faces grouped

Within the four small wooden walls that made

Their home and shut them from the unfathomable

Depths of mysterious gloom without that rolled

All around them; or Tom Moone would heartily troll

A simple stave that struggled oft with thoughts

Beyond its reach, yet reached their hearts no less.

SONG

I

Good luck befall you, mariners all

That sail this world so wide!

Whither we go, not yet we know:

We steer by wind and tide,

Be it right or wrong, I sing this song;

For now it seems to me

Men steer their souls thro' rocks and shoals

As mariners use by sea.

Chorus: As mariners use by sea,

My lads,

As mariners use by sea!

II

And now they plough to windward, now

They drive before the gale!

Now are they hurled across the world

With torn and tattered sail;

Yet, as they will, they steer and still

Defy the world's rude glee:

Till death o'erwhelm them, mast and helm,

They ride and rule the sea.

Chorus: They ride and rule the sea,

My lads,

They ride and rule the sea!

*    *    *    *

Meantime, in England, Bess of Sydenham,

Drake's love and queen, being told that Drake was dead,

And numbed with grief, obeying her father's will

That dreadful summer morn in bridal robes

Had passed to wed her father's choice. The sun

Streamed smiling on her as she went, half-dazed,

Amidst her smiling maids. Nigh to the sea

The church was, and the mellow marriage bells

Mixed with its music. Far away, white sails

Spangled the sapphire, white as flying blossoms

New-fallen from her crown; but as the glad

And sad procession neared the little church,

From some strange ship-of-war, far out at sea,

There came a sudden tiny puff of smoke—

And then a dull strange throb, a whistling hiss,

And scarce a score of yards away a shot

Ploughed up the turf. None knew, none ever knew

From whence it came, whether a perilous jest

Of English seamen, or a wanton deed

Of Spaniards, or mere accident; but all

Her maids in flight were scattered. Bess awoke

As from a dream, crying aloud—"'Tis he,

'Tis he that sends this message. He is not dead.

I will not pass the porch. Come home with me.

'Twas he that sent that message."

Nought availed,

Her father's wrath, her mother's tears, her maids'

Cunning persuasions, nought; home she returned,

And waited for the dead to come to life;

Nor waited long; for ere that month was out,

Rumour on rumour reached the coasts of England,

Borne as it seemed on sea-birds' wings, that Drake

Was on his homeward way.

BOOK VII

The imperial wrath of Spain, one world-wide sea

Of furious pomp and flouted power, now surged

All round this little isle, with one harsh roar

Deepening for Drake's return—"The Golden Hynde

Ye swore had foundered, Drake ye swore was drowned;

They are on their homeward way! The head of Drake!

What answer, what account, what recompense

Now can ye yield our might invincible

Except the head of Drake, whose bloody deeds

Have reddened the Pacific, who hath sacked

Cities of gold, burnt fleets, and ruined realms,

What answer but his life?"

To which the Queen

Who saw the storm of Europe slowly rising

In awful menace o'er her wave-beat throne,

And midmost of the storm, the ensanguined robes

Of Rome and murderous hand, grasping the Cross

By its great hilt, pointing it like a brand

Blood-blackened at the throat of England, saw

Like skeleton castles wrapt in rolling mist

The monstrous engines and designs of war,

The secret fleets and brooding panoplies

Philip prepared, growing from day to day

In dusk armipotent and embattled gloom

Surrounding her, replied: "The life of Drake,

If, on our strict enquiry, in due order

We find that Drake have hurt our friends, mark well,

If Drake have hurt our friends, the life of Drake."

*    *    *    *

And while the world awaited him, as men

Might wait an earthquake, quietly one grey morn,

One grey October morn of mist and rain

When all the window-panes in Plymouth dripped

With listless drizzle, and only through her streets

Rumbled the death-cart with its dreary bell

Monotonously plangent (for the plague

Had lately like a vampire sucked the veins

Of Plymouth town), a little weed-clogged ship,

Grey as a ghost, glided into the Sound

And anchored, scarce a soul to see her come,

And not an eye to read the faded scroll

Around her battered prow—the Golden Hynde.

Then, thro' the dumb grey misty listless port,

A rumour like the colours of the dawn

Streamed o'er the shining quays, up the wet streets,

In at the tavern doors, flashed from the panes

And turned them into diamonds, fired the pools

In every muddy lane with Spanish gold,

Flushed in a thousand faces, Drake is come!

Down every crowding alley the urchins leaped

Tossing their caps, the Golden Hynde is come!

Fisherman, citizen, prentice, dame and maid,

Fat justice, floury baker, bloated butcher,

Fishwife, minister and apothecary,

Yea, even the driver of the death-cart, leaving

His ghastly load, using his dreary bell

To merrier purpose, down the seething streets,

Panting, tumbling, jostling, helter-skelter

To the water-side, to the water-side they rushed,

And some knee-deep beyond it, all one wild

Welcome to Francis Drake!

Wild kerchiefs fluttering, thunderous hurrahs

Rolling from quay to quay, a thousand arms

Outstretched to that grey ghostly little ship

At whose masthead the British flag still flew;

Then, over all, in one tumultuous tide

Of pealing joy, the Plymouth bells outclashed

A nation's welcome home to Francis Drake.

The very Golden Hynde, no idle dream,

The little ship that swept the Spanish Main,

Carelessly lying there, in Plymouth Sound,

The Golden Hynde, the wonder of the world,

A glory wrapt her greyness, and no boat

Dared yet approach, save one, with Drake's close friends,

Who came to warn him: "England stands alone

And Drake is made the price of England's peace.

The Queen, perforce, must temporise with Spain,

The Invincible! She hath forfeited thy life

To Spain, against her will. Only by this

Rejection of thee as a privateer

She averted instant war; for now the menace

Of Spain draws nigher, looms darker every hour.

The world is made Spain's footstool. Philip, the King,

E'en now hath added to her boundless power

Without a blow, the vast domains and wealth

Of Portugal, and deadlier yet, a coast

That crouches over against us. Cadiz holds

A huge Armada, none knows where to strike;

And even this day a flying horseman brought

Rumours that Spain hath landed a great force

In Ireland. Mary of Scotland only waits

The word to stab us in the side for Rome.

The Queen, weighed down by Burleigh and the friends

Of peace at any cost, may yet be driven

To make thy life our ransom, which indeed

She hath already sworn, or seemed to swear."

To whom Drake answered, "Gloriana lives;

And in her life mine only fear lies dead,

Mine only fear, for England, not myself.

Willing am I and glad, as I have lived,

To die for England's sake.

Yet, lest the Queen be driven now to restore

This cargo that I bring her—a world's wealth,

The golden springs of all the power of Spain,

The jewelled hearts of all those cruel realms

(For I have plucked them out) beyond the sea;

Lest she be driven to yield them up again

For Spain and Spain's delight, I will warp out

Behind St. Nicholas' Island. The fierce plague

In Plymouth shall be colour and excuse,

Until my courier return from court

With Gloriana's will. If it be death,

I'll out again to sea, strew its rough floor

With costlier largesses than kings can throw,

And, ere I die, will singe the Spaniard's beard

And set the fringe of his imperial robe

Blazing along his coasts. Then let him roll

His galleons round the little Golden Hynde,

Bring her to bay, if he can, on the high seas,

Ring us about with thousands, we'll not yield,

I and my Golden Hynde, we will go down,

With flag still flying on the last stump left us

And all my cannon spitting out the fires

Of everlasting scorn into his face."

So Drake warped out the Golden Hynde anew

Behind St. Nicholas' Island. She lay there,

The small grey-golden centre of the world

That raged all round her, the last hope, the star

Of Protestant freedom, she, the outlawed ship

Holding within her the great head and heart

Of England's ocean power; and all the fleets

That have enfranchised earth, in that small ship,

Lay waiting for their doom.

Past her at night

Fisher-boats glided, wondering as they heard

In the thick darkness the great songs they deemed

Must oft have risen from many a lonely sea;

For oft had Spaniards brought a rumour back

Of that strange pirate who in royal state

Sailed to a sound of violins, and dined

With skilled musicians round him, turning all

Battle and storm and death into a song.

SONG

The same Sun is o'er us,

The same Love shall find us,

The same and none other

Wherever we be;

With the same hope before us,

The same home behind us,

England, our mother,

Ringed round with the sea.

No land in the ring of it

Now, all around us

Only the splendid

Re-surging unknown;

How should we sing of it,

This that hath found us

By the great stars attended

At midnight, alone?

Our highway none knoweth,

Yet our blood hath discerned it!

Clear, clear is our path now

Whose foreheads are free

Where the hurricane bloweth

Our spirits have learned it,

'Tis the highway of wrath, now,

The storm's way, the sea.

When the waters lay breathless

Gazing at Hesper

Guarding that glorious

Fruitage of gold,

Heard we the deathless

Wonderful whisper

We follow, victorious

To-night, as of old.

Ah, the broad miles of it

White with the onset

Of waves without number

Warring for glee;

Ah, the soft smiles of it

Down to the sunset,

Sacred for slumber

The swan's bath, the sea!

When the breakers charged thundering

In thousands all round us

With a lightning of lances

Up-hurtled on high,

When the stout ships were sundering

A rapture hath crowned us

Like the wild light that dances

On the crests that flash by.

Our highway none knoweth,

Yet our blood hath discerned it!

Clear, clear is our path now

Whose foreheads are free,

Where Euroclydon bloweth

Our spirits have learned it,

'Tis the highway of wrath, now,

The storm's way, the sea!

Who now will follow us

Where England's flag leadeth us,

Where gold not inveigles,

Nor statesmen betray?

Tho' the deep midnight swallow us

Let her cry when she needeth us,

We return, her sea-eagles,

The hurricane's way.

For the same Sun is o'er us,

The same Love shall find us,

The same and none other

Wherever we be;

With the same hope before us,

The same home behind us,

England, our mother,

Ringed round with the sea.

So six days passed, and on the seventh returned

The courier, with a message from the Queen

Summoning Drake to court, bidding him bring

Also such curious trifles of his voyage

As might amuse her, also be of good cheer

She bade him, and rest well content his life

In Gloriana's hands were safe: so Drake

Laughingly landed with his war-bronzed crew

Amid the wide-eyed throng on Plymouth beach

And loaded twelve big pack-horses with pearls

Beyond all price, diamonds, crosses of gold,

Rubies that smouldered once for Aztec kings,

And great dead Incas' gem-encrusted crowns.

Also, he said, we'll add a sack or twain

Of gold doubloons, pieces of eight, moidores,

And such-like Spanish trash, for those poor lords

At court, lilies that toil not neither spin,

Wherefore, methinks their purses oft grow lean

In these harsh times. 'Twere even as well their tongues

Wagged in our favour, now, as in our blame.

*    *    *    *

Six days thereafter a fearful whisper reached

Mendoza, plenipotentiary of Spain

In London, that the pirate Drake was now

In secret conference with the Queen, nay more,

That he, the Master-thief of the golden world,

Drake, even he, that bloody buccaneer,

Had six hours' audience with her Majesty

Daily, nay more, walked with her in her garden

Alone, among the fiery Autumn leaves,

Talking of God knows what, and suddenly

The temporizing diplomatic voice

Of caution he was wont to expect from England

And blandly accept as his imperial due

Changed to a ringing key of firm resolve,

Resistance, nay, defiance. For when he came

Demanding audience of the Queen, behold,

Her officers of state with mouths awry

Informed the high ambassador of Spain,

Despite his pomp and circumstance, the Queen

Could not receive him, being in conference

With some rough seaman, pirate, what you will,

A fellow made of bronze, a buccaneer,

Maned like a lion, bearded like a pard,

With hammered head, clamped jaws, and great deep eyes

That burned with fierce blue colours of the brine,

And liked not Spain—Drake! 'Twas the very name,

One Francis Drake! a Titan that had stood,

Thundering commands against the thundering heavens,

On lightning-shattered, storm-swept decks and drunk

Great draughts of glory from the rolling sea,

El Draque! El Draque! Nor could she promise aught

To Spain's ambassador, nor see his face

Again, while yet one Spanish musketeer

Remained in Ireland.

Vainly the Spaniard raged

Of restitution, recompense; for now

Had Drake brought up the little Golden Hynde

To London, and the rumor of her wealth

Out-topped the wild reality. The crew

Were princes as they swaggered down the streets

In weather-beaten splendour. Out of their doors

To wonder and stare the jostling citizens ran

When They went by; and through the length and breadth

Of England, now, the gathering glory of life

Shone like the dawn. O'er hill and dale it streamed,

Dawn, everlasting and almighty dawn,

Making a golden pomp of every oak—

Had not its British brethren swept the seas?—

In each remotest hamlet, by the hearth,

The cart, the grey church-porch, the village pump

By meadow and mill and old manorial hall,

By turnpike and by tavern, farm and forge,

Men staved the crimson vintage of romance

And held it up against the light and drank it,

And with it drank confusion to the wrath

That menaced England, but eternal honour,

While blood ran in their veins, to Francis Drake.

BOOK VIII

Meanwhile, young Bess of Sydenham, the queen

Of Drake's deep heart, emprisoned in her home,

Fenced by her father's angry watch and ward

Lest he—the poor plebeian dread of Spain,

Shaker of nations, king of the untamed seas—

Might win some word with her, sweet Bess, the flower

Triumphant o'er their rusty heraldries,

Waited her lover, as in ancient tales

The pale princess from some grey wizard's tower

Midmost the deep sigh of enchanted woods

Looks for the starry flash of her knight's shield;

Or on the further side o' the magic West

Sees pushing through the ethereal golden gloom

Some blurred black prow, with loaded colours coarse,

Clouded with sunsets of a mortal sea,

And rich with earthly crimson. She, with lips

Apart, still waits the shattering golden thrill

When it shall grate the coasts of Fairyland.

Only, to Bess of Sydenham, there came

No sight or sound to break that frozen spell

And lonely watch, no message from her love,

Or none that reached her restless helpless hands.

Only the general rumour of the world

Borne to her by the gossip of her maid

Kept the swift pictures passing through her brain

Of how the Golden Hynde was hauled ashore

At Deptford through a sea of exultation,

And by the Queen's command was now set up

For an everlasting memory!

Of how the Queen with subtle statecraft still

Kept Spain at arm's-length, dangling, while she played

At fast and loose with France, whose embassy,

Arriving with the marriage-treaty, found

(And trembled at her daring, since the wrath

Of Spain seemed, in their eyes, to flake with foam

The storm-beat hulk) a gorgeous banquet spread

To greet them on that very Golden Hynde

Which sacked the Spanish main, a gorgeous feast,

The like of which old England had not seen

Since the bluff days of boisterous king Hal,

Great shields of brawn with mustard, roasted swans,

Haunches of venison, roasted chines of beef,

And chewets baked, big olive-pyes thereto,

And sallets mixed with sugar and cinnamon,

White wine, rose-water, and candied eringoes.

There, on the outlawed ship, whose very name

Rang like a blasphemy in the imperial ears

Of Spain (its every old worm-eaten plank

Being scored with scorn and courage that not storm

Nor death, nor all their Inquisition racks,

The white-hot irons and bloody branding whips

That scarred the backs of Rome's pale galley-slaves,

Her captured English seamen, ever could daunt),

There with huge Empires waiting for one word,

One breath of colour and excuse, to leap

Like wolves at the naked throat of her small isle,

There in the eyes of the staggered world she stood,

Great Gloriana, while the live decks reeled

With flash of jewels and flush of rustling silks,

She stood with Drake, the corsair, and her people

Surged like a sea around. There did she give

Open defiance with her agate smile

To Spain. "Behold this pirate, now," she cried,

"Whose head my Lord, the Invincible, Philip of Spain

Demands from England. Kneel down, Master Drake,

Kneel down; for now have I this gilded sword

Wherewith to strike it off. Nay, thou my lord

Ambassador of France, since I be woman,

And squeamish at the sight of blood, give thou

The accolade." With that jest she gave the hilt

(Thus, even in boldness, playing a crafty part,

And dangling France before the adventurous deed)

To Marchaumont: and in the face of Europe,

With that huge fleet in Cadiz and the whole

World-power of Spain crouching around her isle,

Knighted the master-thief of the unknown world,

Sir Francis Drake.

And then the rumour came

Of vaster privateerings planned by Drake

Against the coasts of Philip; but held in check

And fretting at the leash, as ever the Queen

Clung to her statecraft, while Drake's enemies

Worked in the dark against him. Spain had set

An emperor's ransom on his life. At home

John Doughty, treacherous brother of that traitor

Who met his doom by Drake's own hand, intrigued

With Spain abroad and Spain's dark emissaries

At home to avenge his brother. Burleigh still

Beset Drake's path with pitfalls: treacherous greed

For Spain's blood-money daggered all the dark

Around him, and John Doughty without cease

Sought to make use of all; until, by chance,

Drake gat the proof of treasonable intrigue

With Spain, against him, up to the deadly hilt,

And hurled him into the Tower.

Many a night

She sat by that old casement nigh the sea

And heard its ebb and flow. With soul erect

And splendid now she waited, yet there came

No message; and, she thought, he hath seen at last

My little worth. And when her maiden sang,

With white throat throbbing softly in the dusk

And fingers gently straying o'er the lute,

As was her wont at twilight, some old song

Of high disdainful queens and lovers pale

Pining a thousand years before their feet,

She thought, "O, if my lover loved me yet

My heart would break for joy to welcome him:

Perchance his true pride will not let him come

Since false pride barred him out"; and yet again

She burned with shame, thinking, "to him such pride

Were matter for a jest. Ah no, he hath seen

My little worth." Even so, one night she sat,

One dark rich summer night, thinking him far

Away, wrapped in the multitudinous cares

Of one that seemed the steersman of the State

Now, thro' the storm of Europe; while her maid

Sang to the lute, and soft sea-breezes brought

Wreathed scents and sighs of secret waves and flowers

Warm through the casement's muffling jasmine bloom.

SONG

I

Nymphs and naiads, come away,

Love lies dead!

Cover the cast-back golden head,

Cover the lovely limbs with may,

And with fairest boughs of green,

And many a rose-wreathed briar spray;

But let no hateful yew be seen

Where Love lies dead.

II

Let not the queen that would not hear,

(Love lies dead!)

Or beauty that refused to save.

Exult in one dejected tear;

But gather the glory of the year,

The pomp and glory of the year,

The triumphing glory of the year,

And softly, softly, softly shed

Its light and fragrance round the grave

Where Love lies dead.

The song ceased. Far away the great sea slept,

And all was very still. Only hard by

One bird-throat poured its passion through the gloom,

And the whole night breathlessly listened.

A twig

Snapped, the song ceased, the intense dumb night was all

One passion of expectation—as if that song

Were prelude, and ere long the heavens and earth

Would burst into one great triumphant psalm.

The song ceased only as if that small bird-throat

Availed no further. Would the next great chord

Ring out from harps in flaming seraph hands

Ranged through the sky? The night watched, breathless, dumb.

Bess listened. Once again a dry twig snapped

Beneath her casement, and a face looked up,

Draining her face of blood, of sight, of life,

Whispering, a voice from far beyond the stars,

Whispering, unutterable joy, the whole

Glory of life and death in one small word—

Sweetheart!

The jasmine at her casement shook,

She knew no more than he was at her side,

His arms were round her, and his breath beat warm

Against her cheek.

*    *    *    *

Suddenly, nigh the house,

A deep-mouthed mastiff bayed and a foot crunched

The gravel. "Hark! they are watching for thee," she cried.

He laughed: "There's half of Europe on the watch

Outside for my poor head, 'Tis cosier here

With thee; but now"—his face grew grave, he drew

A silken ladder from his doublet—"quick,

Before yon good gamekeeper rounds the house

We must be down." And ere the words were out

Bess reached the path, and Drake was at her side.

Then into the star-stabbed shadow of the woods

They sped, his arm around her. Suddenly

She drew back with a cry, as four grim faces,

With hand to forelock, glimmered in their way.

Laughing she saw their storm-beat friendly smile

Welcome their doughty captain in this new

Adventure. Far away, once more they heard

The mastiff bay; then nearer, as if his nose

Were down upon the trail; and then a cry

As of a hot pursuit. They reached the brook,

Hurrying to the deep. Drake lifted Bess

In his arms, and down the watery bed they splashed

To baffle the clamouring hunt. Then out of the woods

They came, on the seaward side, and Bess, with a shiver,

Saw starlight flashing from bare cutlasses,

As the mastiff bayed still nearer. Swiftlier now

They passed along the bare blunt cliffs and saw

The furrow ploughed by that strange cannon-shot

Which saved this hour for Bess; down to the beach

And starry foam that churned the silver gravel

Around an old black lurching boat, a strange

Grim Charon's wherry for two lovers' flight,

Guarded by old Tom Moone. Drake took her hand,

And with one arm around her waist, her breath

Warm on his cheek for a moment, in she stepped

Daintily o'er the gunwale, and took her seat,

His throned princess, beside him at the helm,

Backed by the glittering waves, his throned princess,

With jewelled throat and glorious hair that seemed

Flashing back scents and colours to a sea

Which lived but to reflect her loveliness.

Then, all together, with their brandished oars

The seamen thrust as a heavy mounded wave

Lifted the boat; and up the flowering breast

Of the next they soared, then settled at the thwarts,

And the fierce water boiled before their blades

While with Drake's iron hand upon the helm

They plunged and ploughed across the starlit seas

To where a small black lugger at anchor swung,

Dipping her rakish brow i' the liquid moon.

Small was she, but not fangless; for Bess saw,

With half a tremor, the dumb protective grin

Of four grim guns above the tossing boat.

But ere his seamen or his sweetheart knew

What power, as of a wind, bore them along,

Anchor was up, the sails were broken out,

And as they scudded down the dim grey coast

Of a new enchanted world (for now had Love

Made all things new and strange) the skilled musicians

Upraised, at Drake's command, a song to cheer

Their midnight path across that faery sea.

SONG

I

Sweet, what is love? 'Tis not the crown of kings,

Nay, nor the fire of white seraphic wings!

Is it a child's heart leaping while he sings?

Even so say I;

Even so say I.

II

Love like a child around our world doth run,

Happy, happy, happy for all that God hath done,

Glad of all the little leaves dancing in the sun,

Even so say I;

Even so say I.

III

Sweet, what is love? 'Tis not the burning bliss

Angels know in heaven! God blows the world a kiss

Wakes on earth a wild-rose! Ah, who knows not this?

Even so say I;

Even so say I.

IV

Love, love is kind! Can it be far away,

Lost in a light that blinds our little day?

Seems it a great thing? Sweetheart, answer nay;

Even so say I;

Even so say I.

V

Sweet, what is love? The dust beneath our feet,

Whence breaks the rose and all the flowers that greet

April and May with lips and heart so sweet;

Even so say I;

Even so say I.

VI

Love is the dust whence Eden grew so fair,

Dust of the dust that set my lover there,

Ay, and wrought the gloriole of Eve's gold hair,

Even so say I;

Even so say I.

VII

Also the springing spray, the little topmost flower

Swung by the bird that sings a little hour,

Earth's climbing spray into the heaven's blue bower,

Even so say I;

Even so say I.

And stranger, ever stranger, grew the night

Around those twain, for whom the fleecy moon

Was but a mightier Cleopatra's pearl

Dissolving in the rich dark wine of night,

While 'mid the tenderer talk of eyes and hands

And whispered nothings, his great ocean realm

Rolled round their gloomy barge, robing its hulk

With splendours Rome and Egypt never knew.

Old ocean was his Nile, his mighty queen

An English maiden purer than the dawn,

His cause the cause of Freedom, his reward

The glory of England. Strangely simple, then,

Simple as life and death, anguish and love,

To Bess appeared those mighty dawning dreams,

Whereby he shaped the pageant of the world

To a new purpose, strangely simple all

Those great new waking tides i' the world's great soul

That set towards the fall of tyranny

Behind a thunderous roar of ocean triumph

O'er burning ships and shattered fleets, while England

Grasped with sure hands the sceptre of the sea,

That untamed realm of Liberty which none

Had looked upon as aught but wilderness

Ere this, or even dreamed of as the seat

Of power and judgment and high sovereignty

Whereby all nations at the last should make

One brotherhood, and war should be no more.

And ever, as the vision broadened out,

The sense of some tremendous change at hand,

The approach of vast Armadas and the dawn

Of battle, reddening the diviner dawn

With clouds, confused it, till once more the song

Rang out triumphant o'er the glittering sea.

SONG

I

Ye that follow the vision

Of the world's weal afar,

Have ye met with derision

And the red laugh of war;

Yet the thunder shall not hurt you,

Nor the battle-storms dismay;

Tho' the sun in heaven desert you,

"Love will find out the way."

II

When the pulse of hope falters,

When the fire flickers low

On your faith's crumbling altars,

And the faithless gods go;

When the fond hope ye cherished

Cometh, kissing, to betray;

When the last star hath perished,

"Love will find out the way."

III

When the last dream bereaveth you,

And the heart turns to stone,

When the last comrade leaveth you

In the desert, alone;

With the whole world before you

Clad in battle-array,

And the starless night o'er you,

"Love will find out the way."

IV

Your dreamers may dream it

The shadow of a dream,

Your sages may deem it

A bubble on the stream;

Yet our kingdom draweth nigher

With each dawn and every day,

Through the earthquake and the fire

"Love will find out the way."

V

Love will find it, tho' the nations

Rise up blind, as of old,

And the new generations

Wage their warfares of gold;

Tho' they trample child and mother

As red clay into the clay,

Where brother wars with brother,

"Love will find out the way."

Dawn, ever bearing some divine increase

Of beauty, love, and wisdom round the world,

Dawn, like a wild-rose in the fields of heaven

Washed grey with dew, awoke, and found the barque

At anchor in a little land-locked bay.

A crisp breeze blew, and all the living sea

Beneath the flower-soft colours of the sky,

Now like a myriad-petalled rose and now

Innumerably scalloped into shells

Of rosy fire, with dwindling wrinkles edged

Fainter and fainter to the unruffled glow

And soft white pallor of the distant deep,

Shone with a mystic beauty for those twain

Who watched the gathering glory; and, in an hour,

Drake and sweet Bess, attended by a guard

Of four swart seamen, with bare cutlasses,

And by the faithful eyes of old Tom Moone,

Went up the rough rock-steps and twisted street

O' the small white sparkling seaport, tow'rds the church

Where, hand in hand, before God's altar they,

With steadfast eyes, did plight eternal troth,

And so were wedded. Never a chime of bells

Had they: but as they passed from out the porch

Between the sleeping graves, a skylark soared

Above the world in an ecstasy of song,

And quivering heavenwards, lost himself in light.

BOOK IX

Now like a white-cliffed fortress England shone

Amid the mirk of chaos; for the huge

Empire of Spain was but the dusky van

Of that dread night beyond all nights and days,

Night of the last corruption of a world

Fast-bound in misery and iron, with chains

Of priest and king and feudal servitude,

Night of the fettered flesh and ravaged soul,

Night of anarchic chaos, darkening the deep,

Swallowing up cities, kingdoms, empires, gods,

With vaster gloom approaching, till the sun

Of love was blackened, the moon of faith was blood.

All round our England, our small struggling star,

Fortress of freedom, rock o' the world's desire,

Bearing at last the hope of all mankind,

The thickening darkness surged, and close at hand

Those first fierce cloudy fringes of the storm,

The Armada sails, gathered their might; and Spain

Crouched close behind them with her screaming fires

And steaming shambles, Spain, the hell-hag, crouched,

Still grasping with red hand the cross of Christ

By its great hilt, pointing it like a dagger,

Spear-head of the ultimate darkness, at the throat

Of England. Under Philip's feet at last

Writhed all the Protestant Netherlands, dim coasts

Right over against us, whence his panoplies

Might suddenly whelm our isle. But all night long,

On many a mountain, many a guardian height,

From Beachy Head to Skiddaw, little groups

Of seamen, torch and battle-lanthorn nigh,

Watched by the brooding unlit beacons, piled

Of sun-dried gorse, funereal peat, rough logs,

Reeking with oil, 'mid sharp scents of the sea,

Waste trampled grass and heather and close-cropped thyme,

High o'er the thundering coast, among whose rocks

Far, far below, the pacing coastguards gazed

Steadfastly seaward through the loaded dusk.

And through that deepening gloom when, as it seemed,

All England held her breath in one grim doubt,

Swift rumours flashed from North to South as runs

The lightning round a silent thunder-cloud;

And there were muttering crowds in the London streets,

And hurrying feet in the brooding Eastern ports.

All night, dark inns, gathering the country-side,

Reddened with clashing auguries of war.

All night, in the ships of Plymouth Sound, the soul

Of Francis Drake was England, and all night

Her singing seamen by the silver quays

Polished their guns and waited for the dawn.

But hour by hour that night grew deeper. Spain

Watched, cloud by cloud, her huge Armadas grow,

Watched, tower by tower, and zone by zone, her fleets

Grapple the sky with a hundred hands and drag

Whole sea-horizons into her menacing ranks,

Joining her powers to the fierce night, while Philip

Still strove, with many a crafty word, to lull

The fears of Gloriana, till his plots

Were ripe, his armaments complete; and still

Great Gloriana took her woman's way,

Preferring ever tortuous intrigue

To battle, since the stakes had grown so great;

Now, more than ever, hoping against hope

To find some subtler means of victory;

Yet not without swift impulses to strike,

Swiftly recalled. Blind, yet not blind, she smiled

On Mary of Scotland waiting for her throne,

A throne with many a strange dark tremor thrilled

Now as the rumoured murderous mines below

Converged towards it, mine and countermine,

Till the live earth was honeycombed with death.

Still with her agate smile, still she delayed,

Holding her pirate admiral in the leash

Till Walsingham, nay, even the hunchback Burleigh,

That crafty king of statesmen, seeing at last

The inevitable thunder-crash at hand.

Grew heart-sick with delay and ached to shatter

The tense tremendous hush that seemed to oppress

All hearts, compress all brows, load the broad night

With more than mortal menace.

Only once

The night was traversed with one lightning flash,

One rapier stroke from England, at the heart

Of Spain, as swiftly parried, yet no less

A fiery challenge; for Philip's hate and scorn

Growing with his Armada's growth, he lured

With promises of just and friendly trade

A fleet of English corn-ships to relieve

His famine-stricken coast. There as they lay

Within his ports he seized them, one and all,

To fill the Armada's maw.

Whereat the Queen,

Passive so long, summoned great Walsingham,

And, still averse from open war, despite

The battle-hunger burning in his eyes,

With one strange swift sharp agate smile she hissed,

"Unchain El Draque!"

A lightning flash indeed

Was this; for he whose little Golden Hynde

With scarce a score of seamen late had scourged

The Spanish Main; he whose piratic neck

Scarcely the Queen's most wily statecraft saved

From Spain's revenge: he, privateer to the eyes

Of Spain, but England to all English hearts,

Gathered together, in all good jollity,

All help and furtherance himself could wish,

Before that moon was out, a pirate fleet

Whereof the like old ocean had not seen—

Eighteen swift cruisers, two great battleships,

With pinnaces and store-ships and a force

Of nigh three thousand men, wherewith to singe

The beard o' the King of Spain.

By night they gathered

In marvellous wind-whipt inns nigh Plymouth Sound,

Not secretly as, ere the Golden Hynde

Burst thro' the West, that small adventurous crew

Gathered beside the Thames, tossing the phrase

"Pieces of eight" from mouth to mouth, and singing

Great songs of the rich Indies, and those tall

Enchanted galleons, red with blood and gold,

Superb with rubies, glorious as clouds,

Clouds in the sun, with mighty press of sail

Dragging the sunset out of the unknown world,

And staining all the grey old seas of Time

With rich romance; but these, though privateers,

Or secret knights on Gloriana's quest,

Recked not if round the glowing magic door

Of every inn the townsfolk grouped to hear

The storm-scarred seamen toasting Francis Drake,

Nor heeded what blithe urchin faces pressed

On each red-curtained magic casement, bright

With wild reflection of the fires within,

The fires, the glasses, and the singing lips

Lifting defiance to the powers of Spain.

SONG

Sing we the Rose,

The flower of flowers most glorious!

Never a storm that blows

Across our English sea,

But its heart breaks out wi' the Rose

On England's flag victorious,

The triumphing flag that flows

Thro' the heavens of Liberty.

Sing we the Rose,

The flower of flowers most beautiful!

Until the world shall end

She blossometh year by year,

Red with the blood that flows

For England's sake, most dutiful,

Wherefore now we bend

Our hearts and knees to her.

Sing we the Rose,

The flower, the flower of war it is,

Where deep i' the midnight gloom

Its waves are the waves of the sea,

And the glare of battle grows,

And red over hulk and spar it is,

Till the grim black broadsides bloom

With our Rose of Victory.

Sing we the Rose,

The flower, the flower of love it is,

Which lovers aye shall sing

And nightingales proclaim;

For O, the heaven that glows,

That glows and burns above it is

Freedom's perpetual Spring,

Our England's faithful fame.

Sing we the Rose,

That Eastward still shall spread for us

Upon the dawn's bright breast,

Red leaves wi' the foam impearled;

And onward ever flows

Till eventide make red for us

A Rose that sinks i' the West

And surges round the world;

Sing we the Rose!

One night as, with his great vice-admiral,

Frobisher, his rear-admiral, Francis Knollys,

And Thomas Fenner, his flag-captain, Drake

Took counsel at his tavern, there came a knock,

The door opened, and cold as from the sea

The gloom rushed in, and there against the night,

Clad as it seemed with wind and cloud and rain,

Glittered a courtier whom by face and form

All knew for the age's brilliant paladin,

Sidney, the king of courtesy, a star

Of chivalry. The seamen stared at him,

Each with a hand upon the red-lined chart

Outspread before them. Then all stared at Drake,

Who crouched like a great bloodhound o'er the table,

And rose with a strange light burning in his eyes;

For he remembered how, three years agone,

That other courtier came, with words and smiles

Copied from Sidney's self; and in his ears

Rang once again the sound of the two-edged sword

Upon the desolate Patagonian shore

Beneath Magellan's gallows. With a voice

So harsh himself scarce knew it, he desired

This fair new courtier's errand. With grim eyes

He scanned the silken knight from head to foot,

While Sidney, smiling graciously, besought

Some place in their adventure. Drake's clenched fist

Crashed down on the old oak table like a rock,

Splintering the wood and dashing his rough wrist

With blood, as he thundered, "By the living God,

No! We've no room for courtiers, now! We leave

All that to Spain."

Whereat, seeing Sidney stood

Amazed, Drake, drawing nearer, said, "You ask

More than you dream: I know you for a knight

Most perfect and most gentle, yea, a man

Ready to die on any battle-field

To save a wounded friend" (even so said Drake,

Not knowing how indeed this knight would die),

Then fiercely he outstretched his bleeding hand

And pointed through the door to where the gloom

Glimmered with bursting spray, and the thick night

Was all one wandering thunder of hidden seas

Rolling out of Eternity: "You'll find

No purple fields of Arcady out there,

No shepherds piping in those boisterous valleys,

No sheep among those roaring mountain-tops,

No lists of feudal chivalry. I've heard

That voice cry death to courtiers. 'Tis God's voice.

Take you the word of one who has occupied

His business in great waters. There's no room,

Meaning, or reason, office, or place, or name

For courtiers on the sea. Does the sea flatter?

You cannot bribe it, torture it, or tame it!

Its laws are those of the Juggernaut universe,

Remorseless—listen to that!"—a mighty wave

Broke thundering down the coast; "your hands are white,

Your rapier jewelled, can you grapple that?

What part have you in all its flaming ways?

What share in its fierce gloom? Has your heart broken

As those waves break out there? Can you lie down

And sleep, as a lion-cub by the old lion,

When it shakes its mane out over you to hide you,

And leap out with the dawn as I have done?

These are big words; but, see, my hand is red:

You cannot torture me, I have borne all that;

And so I have some kinship with the sea,

Some sort of wild alliance with its storms,

Its exultations, ay, and its great wrath

At last, and power upon them. 'Tis the worse

For Spain, Be counselled well: come not between

My sea and its rich vengeance."

Silently,

Bowing his head, Sidney withdrew. But Drake,

So fiercely the old grief rankled in his heart,

Summoned his swiftest horseman, bidding him ride,

Ride like the wind through the night, straight to the Queen,

Praying she would most instantly recall

Her truant courtier. Nay, to make all sure,

Drake sent a gang of seamen out to crouch

Ambushed in woody hollows nigh the road,

Under the sailing moon, there to waylay

The Queen's reply, that she might never know

It reached him, if it proved against his will.

And swiftly came that truant's stern recall;

But Drake, in hourly dread of some new change

In Gloriana's mood, slept not by night

Or day, till out of roaring Plymouth Sound

The pirate fleet swept to the wind-swept main,

And took the wind and shook out all its sails.

Then with the unfettered sea he mixed his soul

In great rejoicing union, while the ships

Crashing and soaring o'er the heart-free waves

Drave ever straight for Spain.

Water and food

They lacked; but the fierce fever of his mind

To sail from Plymouth ere the Queen's will changed

Had left no time for these. Right on he drave,

Determining, though the Queen's old officers

Beneath him stood appalled, to take in stores

Of all he needed, water, powder, food,

By plunder of Spain herself. In Vigo bay,

Close to Bayona town, under the cliffs

Of Spain's world-wide and thunder-fraught prestige

He anchored, with the old sea-touch that wakes

Our England still. There, in the tingling ears

Of the world he cried, En garde! to the King of Spain.

There, ordering out his pinnaces in force,

While a great storm, as if he held indeed

Heaven's batteries in reserve, growled o'er the sea,

He landed. Ere one cumbrous limb of all

The monstrous armaments of Spain could move

His ships were stored; and ere the sword of Spain

Stirred in its crusted sheath, Bayona town

Beheld an empty sea; for like a dream

The pirate fleet had vanished, none knew whither.

But, in its visible stead, invisible fear

Filled the vast rondure of the sea and sky

As with the omnipresent soul of Drake.

For when Spain saw the small black anchored fleet

Ride in her bays, the sight set bounds to fear.

She knew at least the ships were oak, the guns

Of common range: nor did she dream e'en Drake

Could sail two seas at once. Now all her coasts

Heard him all night in every bursting wave,

His topsails gleamed in every moonlit cloud;

His battle-lanthorn glittered in the stars

That hung the low horizon. He became

A universal menace; yet there followed

No sight or sound of him, unless the sea

Were that grim soul incarnate. Did it not roar

His great commands? The very spray that lashed

The cheeks of Spanish seamen lashed their hearts

To helpless hatred of him. The wind sang

El Draque across the rattling blocks and sheets

When storms perplexed them; and when ships went down,

As under the fury of his onsetting battle,

The drowning sailors cursed him while they sank.

Suddenly a rumour shook the Spanish Court,

He has gone once more to the Indies. Santa Cruz,

High Admiral of Spain, the most renowned

Captain in Europe, clamoured for a fleet

Of forty sail instantly to pursue.

For unto him whose little Golden Hynde

Was weapon enough, now leading such a squadron,

The West Indies, the whole Pacific coast,

And the whole Spanish Main, lay at his mercy.

And onward over the great grey gleaming sea

Swept like a thunder-cloud the pirate fleet

With vengeance in its heart. Five years agone,

Young Hawkins, in the Cape Verde Islands, met—

At Santiago—with such treachery

As Drake burned to requite, and from that hour

Was Santiago doomed. His chance had come;

Drake swooped upon it, plundered it, and was gone,

Leaving the treacherous isle a desolate heap

Of smoking ashes in the leaden sea,

While onward all those pirate bowsprits plunged

Into the golden West, across the broad

Atlantic once again; "For I will show,"

Said Drake, "that Englishmen henceforth will sail

Old ocean where they will." Onward they surged,

And the great glittering crested majestic waves

Jubilantly rushed up to meet the keels,

And there was nought around them but the grey

Ruin and roar of the huge Atlantic seas,

Grey mounded seas, pursuing and pursued,

That fly, hounded and hounding on for ever,

From empty marge to marge of the grey sky.

Over the wandering wilderness of foam,

Onward, through storm and death, Drake swept; for now

Once more a fell plague gripped the tossing ships,

And not by twos and threes as heretofore

His crews were minished; but in three black days

Three hundred seamen in their shotted shrouds

Were cast into the deep. Onward he swept,

Implacably, having in mind to strike

Spain in the throat at St. Domingo, port

Of Hispaniola, a city of far renown,

A jewel on the shores of old romance,

Palm-shadowed, gated with immortal gold,

Queen city of Spain's dominions over sea,

And guarded by great guns. Out of the dawn

The pirate ships came leaping, grim and black,

And ere the Spaniards were awake, the flag

Of England floated from their topmost tower.

But since he had not troops enough to hold

So great a city, Drake entrenched his men

Within the Plaza and held the batteries.

Thence he demanded ransom, and sent out

A boy with flag of truce. The boy's return

Drake waited long. Under a sheltering palm

He stood, watching the enemies' camp, and lo,

Along the hot white purple-shadowed road

Tow'rds him, a crawling shape writhed through the dust

Up to his feet, a shape besmeared with blood,

A shape that held the stumps up of its wrists

And moaned, an eyeless thing, a naked rag

Of flesh obscenely mangled, a small face

Hideously puckered, shrivelled like a monkey's

With lips drawn backward from its teeth.

"Speak, speak,

In God's name, speak, what art thou?" whispered Drake,

And a sharp cry came, answering his dread,

A cry as of a sea-bird in the wind

Desolately astray from all earth's shores,

"Captain, I am thy boy, only thy boy!

See, see, my captain, see what they have done!

Captain, I only bore the flag; I only——"

"O, lad, lad, lad," moaned Drake, and, stooping, strove

To pillow the mangled head upon his arm.

"What have they done to thee, what have they done?"

And at the touch the boy screamed, once, and died.

Then like a savage sea with arms uplift

To heaven the wrath of Drake blazed thundering,

"Eternal God, be this the doom of Spain!

Henceforward have no pity. Send the strength

Of Thy great seas into my soul that I

May devastate this empire, this red hell

They make of Thy good earth."

His men drew round,

Staring in horror at the silent shape

That daubed his feet. Like a cold wind

His words went through their flesh:

"This is the lad

That bore our flag of truce. This hath Spain done.

Look well upon it, draw the smoke of the blood

Up into your nostrils, my companions,

And down into your souls. This makes an end

For Spain! Bring forth the Spanish prisoners

And let me look on them."

Forth they were brought,

A swarthy gorgeous band of soldiers, priests,

And sailors, hedged between two sturdy files

Of British tars with naked cutlasses.

Close up to Drake they halted, under the palm,

Gay smiling prisoners, for they thought their friends

Had ransomed them. Then they looked up and met

A glance that swept athwart them like a sword,

Making the blood strain back from their blanched faces

Into their quivering hearts, with unknown dread,

As that accuser pointed to the shape

Before his feet.

"Dogs, will ye lap his blood

Before ye die? Make haste; for it grows cold!

Ye will not, will not even dabble your hands

In that red puddle of flesh, what? Are ye Spaniards?

Come, come, I'll look at you, perchance there's one

That's but a demi-devil and holds you back."

And with the word Drake stepped among their ranks

And read each face among the swarthy crew—

The gorgeous soldiers, ringleted sailors, priests

With rosary and cross, a slender page

In scarlet with a cloud of golden hair,

And two rope-girdled friars.

The slim page

Drake drew before the throng. "You are young," he said,

"Go; take this message to the camp of Spain:

Tell them I have a hunger in my soul

To look upon the murderers of this boy,

To see what eyes they have, what manner of mouths,

To touch them and to take their hands in mine,

And draw them close to me and smile upon them

Until they know my soul as I know theirs,

And they grovel in the dust and grope for mercy.

Say that, until I get them, every day

I'll hang two Spaniards though I dispeople

The Spanish Main. Tell them that, every day,

I'll burn a portion of their city down,

Then find another city and burn that,

And then burn others till I burn away

Their empire from the world, ay, till I reach

The Imperial throne of Philip with my fires,

And send it shrieking down to burn in hell

For ever. Go!"

Then Drake turned once again,

To face the Spanish prisoners. With a voice

Cold as the passionless utterance of Fate

His grim command went forth. "Now, provost-marshal,

Begin with yon two friars, in whose faces

Chined like singed swine, and eyed with the spent coals

Of filthy living, sweats the glory of Spain.

Strip off their leprous rags

And twist their ropes around their throats and hang them

High over the Spanish camp for all to see.

At dawn I'll choose two more."

BOOK X

Across the Atlantic

Great rumours rushed as of a mighty wind,

The wind of the spirit of Drake. But who shall tell

In this cold age the power that he became

Who drew the universe within his soul

And moved with cosmic forces? Though the deep

Divided it from Drake, the gorgeous court

Of Philip shuddered away from the streaming coasts

As a wind-cuffed field of golden wheat. The King,

Bidding his guests to a feast in his own ship

On that wind-darkened sea, was made a mock,

As one by one his ladies proffered excuse

For fear of That beyond. Round Europe now

Ballad and story told how in the cabin

Of Francis Drake there hung a magic glass

Wherein he saw the fleets of every foe

And all that passed aboard them. Rome herself,

Perplexed that this proud heretic should prevail,

Fostered a darker dream, that Drake had bought,

Like old Norse wizards, power to loose or bind

The winds at will.

And now a wilder tale

Flashed o'er the deep—of a distant blood-red dawn

O'er San Domingo, where the embattled troops

Of Spain and Drake were met—but not in war—

Met in the dawn, by his compelling will,

To offer up a sacrifice. Yea, there

Between the hosts, the hands of Spain herself

Slaughtered the Spanish murderers of the boy

Who had borne Drake's flag of truce; offered them up

As a blood-offering and an expiation

Lest Drake, with that dread alchemy of his soul,

Should e'en transmute the dust beneath their feet

To one same substance with the place of pain

And whelm them suddenly in the eternal fires.

Rumour on rumour rushed across the sea,

Large mockeries, and one most bitter of all,

Wormwood to Philip, of how Drake had stood

I' the governor's house at San Domingo, and seen

A mighty scutcheon of the King of Spain

Whereon was painted the terrestrial globe,

And on the globe a mighty steed in act

To spring into the heavens, and from its mouth

Streaming like smoke a scroll, and on the scroll

Three words of flame and fury—Non sufficit

Orbis—of how Drake and his seamen stood

Gazing upon it, and could not forbear

From summoning the Spaniards to expound

Its meaning, whereupon a hurricane roar

Of mirth burst from those bearded British lips,

And that immortal laughter shook the world.

So, while the imperial warrior eyes of Spain

Watched, every hour, her vast Armada grow

Readier to launch and shatter with one stroke

Our island's frail defence, fear gripped her still,

For there came sounds across the heaving sea

Of secret springs unsealed, forces unchained,

A mustering of deep elemental powers,

A sound as of the burgeoning of boughs

In universal April and dead hearts

Uprising from their tombs; a mighty cry

Of resurrection, surging through the souls

Of all mankind. For now the last wild tale

Swept like another dawn across the deep;

And, in that dawn, men saw the slaves of Spain,

The mutilated negroes of the mines,

With gaunt backs wealed and branded, scarred and seared

By whip and iron, in Spain's brute lust for gold,

Saw them, at Drake's great liberating word,

Burst from their chains, erect, uplifting hands

Of rapture to the glad new light that then,

Then first, began to struggle thro' the clouds

And crown all manhood with a sacred crown

August—a light which, though from age to age

Clouds may obscure it, grows and still shall grow,

Until that Kingdom come, that grand Communion,

That Commonweal, that Empire, which still draws

Nigher with every hour, that Federation,

That turning of the wasteful strength of war

To accomplish large and fruitful tasks of peace,

That gathering up of one another's loads

Whereby the weak are strengthened and the strong

Made stronger in the increasing good of all.

Then, suddenly, it seemed, as he had gone,

A ship came stealing into Plymouth Sound

And Drake was home again, but not to rest;

For scarce had he cast anchor ere the road

To London rang beneath the flying hoofs

That bore his brief despatch to Burleigh, saying—

"We have missed the Plate Fleet by but twelve hours' sail,

The reason being best known to God. No less

We have given a cooling to the King of Spain.

There is a great gap opened which, methinks,

Is little to his liking. We have sacked

The towns of his chief Indies, burnt their ships,

Captured great store of gold and precious stones,

Three hundred pieces of artillery,

The more part brass. Our loss is heavy indeed,

Under the hand of God, eight hundred men,

Three parts of them by sickness. Captain Moone,

My trusty old companion, he that struck

The first blow in the South Seas at a Spaniard,

Died of a grievous wound at Cartagena.

My fleet and I are ready to strike again

At once, where'er the Queen and England please.

I pray for her commands, and those with speed,

That I may strike again." Outside the scroll

These words were writ once more—"My Queen's commands

I much desire, your servant, Francis Drake."

This terse despatch the hunchback Burleigh read

Thrice over, with the broad cliff of his brow

Bending among his books. Thrice he assayed

To steel himself with caution as of old;

And thrice, as a glorious lightning running along

And flashing between those simple words, he saw

The great new power that lay at England's hand,

An ocean-sovereignty, a power unknown

Before, but dawning now; a power that swept

All earth's old plots and counterplots away

Like straws; the germ of an unmeasured force

New-born, that laid the source of Spanish might

At England's mercy! Could that force but grow

Ere Spain should nip it, ere the mighty host

That waited in the Netherlands even now,

That host of thirty thousand men encamped

Round Antwerp, under Parma, should embark

Convoyed by that Invincible Armada

To leap at England's throat! Thrice he assayed

To think of England's helplessness, her ships

Little and few. Thrice he assayed to quench

With caution the high furnace of his soul

Which Drake had kindled. As he read the last

Rough simple plea, I wait my Queen's commands,

His deep eyes flashed with glorious tears.

He leapt

To his feet and cried aloud, "Before my God,

I am proud, I am very proud for England's sake!

This Drake is a terrible man to the King of Spain."

And still, still, Gloriana, brooding darkly

On Mary of Scotland's doom, who now at last

Was plucked from out her bosom like a snake

Hissing of war with France, a queenly snake,

A Lilith in whose lovely gleaming folds

And sexual bonds the judgment of mankind

Writhes even yet half-strangled, meting out

Wild execrations on the maiden Queen

Who quenched those jewelled eyes and mixt with dust

That white and crimson, who with cold sharp steel

In substance and in spirit, severed the neck

And straightened out those glittering supple coils

For ever; though for evermore will men

Lie subject to the unforgotten gleam

Of diamond eyes and cruel crimson mouth,

And curse the sword-bright intellect that struck

Like lightning far through Europe and the world

For England, when amid the embattled fury

Of world-wide empires, England stood alone.

Still she held back from war, still disavowed

The deeds of Drake to Spain; and yet once more

Philip, resolved at last never to swerve

By one digressive stroke, one ell or inch

From his own patient, sure, laborious path,

Accepted her suave plea, and with all speed

Pressed on his huge emprise until it seemed

His coasts groaned with grim bulks of cannonry,

Thick loaded hulks of thunder and towers of doom;

And, all round Antwerp, Parma still prepared

To hurl such armies o'er the rolling sea

As in all history hardly the earth herself

Felt shake with terror her own green hills and plains.

I wait my Queen's commands! Despite the plea

Urged every hour upon her with the fire

That burned for action in the soul of Drake,

Still she delayed, till on one darkling eve

She gave him audience in that glimmering room

Where first he saw her. Strangely sounded there

The seaman's rough strong passion as he poured

His heart before her, pleading—"Every hour

Is one more victory lost," and only heard

The bitter answer—"Nay, but every hour

Is a breath snatched from the unconquerable

Doom, that awaits us if we are forced to war.

Yea, and who knows?—though Spain may forge a sword,

Its point is not inevitably bared

Against the breast of England!" As she spake,

The winds without clamoured with clash of bells,

There was a gleam of torches and a roar—

Mary, the traitress of the North, is dead,

God save the Queen!

Her head bent down: she wept.

"Pity me, friend, though I be queen, O yet

My heart is woman, and I am sore pressed

On every side,—Scotland and France and Spain

Beset me, and I know not where to turn."

Even as she spake, there came a hurried step

Into that dim rich chamber. Walsingham

Stood there, before her, without ceremony

Thrusting a letter forth: "At last," he cried,

"Your Majesty may read the full intent

Of priestly Spain. Here, plainly written out

Upon this paper, worth your kingdom's crown,

This letter, stolen by a trusty spy,

Out of the inmost chamber of the Pope

Sixtus himself, here is your murder planned:

Blame not your Ministers who with such haste

Plucked out this viper, Mary, from your breast!

Read here—how, with his thirty thousand men,

The pick of Europe, Parma joins the Scots,

While Ireland, grasped in their Armada's clutch,

And the Isle of Wight, against our west and south

Become their base."

"Rome, Rome, and Rome again,

And always Rome," she muttered; "even here

In England hath she thousands yet. She hath struck

Her curse out with pontific finger at me,

Cursed me down and away to the bottomless pit.

Her shadow like the shadow of clouds or sails,

The shadow of that huge event at hand,

Darkens the seas already, and the wind

Is on my cheek that shakes my kingdom down.

She hath thousands here in England, born and bred

Englishmen. They will stand by Rome!"

"'Fore God,"

Cried Walsingham, "my Queen, you do them wrong!

There is another Rome—not this of Spain

Which lurks to pluck the world back into darkness

And stab it there for gold. There is a City

Whose eyes are tow'rd the morning; on whose heights

Blazes the Cross of Christ above the world;

A Rome that shall wage warfare yet for God

In the dark days to come, a Rome whose thought

Shall march with our humanity and be proud

To cast old creeds like seed into the ground,

Watch the strange shoots and foster the new flower

Of faiths we know not yet. Is this a dream?

I speak as one by knighthood bound to speak;

For even this day—and my heart burns with it—

I heard the Catholic gentlemen of England

Speaking in grave assembly. At one breath

Of peril to our island, why, their swords

Leapt from their scabbards, and their cry went up

To split the heavens—God save our English Queen!"

Even as he spake there passed the rushing gleam

Of torches once again, and as they stood

Silently listening, all the winds ran wild

With clamouring bells, and a great cry went up—

God save Elizabeth, our English Queen!

"I'll vouch for some two hundred Catholic throats

Among that thousand," whispered Walsingham

Eagerly, with his eyes on the Queen's face.

Then, seeing it brighten, fervently he cried,

Pressing the swift advantage home, "O, Madam,

The heart of England now is all on fire!

We are one people, as we have not been

In all our history, all prepared to die

Around your throne. Madam, you are beloved

As never yet was English king or queen!"

She looked at him, the tears in her keen eyes

Glittered—"And I am very proud," she said,

"But if our enemies command the world,

And we have one small island and no more...."

She ceased; and Drake, in a strange voice, hoarse and low,

Trembling with passion deeper than all speech,

Cried out—"No more than the great ocean-sea

Which makes the enemies' coast our frontier now;

No more than that great Empire of the deep

Which rolls from Pole to Pole, washing the world

With thunder, that great Empire whose command

This day is yours to take. Hear me, my Queen,

This is a dream, a new dream, but a true;

For mightier days are dawning on the world

Than heart of man hath known. If England hold

The sea, she holds the hundred thousand gates

That open to futurity. She holds

The highway of all ages. Argosies

Of unknown glory set their sails this day

For England out of ports beyond the stars.

Ay, on the sacred seas we ne'er shall know

They hoist their sails this day by peaceful quays,

Great gleaming wharves in the perfect City of God,

If she but claim her heritage."

He ceased;

And the deep dream of that new realm the sea,

Through all the soul of Gloriana surged,

A moment, then with splendid eyes that filled

With fire of sunsets far away, she cried

(Faith making her a child, yet queenlier still)

"Yea, claim it thou for me!"

A moment there

Trembling she stood. Then, once again, there passed

A rush of torches through the gloom without,

And a great cry "God save Elizabeth,

God save our English Queen!"

"Yea go, then, go,"

She said, "God speed you now, Sir Francis Drake,

Not as a privateer, but with full powers,

My Admiral-at-the-Seas!"

Without a word

Drake bent above her hand and, ere she knew it,

His eyes from the dark doorway flashed farewell

And he was gone. But ere he leapt to saddle

Walsingham stood at his stirrup, muttering "Ride,

Ride now like hell to Plymouth; for the Queen

Is hard beset, and ere ye are out at sea

Her mood will change. The friends of Spain will move

Earth and the heavens for your recall. They'll tempt her

With their false baits of peace, though I shall stand

Here at your back through thick and thin; farewell!"

Fire flashed beneath the hoofs and Drake was gone.

Scarce had he vanished in the night than doubt

Once more assailed the Queen. The death of Mary

Had brought e'en France against her. Walsingham,

And Burleigh himself, prime mover of that death,

Being held in much disfavour for it, stood

As helpless. Long ere Drake or human power,

They thought, could put to sea, a courier sped

To Plymouth bidding Drake forbear to strike

At Spain, but keep to the high seas, and lo,

The roadstead glittered empty. Drake was gone!

Gone! Though the friends of Spain had poured their gold

To thin his ranks, and every hour his crews

Deserted, he had laughed—"Let Spain buy scum!

Next to an honest seaman I love best

An honest landsman. What more goodly task

Than teaching brave men seamanship?" He had filled

His ships with soldiers! Out in the teeth of the gale

That raged against him he had driven. In vain,

Amid the boisterous laughter of the quays,

A pinnace dashed in hot pursuit and met

A roaring breaker and came hurtling back

With oars and spars all trailing in the foam,

A tangled mass of wreckage and despair.

Sky swept to stormy sky: no sail could live

In that great yeast of waves; but Drake was gone!

Then, once again, across the rolling sea

Great rumours rushed of how he had sacked the port

Of Cadiz and had swept along the coast

To Lisbon, where the whole Armada lay.

Had snapped up prizes under its very nose,

And taunted Santa Cruz, High Admiral

Of Spain, striving to draw him out for fight,

And offering, if his course should lie that way,

To convoy him to Britain, taunted him

So bitterly that for once, in the world's eyes,

A jest had power to kill; for Santa Cruz

Died with the spleen of it, since he could not move

Before the appointed season. Then there came

Flying back home, the Queen's old Admiral

Borough, deserting Drake and all aghast

At Drake's temerity: "For," he said, "this man,

Thrust o'er my head, against all precedent,

Bade me follow him into harbour mouths

A-flame with cannon like the jaws of death,

Whereat I much demurred; and straightway Drake

Clapped me in irons, me—an officer

And Admiral of the Queen; and, though my voice

Was all against it, plunged into the pit

Without me, left me with some word that burns

And rankles in me still, making me fear

The man was mad, some word of lonely seas,

A desert island and a mutineer

And dead Magellan's gallows. Sirs, my life

Was hardly safe with him. Why, he resolved

To storm the Castle of St. Vincent, sirs,

A castle on a cliff, grinning with guns,

Well known impregnable! The Spaniards fear

Drake; but to see him land below it and bid

Surrender, sirs, the strongest fort of Spain

Without a blow, they laughed! And straightway he,

With all the fury of Satan, turned that cliff

To hell itself. He sent down to the ships

For faggots, broken oars, beams, bowsprits, masts,

And piled them up against the outer gates,

Higher and higher, and fired them. There he stood

Amid the smoke and flame and cannon-shot,

This Admiral, like a common seamen, black

With soot, besmeared with blood, his naked arms

Full of great faggots, labouring like a giant

And roaring like Apollyon. Sirs, he is mad!

But did he take it, say you? Yea, he took it,

The mightiest stronghold on the coast of Spain,

Took it and tumbled all its big brass guns

Clattering over the cliffs into the sea.

But, sirs, ye need not raise a cheer so loud

It is not warfare. 'Twas a madman's trick,

A devil's!"

Then the rumour of a storm

That scattered the fleet of Drake to the four winds

Disturbed the heart of England, as his ships

Came straggling into harbour, one by one,

Saying they could not find him. Then, at last,

When the storm burst in its earth-shaking might

Along our coasts, one night of rolling gloom

His cannon woke old Plymouth. In he came

Across the thunder and lightning of the sea

With his grim ship of war and, close behind,

A shadow like a mountain or a cloud

Torn from the heaven-high panoplies of Spain,

A captured galleon loomed, and round her prow

A blazoned scroll, whence (as she neared the quays

Which many a lanthorn swung from brawny fist

Yellowed) the sudden crimson of her name

San Filippe flashed o'er the white sea of faces,

And a rending shout went skyward that outroared

The blanching breakers—"'Tis the heart of Spain!

The great San Filippe!" Overhead she towered,

The mightiest ship afloat; and in her hold

The riches of a continent, a prize

Greater than earth had ever known; for there

Not only ruby and pearl like ocean-beaches

Heaped on some wizard coast in that dim hull

Blazed to the lanthorn-light; not only gold

Gleamed, though of gold a million would not buy

Her store; but in her cabin lay the charts

And secrets of the wild unwhispered wealth

Of India, secrets that splashed London wharves

With coloured dreams and made her misty streets

Flame like an Eastern City when the sun

Shatters itself on jewelled domes and spills

Its crimson wreckage thro' the silvery palms.

And of those dreams the far East India quest

Began: the first foundation-stone was laid

Of our great Indian Empire, and a star

Began to tremble on the brows of England

That time can never darken.

But now the seas

Darkened indeed with menace; now at last

The cold wind of the black approaching wings

Of Azrael crept across the deep: the storm

Throbbed with their thunderous pulse, and ere that moon

Waned, a swift gunboat foamed into the Sound

With word that all the Invincible Armada

Was hoisting sail for England.

Even now,

Elizabeth, torn a thousand ways, withheld

The word for which Drake pleaded as for life,

That he might meet them ere they left their coasts,

Meet them or ever they reached the Channel, meet them

Now, or—"Too late! Too late!" At last his voice

Beat down e'en those that blindly dinned her ears

With chatter of meeting Spain on British soil;

And swiftly she commanded (seeing once more

The light that burned amid the approaching gloom

In Drake's deep eyes) Lord Howard of Effingham,

High Admiral of England, straight to join him

At Plymouth Sound. "How many ships are wanted?"

She asked him, thinking "we are few, indeed!"

"Give me but sixteen merchantmen," he said,

"And but four battleships, by the mercy of God,

I'll answer for the Armada!" Out to sea

They swept, in the teeth of a gale; but vainly Drake

Strove to impart the thought wherewith his mind

Travailed—to win command of the ocean-sea

By bursting on the fleets of Spain at once

Even as they left their ports, not as of old

To hover in a vain dream of defence

Round fifty threatened points of British coast,

But Howard, clinging to his old-world order,

Flung out his ships in a loose, long, straggling line

Across the Channel, waiting, wary, alert,

But powerless thus as a string of scattered sea-gulls

Beating against the storm. Then, flying to meet them,

A merchantman brought terror down the wind,

With news that she had seen that monstrous host

Stretching from sky to sky, great hulks of doom,

Dragging death's midnight with them o'er the sea

Tow'rds England. Up to Howard's flag-ship Drake

In his immortal battle-ship—Revenge,

Rushed thro' the foam, and thro' the swirling seas

His pinnace dashed alongside. On to the decks

O' the tossing flag-ship, like a very Viking

Shaking the surf and rainbows of the spray

From sun-smit lion-like mane and beard he stood

Before Lord Howard in the escutcheoned poop

And poured his heart out like the rending sea

In passionate wave on wave:

"If yonder fleet

Once reach the Channel, hardly the mercy of God

Saves England! I would pray with my last breath,

Let us beat up to windward of them now,

And handle them before they reach the Channel."

"Nay; but we cannot bare the coast," cried Howard,

"Nor have we stores of powder or food enough!"

"My lord," said Drake, with his great arm outstretched,

"There is food enough in yonder enemy's ships,

And powder enough and cannon-shot enough!

We must re-victual there. Look! look!" he cried,

And pointed to the heavens. As for a soul

That by sheer force of will compels the world

To work his bidding, so it seemed the wind

That blew against them slowly veered. The sails

Quivered, the skies revolved. A northerly breeze

Awoke and now, behind the British ships,

Blew steadily tow'rds the unseen host of Spain.

"It is the breath of God," cried Drake; "they lie

Wind-bound, and we may work our will with them.

Signal the word, Lord Howard, and drive down!"

And as a man convinced by heaven itself

Lord Howard ordered, straightway, the whole fleet

To advance.

And now, indeed, as Drake foresaw,

The Armada lay, beyond the dim horizon,

Wind-bound and helpless in Corunna bay,

At England's mercy, could her fleet but draw

Nigh enough, with its fire-ships and great guns

To windward. Nearer, nearer, league by league

The ships of England came: till Ushant lay

Some seventy leagues behind. Then, yet once more

The wind veered, straight against them. To remain

Beating against it idly was to starve:

And, as a man whose power upon the world

Fails for one moment of exhausted will,

Drake, gathering up his forces as he went

For one more supreme effort, turned his ship

Tow'rds Plymouth, and retreated with the rest.

There, while the ships refitted with all haste

And axe and hammer rang, one golden eve

Just as the setting sun began to fringe

The clouds with crimson, and the creaming waves

Were one wild riot of fairy rainbows, Drake

Stood with old comrades on the close-cropped green

Of Plymouth Hoe, playing a game of bowls.

Far off unseen, a little barque, full-sail,

Struggled and leapt and strove tow'rds Plymouth Sound,

Noteless as any speckled herring-gull

Flickering between the white flakes of the waves.

A group of schoolboys with their satchels lay

Stretched on the green, gazing with great wide eyes

Upon their seamen heroes, as like gods

Disporting with the battles of the world

They loomed, tossing black bowls like cannon-balls

Against the rosy West, or lounged at ease

With faces olive-dark against that sky

Laughing, while from the neighboring inn mine host,

White aproned and blue-jerkined, hurried out

With foaming cups of sack, and they drank deep,

Tossing their heads back under the golden clouds

And burying their bearded lips. The hues

That slashed their doublets, for the boy's bright eyes

(Even as the gleams of Grecian cloud or moon

Revealed the old gods) were here rich dusky streaks

Of splendour from the Spanish Main, that shone

But to proclaim these heroes. There a boy

More bold crept nearer to a slouched hat thrown

Upon the green, and touched the silver plume,

And felt as if he had touched a sunset-isle

Of feathery palms beyond a crimson sea.

Another stared at the blue rings of smoke

A storm-scarred seaman puffed from a long pipe

Primed with the strange new herb they had lately found

In far Virginia. But the little ship

Now plunging into Plymouth Bay none saw.

E'en when she had anchored and her straining boat

Had touched the land, and the boat's crew over the quays

Leapt with a shout, scarce was there one to heed.

A seaman, smiling, swaggered out of the inn

Swinging in one brown hand a gleaming cage

Wherein a big green parrot chattered and clung

Fluttering against the wires. A troop of girls

With arms linked paused to watch the game of bowls;

And now they flocked around the cage, while one

With rosy finger tempted the horny beak

To bite. Close overhead a sea-mew flashed

Seaward. Once, from an open window, soft

Through trellised leaves, not far away, a voice

Floated, a voice that flushed the cheek of Drake,

The voice of Bess, bending her glossy head

Over the broidery frame, in a quiet song.

The song ceased. Still, with rainbows in their eyes,

The schoolboys watched the bowls like cannon-balls

Roll from the hand of gods along the turf.

Suddenly, tow'rds the green, a little cloud

Of seamen, shouting, stumbling, as they ran

Drew all eyes on them. The game ceased. A voice

Rough with the storms of many an ocean roared

"Drake! Cap'en Drake! The Armada!

They are in the Channel! We sighted them—

A line of battleships! We could not see

An end of them. They stretch from north to south

Like a great storm of clouds, glinting with guns,

From sky to sky!"

So, after all his strife,

The wasted weeks had tripped him, the fierce hours

Of pleading for the sea's command, great hours

And golden moments, all were lost. The fleet

Of Spain had won the Channel without a blow.

All eyes were turned on Drake, as he stood there

A giant against the sunset and the sea

Looming, alone. Far off, the first white star

Gleamed in a rosy space of heaven. He tossed

A grim black ball i' the lustrous air and laughed,—

"Come lads," he said, "we've time to finish the game."

BOOK XI

Few minutes, and well wasted those, were spent

On that great game of bowls; for well knew Drake

What panic threatened Plymouth, since his fleet

Lay trapped there by the black head-wind that blew

Straight up the Sound, and Plymouth town itself,

Except the ships won seaward ere the dawn,

Lay at the Armada's mercy. Never a seaman

Of all the sea-dogs clustered on the quays,

And all the captains clamouring round Lord Howard,

Hoped that one ship might win to the open sea:

At dawn, they thought, the Armada's rolling guns

To windward, in an hour, must shatter them,

Huddled in their red slaughter-house like sheep.

Now was the great sun sunken and the night

Dark. Far to Westward, like the soul of man

Fighting blind nature, a wild flare of red

Upon some windy headland suddenly leapt

And vanished flickering into the clouds. Again

It leapt and vanished: then all at once it streamed

Steadily as a crimson torch upheld

By Titan hands to heaven. It was the first

Beacon! A sudden silence swept along

The seething quays, and in their midst appeared

Drake.

Then the jubilant thunder of his voice

Rolled, buffeting the sea-wind far and nigh,

And ere they knew what power as of a sea

Surged through them, his immortal battle-ship

Revenge had flung out cables to the quays,

And while the seamen, as he had commanded,

Knotted thick ropes together, he stood apart

(For well he knew what panic threatened still)

Whittling idly at a scrap of wood,

And carved a little boat out for the child

Of some old sea-companion.

So great and calm a master of the world

Seemed Drake that, as he whittled, and the chips

Fluttered into the blackness over the quay,

Men said that in this hour of England's need

Each tiny flake turned to a battle-ship;

For now began the lanthorns, one by one,

To glitter, and half-reveal the shadowy hulks

Before him.—So the huge old legend grew,

Not all unworthy the Homeric age

Of gods and god-like men.

St. Michael's Mount,

Answering the first wild beacon far away,

Rolled crimson thunders to the stormy sky!

The ropes were knotted. Through the panting dark

Great heaving lines of seamen all together

Hauled with a shout, and all together again

Hauled with a shout against the roaring wind;

And slowly, slowly, onward tow'rds the sea

Moved the Revenge, and seaward ever heaved

The brawny backs together, and in their midst,

Suddenly, as they slackened, Drake was there

Hauling like any ten, and with his heart

Doubling the strength of all, giving them joy

Of battle against those odds,—ay, till they found

Delight in the burning tingle of the blood

That even their hardy hands must feel besmear

The harsh, rough, straining ropes. There as they toiled,

Answering a score of hills, old Beachy Head

Streamed like a furnace to the rolling clouds

Then all around the coast each windy ness

And craggy mountain kindled. Peak from peak

Caught the tremendous fire, and passed it on

Round the bluff East and the black mouth of Thames,—

Up, northward to the waste wild Yorkshire fells

And gloomy Cumberland, where, like a giant,

Great Skiddaw grasped the red tempestuous brand,

And thrust it up against the reeling heavens.

Then all night long, inland, the wandering winds

Ran wild with clamour and clash of startled bells;

All night the cities seethed with torches, flashed

With twenty thousand flames of burnished steel;

While over the trample and thunder of hooves blazed forth

The lightning of wild trumpets. Lonely lanes

Of country darkness, lit by cottage doors

Entwined with rose and honeysuckle, roared

Like mountain-torrents now—East, West, and South,

As to the coasts with pike and musket streamed

The trained bands, horse and foot, from every town

And every hamlet. All the shaggy hills

From Milford Haven to the Downs of Kent,

And up to Humber, gleamed with many a hedge

Of pikes between the beacon's crimson glares;

While in red London forty thousand men,

In case the Invader should prevail, drew swords

Around their Queen. All night in dark St. Paul's,

While round it rolled a multitudinous roar

As of the Atlantic on a Western beach,

And all the leaning London streets were lit

With fury of torches, rose the passionate prayer

Of England's peril:

O Lord God of Hosts,

Let Thine enemies know that Thou hast taken

England into Thine hands!

The mighty sound

Rolled, billowing round the kneeling aisles, then died,

Echoing up the heights. A voice, far off,

As on the cross of Calvary, caught it up

And poured the prayer o'er that deep hush, alone:

We beseech Thee, O God, to go before our armies,

Bless and prosper them both by land and sea!

Grant unto them Thy victory, O God,

As Thou usedst to do to Thy children when they please Thee!

All power, all strength, all victory come from Thee!

Then from the lips of all those thousands burst

A sound as from the rent heart of an ocean,

One tumult, one great rushing storm of wings

Cleaving the darkness round the Gates of Heaven:

Some put their trust in chariots and some in horses;

But we will remember Thy name, O Lord our God!

So, while at Plymouth Sound her seamen toiled

All through the night, and scarce a ship had won

Seaward, the heart of England cried to God.

All night, while trumpets yelled and blared without,

And signal cannon shook the blazoned panes,

And billowing multitudes went thundering by,

Amid that solemn pillared hush arose

From lips of kneeling thousands one great prayer

Storming the Gates of Heaven! O Lord, our God,

Heavenly Father, have mercy upon our Queen,

To whom Thy far dispersed flock do fly

In the anguish of their souls. Behold, behold,

How many princes band themselves against her,

How long Thy servant hath laboured to them for peace,

How proudly they prepare themselves for battle!

Arise, therefore! Maintain Thine own cause,

Judge Thou between her and her enemies!

She seeketh not her own honour, but Thine,

Not the dominions of others, but Thy truth,

Not bloodshed but the saving of the afflicted!

O rend the heavens, therefore, and come down.

Deliver Thy people!

To vanquish is all one with Thee, by few

Or many, ward or wealth, weakness or strength.

The cause is Thine, the enemies Thine, the afflicted

Thine! The honour, victory, and triumph

Thine! Grant her people now one heart, one mind,

One strength. Give unto her councils and her captains

Wisdom and courage strongly to withstand

The forces of her enemies, that the fame

And glory of Thy Kingdom may be spread

Unto the ends of the world. Father, we crave

This in Thy mercy, for the precious death

Of Thy dear Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ!

Amen.

And as the dreadful dawn thro' mist-wreaths broke,

And out of Plymouth Sound at last, with cheers

Ringing from many a thousand throats, there struggled

Six little ships, all that the night's long toil

Had warped down to the sea (but leading them

The ship of Drake) there rose one ocean-cry

From all those worshippers—Let God arise,

And let His enemies be scattered!

Under the leaden fogs of that new dawn,

Empty and cold, indifferent as death,

The sea heaved strangely to the seamen's eyes,

Seeing all round them only the leaden surge

Wrapped in wet mists or flashing here and there

With crumbling white. Against the cold wet wind

Westward the little ships of England beat

With short tacks, close inshore, striving to win

The windward station of the threatening battle

That neared behind the veil. Six little ships,

No more, beat Westward, even as all mankind

Beats up against that universal wind

Whereon like withered leaves all else is blown

Down one wide way to death: the soul alone,

Whether at last it wins, or faints and fails,

Stems the dark tide with its intrepid sails.

Close-hauled, with many a short tack, struggled and strained,

North-west, South-west, the ships; but ever Westward gained

Some little way with every tack; and soon,

While the prows plunged beneath the grey-gold noon,

Lapped by the crackling waves, even as the wind

Died down a little, in the mists behind

Stole out from Plymouth Sound the struggling score

Of ships that might not win last night to sea.

They followed; but the Six went on before,

Not knowing, alone, for God and Liberty.

Now, as they tacked North-west, the sullen roar

Of reefs crept out, or some strange tinkling sound

Of sheep upon the hills. South-west once more

The bo'sun's whistle swung their bowsprits round;

South-west until the long low lapping splash

Was all they heard, of keels that still ran out

Seaward, then with one muffled heave and crash

Once more the whistles brought their sails about.

And now the noon began to wane; the west

With slow rich colours filled and shadowy forms,

Dark curdling wreaths and fogs with crimsoned breast,

And tangled zones of dusk like frozen storms,

Motionless, flagged with sunset, hulled with doom!

Motionless? Nay, across the darkening deep

Surely the whole sky moved its gorgeous gloom

Onward; and like the curtains of a sleep

The red fogs crumbled, mists dissolved away!

There, like death's secret dawning thro' a dream,

Great thrones of thunder dusked the dying day,

And, higher, pale towers of cloud began to gleam.

There, in one heaven-wide storm, great masts and clouds

Of sail crept slowly forth, the ships of Spain!

From North to South, their tangled spars and shrouds

Controlled the slow wind as with bit and rein;

Onward they rode in insolent disdain

Sighting the little fleet of England there,

While o'er the sullen splendour of the main

Three solemn guns tolled all their host to prayer,

And their great ensign blazoned all the doom-fraught air.

The sacred standard of their proud crusade

Up to the mast-head of their flag-ship soared:

On one side knelt the Holy Mother-maid,

On one the crucified Redeemer poured

His blood, and all their kneeling hosts adored

Their saints, and clouds of incense heavenward streamed,

While pomp of cannonry and pike and sword

Down long sea-lanes of mocking menace gleamed,

And chant of priests rolled out o'er seas that darkly dreamed.

Who comes to fight for England? Is it ye,

Six little straws that dance upon the foam?

Ay, sweeping o'er the sunset-crimsoned sea

Let the proud pageant in its glory come,

Leaving the sunset like a hecatomb

Of souls whose bodies yet endure the chain!

Let slaves, by thousands, branded, scarred and dumb,

In those dark galleys grip their oars again,

And o'er the rolling deep bring on the pomp of Spain;—

Bring on the pomp of royal paladins

(For all the princedoms of the land are there!)

And for the gorgeous purple of their sins

The papal pomp bring on with psalm and prayer:

Nearer the splendour heaves; can ye not hear

The rushing foam, not see the blazoned arms,

And black-faced hosts thro' leagues of golden air

Crowding the decks, muttering their beads and charms

To where, in furthest heaven, they thicken like locust-swarms?

Bring on the pomp and pride of old Castille,

Blazon the skies with royal Aragon,

Beneath Oquendo let old ocean reel.

The purple pomp of priestly Rome bring on;

And let her censers dusk the dying sun,

The thunder of her banners on the breeze

Following Sidonia's glorious galleon

Deride the sleeping thunder of the seas,

While twenty thousand warriors chant her litanies.

Lo, all their decks are kneeling! Sky to sky

Responds! It is their solemn evening hour.

Salve Regina, though the daylight die,

Salve Regina, though the darkness lour;

Have they not still the kingdom and the power?

Salve Regina, hark, their thousands cry,

From where like clouds to where like mountains tower

Their crowded galleons looming far or nigh,

Salve Regina, hark, what distant seas reply!

What distant seas, what distant ages hear?

Bring on the pomp! the sun of Spain goes down:

The moon but swells the tide of praise and prayer;

Bring on the world-wide pomp of her renown;

Let darkness crown her with a starrier crown,

And let her watch the fierce waves crouch and fawn

Round those huge hulks from which her cannon frown,

While close inshore the wet sea-mists are drawn

Round England's Drake: then wait, in triumph, for the dawn.

The sun of Rome goes down; the night is dark!

Still are her thousands praying, still their cry

Ascends from the wide waste of waters, hark!

AVE MARIA, darker grows the sky!

AVE MARIA, those about to die

Salute thee! Nay, what wandering winds blaspheme

With random gusts of chilling prophecy

Against the solemn sounds that heavenward stream!

The night is come at last. Break not the splendid dream.

But through the misty darkness, close inshore,

North-west, South-west, and ever Westward strained

The little ships of England. All night long,

As down the coast the reddening beacons leapt,

The crackle and lapping splash of tacking keels,

The bo'suns' low sharp whistles and the whine

Of ropes, mixing with many a sea-bird's cry

Disturbed the darkness, waking vague swift fears

Among the mighty hulks of Spain that lay

Nearest, then fading through the mists inshore

North-west, then growing again, but farther down

Their ranks to Westward with each dark return

And dark departure, till the rearmost rank

Of grim sea-castles heard the swish and creak

Pass plashing seaward thro' the wet sea-mists

To windward now of all that monstrous host,

Then heard no more than wandering sea-birds' cries

Wheeling around their leagues of lanthorn-light,

Or heave of waters, waiting for the dawn.

Dawn, everlasting and almighty dawn

Rolled o'er the waters. The grey mists were fled.

See, in their reeking heaven-wide crescent drawn

Those masts and spars and cloudy sails, outspread

Like one great sulphurous tempest soaked with red,

In vain withstand the march of brightening skies:

The dawn sweeps onward and the night is dead,

And lo, to windward, what bright menace lies,

What glory kindles now in England's wakening eyes?

There, on the glittering plains of open sea,

To windward now, behind the fleets of Spain,

Two little files of ships are tossing free,

Free of the winds and of the wind-swept main:

Were they not trapped? Who brought them forth again,

Free of the great new fields of England's war,

With sails like blossoms shining after rain,

And guns that sparkle to the morning star?

Drake!—first upon the deep that rolls to Trafalgar!

And Spain knows well that flag of fiery fame,

Spain knows who leads those files across the sea;

Implacable, invincible, his name

El Draque, creeps hissing through her ranks to lee;

But now she holds the rolling heavens in fee,

His ships are few. They surge across the foam,

The hunt is up! But need the mountains flee

Or fear the snarling wolf-pack? Let them come!

They crouch, but dare not leap upon the flanks of Rome.

Nearer they come and nearer! Nay, prepare!

Close your huge ranks that sweep from sky to sky!

Madness itself would shrink; but Drake will dare

Eternal hell! Let the great signal fly—

Close up your ranks; El Draque comes down to die!

El Draque is brave! The vast sea-cities loom

Thro' heaven: Spain spares one smile of chivalry,

One wintry smile across her cannons' gloom

As that frail fleet full-sail comes rushing tow'rds its doom.

Suddenly, as the wild change of a dream,

Even as the Spaniards watched those lean sharp prows

Leap straight at their huge hulks, watched well content,

Knowing their foes, once grappled, must be doomed;

Even as they caught the rush and hiss of foam

Across that narrow, dwindling gleam of sea,

And heard, abruptly close, the sharp commands

And steady British answers, caught one glimpse

Of bare-armed seamen waiting by their guns,

The vision changed! The ships of England swerved

Swiftly—a volley of flame and thunder swept

Blinding the buffeted air, a volley of iron

From four sheer broadsides, crashing thro' a hulk

Of Spain. She reeled, blind in the fiery surge

And fury of that assault. So swift it seemed

That as she heeled to leeward, ere her guns

Trained on the foe once more, the sulphurous cloud

That wrapped the sea, once, twice, and thrice again

Split with red thunder-claps that rent and raked

Her huge beams through and through. Ay, as she heeled

To leeward still, her own grim cannon belched

Their lava skyward, wounding the void air,

And, as by miracle, the ships of Drake

Were gone. Along the Spanish rear they swept

From North to South, raking them as they went

At close range, hardly a pistol-shot away,

With volley on volley. Never Spain had seen

Seamen or marksmen like to these who sailed

Two knots against her one. They came and went,

Suddenly neared or sheered away at will

As if by magic, pouring flame and iron

In four full broadsides thro' some Spanish hulk

Ere one of hers burst blindly at the sky.

Southward, along the Spanish rear they swept,

Then swung about, and volleying sheets of flame,

Iron, and death, along the same fierce road

Littered with spars, reeking with sulphurous fumes,

Returned, triumphantly rushing, all their sails

Alow, aloft, full-bellied with the wind.

Then, then, from sky to sky, one mighty surge

Of baleful pride, huge wrath, stormy disdain,

With shuddering clouds and towers of sail would urge

Onward the heaving citadels of Spain,

Which dragged earth's thunders o'er the groaning main,

And held the panoplies of faith in fee,

Beating against the wind, struggling in vain

To close with that swift ocean-cavalry:

Spain had all earth in charge! Had England, then, the sea?

Spain had the mountains—mountains flow like clouds.

Spain had great kingdoms—kingdoms melt away!

Yet, in that crescent, army on army crowds,

How shall she fear what seas or winds can say?—

The seas that leap and shine round earth's decay,

The winds that mount and sing while empires fall,

And mountains pass like waves in the wind's way,

And dying gods thro' shuddering twilights call.

Had England, then, the sea that sweeps o'er one and all?

See, in gigantic wrath the Rata hurls

Her mighty prows round to the wild sea-wind:

The deep like one black maelstrom round her swirls

While great Recaldé follows hard behind:

Reeling, like Titans, thunder-blasted, blind,

They strive to cross the ships of England—yea,

Challenge them to the grapple, and only find

Red broadsides bursting o'er the bursting spray,

And England surging still along her windward way!

To windward still Revenge and Raleigh flash

And thunder, and the sea flames red between:

In vain against the wind the galleons crash

And plunge and pour blind volleys thro' the screen

Of rolling sulphurous clouds at dimly seen

Topsails that, to and fro, like sea-birds fly!

Ever to leeward the great hulks careen;

Their thousand cannon can but wound the sky,

While England's little Rainbow foams and flashes by.

Suddenly the flag-ship of Recaldé, stung

To fury it seemed, heeled like an avalanche

To leeward, then reeled out beyond the rest

Against the wind, alone, daring the foe

To grapple her. At once the little Revenge

With Drake's flag flying flashed at her throat,

And hardly a cable's-length away out-belched

Broadside on broadside, under those great cannon,

Crashing through five-foot beams, four shots to one,

While Howard and the rest swept to and fro

Keeping at deadly bay the rolling hulks

That looming like Leviathans now plunged

Desperately against the freshening wind

To rescue the great flag-ship where she lay

Alone, amid the cannonades of Drake,

Alone, like a volcanic island lashed

With crimson hurricanes, dinning the winds

With isolated thunders, flaking the skies

With wrathful lava, while great spars and blocks

Leapt through the cloudy glare and fell, far off,

Like small black stones into the hissing sea.

Oquendo saw her peril far away!

His rushing prow thro' heaven begins to loom,

Oquendo, first in all that proud array,

Hath heart the pride of Spain to reassume:

He comes; the rolling seas are dusked with gloom

Of his great sails! Now round him once again,

Thrust out your oars, ye mighty hulks of doom;

Forward, with hiss of whip and clank of chain!

Let twice ten hundred slaves bring on the wrath of Spain!

Sidonia comes! Toledo comes!—huge ranks

That rally against the storm from sky to sky,

As down the dark blood-rusted chain-locked planks

Of labouring galleys the dark slave-guards ply

Their knotted scourges, and the red flakes fly

From bare scarred backs that quiver and heave once more,

And slaves that heed not if they live or die

Pull with numb arms at many a red-stained oar,

Nor know the sea's dull crash from cannon's growing roar.

Bring on the wrath! From heaven to rushing heaven

The white foam sweeps around their fierce array;

In vain before their shattering crimson levin

The ships of England flash and dart away:

Not England's heart can hold that host at bay!

See, a swift signal shoots along her line,

Her ships are scattered, they fly, they fly like spray

Driven against the wind by wrath divine,

While, round Recaldé now, Sidonia's cannon shine.

The wild sea-winds with golden trumpets blaze!

One wave will wash away the crimson stain

That blots Recaldé's decks. Her first amaze

Is over: down the Channel once again

Turns the triumphant pageantry of Spain

In battle-order, now. Behind her, far,

While the broad sun sinks to the Western main,

Glitter the little ships of England's war,

And over them in heaven glides out the first white star.

The sun goes down: the heart of Spain is proud:

Her censers fume, her golden trumpets blow!

Into the darkening East with cloud on cloud

Of broad-flung sail her huge sea-castles go:

Rich under blazoned poops like rose-flushed snow

Tosses the foam. Far off the sunset gleams:

Her banners like a thousand sunsets glow,

As down the darkening East the pageant streams,

Full-fraught with doom for England, rigged with princely dreams.

Nay, "rigged with curses dark," as o'er the waves

Drake watched them slowly sweeping into the gloom

That thickened down the Channel, watched them go

In ranks compact, roundels impregnable,

With Biscay's bristling broad-beamed squadron drawn

Behind for rear-guard. As the sun went down

Drake flew the council-flag. Across the sea

That gleamed still like a myriad-petalled rose

Up to the little Revenge the pinnaces foamed.

There, on Drake's powder-grimed escutcheoned poop

They gathered, Admirals and great flag-captains,

Hawking, Frobisher, shining names and famous,

And some content to serve and follow and fight

Where duty called unknown, but heroes all.

High on the poop they clustered, gazing East

With faces dark as iron against the flame

Of sunset, eagle-faces, iron lips,

And keen eyes fiercely flashing as they turned

Like sword-flames now, or dark and deep as night

Watching the vast Armada slowly mix

Its broad-flung sails with twilight where it dragged

Thro' thickening heavens its curdled storms of clouds

Down the wide darkening Channel.

"My Lord Howard,"

Said Drake, "it seems we have but scarred the skins

Of those huge hulks: the hour grows late for England.

'Twere well to handle them again at once." A growl

Of fierce approval answered; but Lord Howard

Cried out, "Attack we cannot, save at risk

Of our whole fleet. It is not death I fear,

But England's peril. We have fought all day,

Accomplished nothing. Half our powder is spent!

I think it best to hang upon their flanks

Till we be reinforced."

"My lord," said Drake,

"Had we that week to spare for which I prayed,

And were we handling them in Spanish seas,

We might delay. There is no choosing now.

Yon hulks of doom are steadfastly resolved

On one tremendous path and solid end—

To join their powers with Parma's thirty thousand

(Not heeding our light horsemen of the sea),

Then in one earthquake of o'erwhelming arms

Roll Europe over England. They've not grasped

The first poor thought which now and evermore

Must be the sceptre of Britain, the steel trident

Of ocean-sovereignty. That mighty fleet

Invincible, impregnable, omnipotent,

Must here and now be shattered, never be joined

With Parma, never abase the wind-swept sea,

With oaken roads for thundering legions

To trample in the splendour of the sun

From Europe to our island.

As for food,

In yonder enemy's fleet there is food enough

To feed a nation; ay, and powder enough

To split an empire. I will answer for it

Ye shall not lack of either, nor for shot,

Not though ye pluck them out of your own beams

To feed your hungry cannon. Cast your bread

Upon the waters. Think not of the Queen!

She will not send it! For she hath not known

(How could she know?) this wide new realm of hers,

When we ourselves—her seamen—scarce have learnt

What means this kingdom of the ocean-sea

To England and her throne—food, life-blood, life!

She could not understand who, when our ships

Put out from Plymouth, hardly gave them store

Of powder and shot to last three fighting days,

Or rations even for those. Blame not the Queen,

Who hath striven for England as no king hath fought

Since England was a nation. Bear with me,

For I must pour my heart before you now

This one last time. Yon fishing-boats have brought

Tidings how on this very day she rode

Before her mustered pikes at Tilbury.

Methinks I see her riding down their lines

High on her milk-white Barbary charger, hear

Her voice—'My people, though my flesh be woman,

My heart is of your kingly lion's breed:

I come myself to lead you!' I see the sun

Shining upon her armour, hear the voice

Of all her armies roaring like one sea—

God save Elizabeth, our English Queen!

'God save her,' I say, too; but still she dreams,

As all too many of us—bear with me!—dream,

Of Crécy, when our England's war was thus;

When we, too, hurled our hosts across the deep

As now Spain dreams to hurl them on our isle.

But now our war is otherwise. We claim

The sea's command, and Spain shall never land

One swordsman on our island. Blame her not,

But look not to the Queen. The people fight

This war of ours, not princes. In this hour

God maketh us a people. We have seen

Victories, never victory like to this,

When in our England's darkest hour of need

Her seamen, without wage, powder, or food,

Are yet on fire to fight for her. Your ships

Tossing in the great sunset of an Empire,

Dawn of a sovereign people, are all manned

By heroes, raggèd, hungry, who will die

Like flies ere long, because they have no food

But turns to fever-breeding carrion

Not fit for dogs. They are half-naked, hopeless

Living, of any reward; and if they die

They die a dog's death. We shall reap the fame

While they—great God! and all this cannot quench

The glory in their eyes. They will be served

Six at the mess of four, eking it out

With what their own rude nets may catch by night,

Silvering the guns and naked arms that haul

Under the stars with silver past all price,

While some small ship-boy in the black crow's nest

Watches across the waters for the foe.

My lord, it is a terrible thing for Spain

When poor men thus go out against her princes;

For so God whispers 'Victory' in our ears,

I cannot dare to doubt it."

Once again

A growl of fierce approval answered him,

And Hawkins cried—"I stand by Francis Drake";

But Howard, clinging to his old-world order,

Yet with such manly strength as dared to rank

Drake's wisdom of the sea above his own,

Sturdily shook his head. "I dare not risk

A close attack. Once grappled we are doomed.

We'll follow on their trail no less, with Drake

Leading. Our oriflamme to-night shall be

His cresset and stern-lanthorn. Where that shines

We follow."

Drake, still thinking in his heart,—

"And if Spain be not shattered here and now

We are doomed no less," must even rest content

With that good vantage.

As the sunset died

Over the darkling emerald seas that swelled

Before the freshening wind, the pinnaces dashed

To their own ships; and into the mind of Drake

There stole a plot that twitched his lips to a smile.

High on the heaving purple of the poop

Under the glimmer of firm and full-blown sails

He stood, an iron statue, glancing back

Anon at his stern-cresset's crimson flare,

The star of all the shadowy ships that plunged

Like ghosts amid the grey stream of his wake,

And all around him heard the low keen song

Of hidden ropes above the wail and creak

Of blocks and long low swish of cloven foam,

A keen rope-music in the formless night,

A harmony, a strong intent good sound,

Well-strung and taut, singing the will of man.

"Your oriflamme," he muttered,—"so you travail

With sea-speech in the tongue of old Poictiers—

Shall be my own stern-lanthorn. Watch it well,

My good Lord Howard."

Over the surging seas

The little Revenge went swooping on the trail,

Leading the ships of England. One by one

Out of the gloom before them slowly crept,

Sinister gleam by gleam, like blood-red stars,

The rearmost lanthorns of the Spanish Fleet,

A shaggy purple sky of secret storm

Heaving from north to south upon the black

Breast of the waters. Once again with lips

Twitched to a smile, Drake suddenly bade them crowd

All sail upon the little Revenge. She leapt

Forward. Smiling he watched the widening gap

Between the ships that followed and her light,

Then as to those behind, its flicker must seem

Wellnigh confused with those of Spain, he cried,

"Now, master bo'sun, quench their oriflamme,

Dip their damned cresset in the good black Sea!

The rearmost light of Spain shall lead them now,

A little closer, if they think it ours.

Pray God, they come to blows!"

Even as he spake

His cresset-flare went out in the thick night;

A fluttering as of blind bewildered moths

A moment seized upon the shadowy ships

Behind him, then with crowded sail they steered

Straight for the rearmost cresset-flare of Spain.

BOOK XII

Meanwhile, as in the gloom he slipped aside

Along the Spanish ranks, waiting the crash

Of battle, suddenly Drake became aware

Of strange sails bearing up into the wind

Around his right, and thought, "the Armada strives

To weather us in the dark." Down went his helm,

And all alone the little Revenge gave chase,

Till as the moon crept slowly forth, she stood

Beside the ghostly ships, only to see

Bewildered Flemish merchantmen, amazed

With fears of Armageddon—such vast shrouds

Had lately passed them on the rolling seas.

Down went his helm again, with one grim curse

Upon the chance that led him thus astray;

And down the wind the little Revenge once more

Swept on the trail. Fainter and fainter now

Glared the red beacons on the British coasts,

And the wind slackened and the glimmering East

Greyed and reddened, yet Drake had not regained

Sight of the ships. When the full glory of dawn

Dazzled the sea, he found himself alone,

With one huge galleon helplessly drifting

A cable's-length away. Around her prow,

Nuestra Señora del Rosario,

Richly emblazoned, gold on red, proclaimed

The flagship of great Valdes, of the fleet

Of Andalusia, captain-general. She,

Last night, in dark collision with the hulks

Of Spain, had lost her foremast. Through the night

Her guns, long rank on deadly rank, had kept

All enemies at bay. Drake summoned her

Instantly to surrender. She returned

A scornful answer from the glittering poop

Where two-score officers crowned the golden sea

And stained the dawn with blots of richer colour

Loftily clustered in the glowing sky,

Doubleted with cramoisy velvet, wreathed

With golden chains, blazing with jewelled swords

And crusted poignards. "What proud haste was this?"

They asked, glancing at their huge tiers of cannon

And crowded decks of swarthy soldiery;

"What madman in yon cockle-shell defied Spain?"

"Tell them it is El Draque," he said, "who lacks

The time to parley; therefore it will be well

They strike at once, for I am in great haste."

There, at the sound of that renownèd name,

Without a word down came their blazoned flag.

Like a great fragment of the dawn it lay

Crumpled upon their decks.. . .

Into the soft bloom and Italian blue

Of sparkling, ever-beautiful Torbay,

Belted as with warm Mediterranean crags,

The little Revenge foamed with her mighty prize,

A prize indeed—not for the casks of gold

Drake split in the rich sunlight and poured out

Like dross amongst his men, but in her hold

Lay many tons of powder, worth their weight

In rubies now to Britain. Into the hands

Of swarthy Brixham fishermen he gave

Prisoners and prize, then—loaded stem to stern

With powder and shot—their swiftest trawlers flew

Like falcons following a thunder-cloud

Behind him, as with crowded sail he rushed

On England's trail once more. Like a caged lion

Drake paced his deck, praying he yet might reach

The fight in time; and ever the warm light wind

Slackened. Not till the sun was half-way fallen

Once more crept out in front those dusky thrones

Of thunder, heaving on the smooth bright sea

From North to South with Howard's clustered fleet

Like tiny clouds, becalmed, not half a mile

Behind the Spaniards. For the breeze had failed

Their blind midnight pursuit; and now attack

Seemed hopeless. Even as Drake drew nigh, the last

Breath of the wind sank. One more day had flown,

Nought was accomplished; and the Armada lay

Some leagues of golden sea-way nearer now

To its great goal. The sun went down: the moon

Rose glittering. Hardly a cannon-shot apart

The two fleets lay becalmed upon the silver

Swell of the smooth night-tide. The hour had come

For Spain to strike. The ships of England drifted

Helplessly, at the mercy of those great hulks

Oared by their thousand slaves.

Onward they came,

Swinging suddenly in tremendous gloom

Over the silver seas. But even as Drake,

With eyes on fire at last for his last fight,

Measured the distance ere he gave the word

To greet it with his cannon, suddenly

The shining face of the deep began to shiver

With dusky patches: the doomed English sails

Quivered and, filling smart from the North-east,

The little Revenge rushed down their broken line

Signalling them to follow, and ere they knew

What miracle had saved them, they all sprang

Their luff and ran large out to sea. For now

The Armada lay to windward, and to fight

Meant to be grappled and overwhelmed; but dark

Within the mind of Drake, a fiercer plan

Already had shaped itself.

"They fly! They fly!"

Rending the heavens from twice ten thousand throats

A mighty shout rose from the Spanish Fleet.

Over the moonlit waves their galleons came

Towering, crowding, plunging down the wind

In full chase, while the tempter, Drake, laughed low

To watch their solid battle-order break

And straggle. When once more the golden dawn

Dazzled the deep, the labouring galleons lay

Scattered by their unequal speed. The wind

Veered as the sun rose. Once again the ships

Of England lay to windward. Down swooped Drake

Where like a mountain the San Marcos heaved

Her giant flanks alone, having out-sailed

Her huge companions. Then the sea-winds blazed

With broadsides. Two long hours the sea flamed red

All round her. One by one the Titan ships

Came surging to her rescue, and met the buffet

Of battle-thunders, belching iron and flame;

Nor could they pluck her forth from that red chaos

Till great Oquendo hurled his mighty prows

Crashing athwart those thunders, and once more

Gathered into unshakeable battle-order

The whole Armada raked the reeking seas.

Then up the wind the ships of England sheered

Once more, and one more day drew to its close,

With little accomplished, half their powder spent,

And all the Armada moving as of old,

From sky to sky one heaven-wide zone of storm,

(Though some three galleons out of all their host

Laboured woundily) down the darkening Channel.

And all night long on England's guardian heights

The beacons reddened, and all the next long day

The impregnable Armada never swerved

From its tremendous path. In vain did Drake,

Frobisher, Hawkins, Howard, greatest names

In all our great sea-history, hover and dart

Like falcons round the mountainous array.

Till now, as night fell and they lay abreast

Of the Isle of Wight, once more the council flag

Flew from the little Revenge. With iron face

Thrust close to Howard's, and outstretched iron arm,

Under the stars Drake pointed down the coast

Where the red beacons flared. "The shoals," he hissed,

"The shoals from Owers to Spithead and the net

Of channels yonder in Portsmouth Roads. At dawn

They'll lie to leeward of the Invincible Fleet!"

Swiftly, in mighty sweeping lines Drake set

Before the council his fierce battle-plan

To drive the Armada down upon the banks

And utterly shatter it—stroke by well-schemed stroke

As he unfolded there his vital plot

And touched their dead cold warfare into life

Where plan before was none, he seemed to tower

Above them, clad with the deep night of stars;

And those that late would rival knew him now,

In all his great simplicity, their king,

One of the gods of battle, England's Drake,

A soul that summoned Cæsar from his grave,

And swept with Alexander o'er the deep.

So when the dawn thro' rolling wreaths of cloud

Struggled, and all the waves were molten gold,

The heart of Spain exulted, for she saw

The little fleet of England cloven in twain

As if by some strange discord. A light breeze

Blew from the ripening East; and, up against it,

Urged by the very madness of defeat,

Or so it seemed, one half the British fleet

Drew nigh, towed by their boats, to challenge the vast

Tempest-winged heaving citadels of Spain,

At last to the murderous grapple; while far away

Their other half, led by the flag of Drake,

Stood out to sea, as if to escape the doom

Of that sheer madness, for the light wind now

Could lend them no such wings to hover and swoop

As heretofore. Nearer the mad ships came

Towed by their boats, till now upon their right

To windward loomed the Fleet Invincible

With all its thunder-clouds, and on their left

To leeward, gleamed the perilous white shoals

With their long level lightnings under the cliffs

Of England, from the green glad garden of Wight

To the Owers and Selsea Bill. Right on they came,

And suddenly the wrench of thundering cannon

Shook the vast hulks that towered above them. Red

Flamed the blue sea between. Thunder to thunder

Answered, and still the ships of Drake sped out

To the open sea. Sidonia saw them go,

Furrowing the deep that like a pale-blue shield

Lay diamond-dazzled now in the full light.

Rich was the omen of that day for Spain,

The feast-day of Sidonia's patron-saint!

And the priests chanted and the trumpets blew

Triumphantly! A universal shout

Went skyward from the locust-swarming decks,

A shout that rent the golden morning clouds

From heaven to menacing heaven, as castle to castle

Flew the great battle-signal, and like one range

Of moving mountains, those almighty ranks

Swept down upon the small forsaken ships!

The lion's brood was in the imperial nets

Of Spain at last. Onward the mountains came

With all their golden clouds of sail and flags

Like streaming cataracts; all their glorious chasms

And glittering steeps, echoing, re-echoing,

Calling, answering, as with the herald winds

That blow the golden trumpets of the morning

From Skiddaw to Helvellyn. In the midst

The great San Martin surged with heaven-wide press

Of proudly billowing sail; and yet once more

Slowly, solemnly, like another dawn

Up to her mast-head soared in thunderous gold

The sacred standard of their last crusade;

While round a hundred prows that heaved thro' heaven

Like granite cliffs, their black wet shining flanks,

And swept like moving promontories, rolled

The splendid long-drawn thunders of the foam,

And flashed the untamed white lightnings of the sea

Back to a morn unhalyarded of man,

Back to the unleashed sun and blazoned clouds

And azure sky—the unfettered flag of God.

*    *    *    *

Like one huge moving coast-line on they came

Crashing, and closed the ships of England round

With one fierce crescent of thunder and sweeping flame,

One crimson scythe of Death, whose long sweep drowned

The eternal ocean with its mighty sound,

From heaven to heaven, one roar, one glitter of doom,

While out to the sea-line's blue remotest bound

The ships of Drake still fled, and the red fume

Of battle thickened and shrouded shoal and sea with gloom.

The distant sea, the close white menacing shoals

Are shrouded! And the lion's brood fight on!

And now death's very midnight round them rolls;

Rent is the flag that late so proudly shone!

The red decks reel and their last hope seems gone!

Round them they still keep clear one ring of sea:

It narrows; but the lion's brood fight on,

Ungrappled still, still fearless and still free,

While the white menacing shoals creep slowly out to lee.

Now through the red rents of each fire-cleft cloud,

High o'er the British blood-greased decks flash out

Thousands of swarthy faces, crowd on crowd

Surging, with one tremendous hurricane shout

On, to the grapple! and still the grim redoubt

Of the oaken bulwarks rolls them back again,

As buffeted waves that shatter in the furious bout

When cannonading cliffs meet the full main

And hurl it back in smoke—so Britain hurls back Spain;

Hurls her back, only to see her return,

Darkening the heavens with billow on billow of sail:

Round that huge storm the waves like lava burn,

The daylight withers, and the sea-winds fail!

Seamen of England, what shall now avail

Your naked arms? Before those blasts of doom

The sun is quenched, the very sea-waves quail:

High overhead their triumphing thousands loom,

When hark! what low deep guns to windward suddenly boom?

What low deep strange new thunders far away

Respond to the triumphant shout of Spain?

Is it the wind that shakes their giant array?

Is it the deep wrath of the rising main?

Is it—El Draque? El Draque! Ay, shout again,

His thunders burst upon your windward flanks;

The shoals creep out to leeward! Is it plain

At last, what earthquake heaves your herded ranks

Huddled in huge dismay tow'rds those white foam-swept banks?

Plain, it was plain at last, what cunning lured,

What courage held them over the jaws o' the pit,

Till Drake could hurl them down. The little ships

Of Howard and Frobisher, towed by their boats,

Slipped away in the smoke, while out at sea

Drake, with a gale of wind behind him, crashed

Volley on volley into the helpless rear

Of Spain and drove it down, huddling the whole

Invincible Fleet together upon the verge

Of doom. One awful surge of stormy wrath

Heaved thro' the struggling citadels of Spain.

From East to West their desperate signal flew,

And like a drove of bullocks, with the foam

Flecking their giant sides, they staggered and swerved,

Careening tow'rds the shallows as they turned,

Then in one wild stampede of sheer dismay

Rushed, tacking seaward, while the grey sea-plain

Smoked round them, and the cannonades of Drake

Raked their wild flight; and the crusading flag,

Tangled in one black maze of crashing spars,

Whirled downward like the pride of Lucifer

From heaven to hell.

Out tow'rds the coasts of France

They plunged, narrowly weathering the Ower banks;

Then, once again, they formed in ranks compact,

Roundels impregnable, wrathfully bent at last

Never to swerve again from their huge path

And solid end—to join with Parma's host,

And hurl the whole of Europe on our isle.

Another day was gone, much powder spent;

And, while Lord Howard exulted and conferred

Knighthoods on his brave seamen, Drake alone

Knew that his mighty plan, in spite of all,

Had failed, knew that wellnigh his last great chance

Was lost of wrecking the Spaniards ere they joined

Parma. The night went by, and the next day,

With scarce a visible scar the Invincible Fleet

Drew onwards tow'rds its goal, unshakeable now

In that grim battle-order. Beacons flared

Along the British coast, and pikes flashed out

All night, and a strange dread began to grip

The heart of England, as it seemed the might

Of seamen most renowned in all the world

Checked not that huge advance. Yet at the heart

Of Spain no less there clung a vampire fear

And strange foreboding, as the next day passed

Quietly, and behind her all day long

The shadowy ships of Drake stood on her trail

Quietly, patiently, as death or doom,

Unswerving and implacable.

While the sun

Sank thro' long crimson fringes on that eve.

The fleets were passing Calais and the wind

Blew fair behind them. A strange impulse seized

Spain to shake off those bloodhounds from her trail,

And suddenly the whole Invincible Fleet

Anchored, in hope the following wind would bear

The ships of England past and carry them down

To leeward. But their grim insistent watch

Was ready; and though their van had wellnigh crashed

Into the rear of Spain, in the golden dusk,

They, too, a cannon-shot away, at once

Anchored, to windward still.

Quietly heaved

The golden sea in that tremendous hour

Fraught with the fate of Europe and mankind,

As yet once more the flag of council flew,

And Hawkins, Howard, Frobisher, and Drake

Gathered together upon the little Revenge

While like a triumphing fire the news was borne

To Spain, already, that the Invincible Fleet

Had reached its end, ay, and "that great black dog

Sir Francis Drake" was writhing now in chains

Beneath the torturer's hands.

High on his poop

He stood, a granite rock, above the throng

Of captains, there amid the breaking waves

Of clashing thought and swift opinion,

Silent, gazing where now the cool fresh wind

Blew steadily up the terrible North Sea

Which rolled under the clouds into a gloom

Unfathomable. Once only his lips moved

Half-consciously, breathing those mighty words,

The clouds His chariot! Then, suddenly, he turned

And looked upon the little flock of ships

That followed on the fleet of England, sloops

Helpless in fight. These, manned by the brave zeal

Of many a noble house, from hour to hour

Had plunged out from the coast to join his flag.

"Better if they had brought us powder and food

Than sought to join us thus," he had growled; but now

"Lord God," he cried aloud, "they'll light our road

To victory yet!" And in great sweeping strokes

Once more he drew his mighty battle-plan

Before the captains. In the thickening gloom

They stared at his grim face as at a man

Risen from hell, with all the powers of hell

At his command, a face tempered like steel

In the everlasting furnaces, a rock

Of adamant, while with a voice that blent

With the ebb and flow of the everlasting sea

He spake, and at the low deep menacing words

Monotonous with the unconquerable

Passion and level strength of his great soul

They shuddered; for the man seemed more than man,

And from his iron lips resounded doom

As from the lips of cannon, doom to Spain,

Inevitable, unconquerable doom.

And through that mighty host of Spain there crept

Cold winds of fear, as to the darkening sky

Once more from lips of kneeling thousands swept

The vespers of an Empire—one vast cry,

SALVE REGINA! God, what wild reply

Hissed from the clouds in that dark hour of dreams?

AVE MARIA, those about to die

Salute thee! See, what ghostly pageant streams

Above them? What thin hands point down like pale moonbeams?

Thick as the ghosts that Dante saw in hell

Whirled on the blast thro' boundless leagues of pain,

Thick, thick as wind-blown leaves innumerable,

In the Inquisition's yellow robes her slain

And tortured thousands, dense as the red rain

That wellnigh quenched her fires, went hissing by

With twisted shapes, raw from the racks of Spain,

Salve Regina!—rushing thro' the sky,

And pale hands pointing down and lips that mocked her cry,

Ten thousand times ten thousand!—what are these

That are arrayed in yellow robes and sweep

Between your prayers and God like phantom seas

Prophesying over your masts? Could Rome not keep

The keys? Who loosed these dead to break your sleep?

SALVE REGINA, cry, yea, cry aloud.

AVE MARIA! Ye have sown: shall ye not reap?

SALVE REGINA! Christ, what fiery cloud

Suddenly rolls to windward, high o'er mast and shroud?

Are hell-gates burst at last? For the black deep

To windward burns with streaming crimson fires!

Over the wild strange waves, they shudder and creep

Nearer—strange smoke-wreathed masts and spars, red spires

And blazing hulks, vast roaring blood-red pyres,

Fierce as the flames ye fed with flesh of men

Amid the imperial pomp and chanting choirs

Of Alva—from El Draque's red hand again

Sweep the wild fire-ships down upon the Fleet of Spain.

Onward before the freshening wind they come

Full fraught with all the terrors, all the bale

That flamed so long for the delight of Rome,

The shrieking fires that struck the sunlight pale,

The avenging fires at last! Now what avail

Your thousand ranks of cannon? Swift, cut free,

Cut your scorched cables! Cry, reel backward, quail,

Crash your huge huddled ranks together, flee!

Behind you roars the fire, before—the dark North Sea!

Dawn, everlasting and omnipotent

Dawn rolled in crimson o'er the spar-strewn waves,

As the last trumpet shall in thunder roll

O'er heaven and earth and ocean. Far away,

The ships of Spain, great ragged piles of gloom

And shaggy splendour, leaning to the North

Like sun-shot clouds confused, or rent apart

In scattered squadrons, furiously plunged,

Burying their mighty prows i' the broad grey rush

Of smoking billowy hills, or heaving high

Their giant bowsprits to the wandering heavens,

Labouring in vain to return, struggling to lock

Their far-flung ranks anew, but drifting still

To leeward, driven by the ever-increasing storm

Straight for the dark North Sea. Hard by there lurched

One gorgeous galleon on the ravening shoals,

Feeding the white maw of the famished waves

With gold and purple webs from kingly looms

And spilth of world-wide empires. Howard, still

Planning to pluck the Armada plume by plume,

Swooped down upon that prey and swiftly engaged

Her desperate guns; while Drake, our ocean-king,

Knowing the full worth of that doom-fraught hour,

Glanced neither to the left nor right, but stood

High on his poop, with calm implacable face

Gazing as into eternity, and steered

The crowded glory of his dawn-flushed sails

In superb onset, straight for the great fleet

Invincible; and after him the main

Of England's fleet, knowing its captain now,

Followed, and with them rushed—from sky to sky

One glittering charge of wrath—the storm's white waves,

The twenty thousand foaming chariots

Of God.

None but the everlasting voice

Of him who fought at Salamis might sing

The fight of that dread Sabbath. Not mankind

Waged it alone. War raged in heaven that day,

Where Michael and his angels drave once more

The hosts of darkness ruining down the abyss

Of chaos. Light against darkness, Liberty

Against all dark old despotism, unsheathed

The sword in that great hour. Behind the strife

Of men embattled deeps beyond all thought

Moved in their awful panoply, as move

Silent, invisible, swift, under the clash

Of waves and flash of foam, huge ocean-glooms

And vast reserves of inappellable power.

The bowsprits ranked on either fore-front seemed

But spear-heads of those dread antagonists

Invisible: the shuddering sails of Spain

Dusk with the shadow of death, the sunward sails

Of England full-fraught with the breath of God.

Onward the ships of England and God's waves

Triumphantly charged, glittering companions,

And poured their thunders on the extreme right

Of Spain, whose giant galleons as they lurched

Heavily to the roughening sea and wind

With all their grinding, wrenching cannon, worked

On rolling platforms by the helpless hands

Of twenty thousand soldiers, without skill

In stormy seas, rent the indifferent sky

Or tore the black troughs of the swirling deep

In vain, while volley on volley of flame and iron

Burst thro' their four-foot beams, fierce raking blasts

From ships that came and went on wings of the wind

All round their mangled bulk, scarce a pike's thrust

Away, sweeping their decks from stem to stern

(Between the rush and roar of the great green waves)

With crimson death, rending their timbered towns

And populous floating streets into wild squares

Of slaughter and devastation; driving them down,

Huddled on their own centre, cities of shame

And havoc, in fiery forests of tangled wrath,

With hurricanes of huge masts and swarming spars

And multitudinous decks that heaved and sank

Like earthquake-smitten palaces, when doom

Comes, with one stride, across the pomp of kings.

All round them shouted the everlasting sea,

Burst in white thunders on the streaming poops

And blinded fifty thousand eyes with spray.

Once, as a gorgeous galleon, drenched with blood

Began to founder and settle, a British captain

Called from his bulwarks, bidding her fierce crew

Surrender and come aboard. Straight through the heart

A hundred muskets answered that appeal.

Sink or destroy! The deadly signal flew

From mast to mast of England. Once, twice, thrice,

A huge sea-castle heaved her haggled bulk

Heavenward, and with a cry that rent the heavens

From all her crowded decks, and one deep roar

As of a cloven world or the dark surge

Of chaos yawning, sank: the swirling slopes

Of the sweeping billowy hills for a moment swarmed

With struggling insect-men, sprinkling the foam

With tossing arms; then the indifferent sea

Rolled its grey smoking waves across the place

Where they had been. Here a great galleasse poured

Red rivers through her scuppers and torn flanks,

And there a galleon, wrapped in creeping fire,

Suddenly like a vast volcano split

Asunder, and o'er the vomiting sulphurous clouds

And spouting spread of crimson, flying spars

And heads torn from their trunks and scattered limbs

Leapt, hideous gouts of death, against the glare.

Hardly the thrust of a pike away, the ships

Of England flashed and swerved, till in one mass

Of thunder-blasted splendour and shuddering gloom

Those gorgeous floating citadels huddled and shrank

Their towers, and all the glory of dawn that rolled

And burned along the tempest of their banners

Withered, as on a murderer's face the light

Withers before the accuser. All their proud

Castles and towers and heaven-wide clouds of sail

Shrank to a darkening horror, like the heart

Of Evil, plucked from midnight's fiercest gloom,

With all its curses quivering and alive;

A horror of wild masts and tangled spars,

Like some great kraken with a thousand arms

Torn from the filthiest cavern of the deep,

Writhing, and spewing forth its venomous fumes

On every side. Sink or destroy!—all day

The deadly signal flew; and ever the sea

Swelled higher, and the flashes of the foam

Broadened and leapt and spread as a wild white fire

That flourishes with the wind; and ever the storm

Drave the grim battle onward to the wild

Menace of the dark North Sea. At set of sun,

Even as below the sea-line the broad disc

Sank like a red-hot cannon-ball through scurf

Of seething molten lead, the Santa Maria

Uttering one cry that split the heart of heaven

Went down with all hands, roaring into the dark.

Hardly five rounds of shot were left to Drake!

Gun after gun fell silent, as the night

Deepened—"Yet we must follow them to the North,"

He cried, "or they'll return yet to shake hands

With Parma! Come, we'll put a brag upon it,

And hunt them onward as we lacked for nought!"

So, when across the swinging smoking seas,

Grey and splendid and terrible broke the day

Once more, the flying Invincible fleet beheld

Upon their weather-beam, and dogging them

Like their own shadow, the dark ships of Drake,

Unswerving and implacable. Ever the wind

And sea increased; till now the heaving deep

Swelled all around them into sulky hills

And rolling mountains, whose majestic crests,

Like wild white flames far blown and savagely flickering

Swept thro' the clouds; and, on their vanishing slopes,

Past the pursuing fleet began to swirl

Scores of horses and mules, drowning or drowned,

Cast overboard to lighten the wild flight

Of Spain, and save her water-casks, a trail

Telling of utmost fear. And ever the storm

Soared louder across the leagues of rioting sea,

Driving her onward like a mighty stag

Chased by the wolves. Off the dark Firth of Forth

At last, Drake signalled and lay head to wind,

Watching. "The chariots of God are twenty thousand,"

He muttered, as, for a moment close at hand,

Caught in some league-wide whirlpool of the sea,

The mighty galleons crowded and towered and plunged

Above him on the huge o'erhanging billows,

As if to crash down on his decks; the next,

A mile of ravening sea had swept between

Each of those wind-whipt straws and they were gone,

With all their tiny shrivelling scrolls of sail,

Through roaring deserts of embattled death,

Where like a hundred thousand chariots charged

With lightnings and with thunders, the great deep

Hurled them away to the North. From sky to sky

One blanching bursting storm of infinite seas

Followed them, broad white cataracts, hills that grasped

With struggling Titan hands at reeling heavens,

And roared their doom-fraught greetings from Cape Wrath

Round to the Bloody Foreland.

There should the yeast

Of foam receive the purple of many kings,

And the grim gulfs devour the blood-bought gold

Of Aztecs and of Incas, and the reefs,

League after league, bristle with mangled spars,

And all along their coasts the murderous kerns

Of Catholic Ireland strip the gorgeous silks

And chains and jewel-encrusted crucifixes

From thousands dead, and slaughter thousands more

With gallow-glass axes as they blindly crept

Forth from the surf and jagged rocks to seek

Pity of their own creed.

To meet that doom

Drake watched their sails go shrivelling, till the last

Flicker of spars vanished as a skeleton leaf

Upon the blasts of winter, and there was nought

But one wide wilderness of splendour and gloom

Under the northern clouds.

"Not unto us,"

Cried Drake, "not unto us—but unto Him

Who made the sea, belongs our England now!

Pray God that heart and mind and soul we prove

Worthy among the nations of this hour

And this great victory, whose ocean fame

Shall wash the world with thunder till that day

When there is no more sea, and the strong cliffs

Pass like a smoke, and the last peal of it

Sounds thro' the trumpet."

So, with close-hauled sails,

Over the rolling triumph of the deep,

Lifting their hearts to heaven, they turned back home.

END OF VOLUME ONE.

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Table of Contents

COLLECTED POEMS

ALFRED NOYES

VOLUME ONE

CONTENTS

COLLECTED POEMS

EARLY POEMS

DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF JAMES PAYNE

THE LOOM OF YEARS

IN THE HEART OF THE WOODS

ART

(IMITATED FROM DE BANVILLE AND GAUTIER)

TRIOLET

A TRIPLE BALLAD OF OLD JAPAN

THE SYMBOLIST

HAUNTED IN OLD JAPAN

NECROMANCY

(AFTER THE PROSE OF BAUDELAIRE)

THE MYSTIC

THE FLOWER OF OLD JAPAN

DEDICATED TO CAROL, A LITTLE MAIDEN Of MYAKO.

PERSONS OF THE TALE

PRELUDE

PART I

EMBARKATION

SONG

PART II

THE ARRIVAL

SONG

THE CRY OF THE MAD MOONSHEE

SONG

PART III

THE MYSTIC RUBY

SONG

PART IV

THE END OF THE QUEST

EPILOGUE

APES AND IVORY

A SONG OF SHERWOOD

THE WORLD'S MAY-QUEEN

PIRATES

A SONG OF ENGLAND

THE OLD SCEPTIC

THE DEATH OF CHOPIN

SONG

(AFTER THE FRENCH OF ROSTAND)

BUTTERFLIES

SONG OF THE WOODEN-LEGGED FIDDLER

(PORTSMOUTH 1805)

THE FISHER-GIRL

A SONG OF TWO BURDENS

EARTH-BOUND

ART, THE HERALD

"The voice of one crying in the wilderness"

THE OPTIMIST

A POST-IMPRESSION

THE BARREL-ORGAN

THE LITANY OF WAR

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE

[Written in answer to certain scientific pronouncements]

THE LAST BATTLE

THE PARADOX

"I Am that I Am"

THE PROGRESS OF LOVE

(A LYRICAL SYMPHONY)

THE FOREST OF WILD THYME

DEDICATED TO HELEN, ROSIE, AND BEATRIX

APOLOGIA

PRELUDE

PART I

THE SPLENDID SECRET

PART II

THE FIRST DISCOVERY

PART III

THE HIDEOUS HERMIT

SONG

SONG

SONG

PART IV

PEASE-BLOSSOM AND MUSTARD-SEED

SONG

SONG

SONG

PART V

THE HAPPY ENDING

DEDICATION

FORTY SINGING SEAMEN AND OTHER POEMS

TO GARNETT

FORTY SINGING SEAMEN

THE EMPIRE BUILDERS

NELSON'S YEAR

(1905)

IN TIME OF WAR

ODE FOR THE SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY OF SWINBURNE

IN CLOAK OF GREY

A RIDE FOR THE QUEEN

SONG

THE HIGHWAYMAN

PART ONE

PART TWO

THE HAUNTED PALACE

THE SCULPTOR

SUMMER

(AN ODE)

AT DAWN

THE SWIMMER'S RACE

THE VENUS OF MILO

THE NET OF VULCAN

NIOBE

ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE

FROM THE SHORE

THE RETURN

REMEMBRANCE

A PRAYER

LOVE'S GHOST

ON A RAILWAY PLATFORM

OXFORD REVISITED

THE THREE SHIPS

(To an old Tune)

SLUMBER-SONGS OF THE MADONNA

PRELUDE

ENCELADUS

IN THE COOL OF THE EVENING

A ROUNDHEAD'S RALLYING SONG

VICISTI, GALILÆE

DRAKE

DEDICATED TO RUDOLPH CHAMBERS LEHMANN

PROLOGUE TO AMERICAN EDITION

EXORDIUM

BOOK I

SONG

BOOK II

SONG

SONG

SONG

SONG

BOOK III

SONG

SONG

BOOK IV

BOOK V

BOOK VI

SONG

SONG

SONG

BOOK VII

SONG

BOOK VIII

SONG

SONG

SONG

BOOK IX

SONG

BOOK X

BOOK XI

BOOK XII

End of Volume One.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE