A Song of Heroes | ||
CANTO II. THE MIDDLE AGES
COLUMBA.
When the ages rang the knell
Of the iron-hearted Rome,
That like a palsied Titan fell.
Where the rank corruption grew,
Paul's sure word made sweeping clearance;
Old things passed away, and new
Born far West in sea-girt home,
In the clovered green Ierne
Named, not known, by mighty Rome.
Things unvalued, worthless, weak,
To abase the lordly Roman,
To confound the subtle Greek.
Like a sanguine deluge spread,
When the axe of Diocletian
Severed Alban's holy head.
Bar from light their dark dominion;
In the far Galwegian outland
Rose the pure white shrine of Ninian.
When sweet showers uncoil the fern,
Came a host of God-sent teachers,
Serf, Palladius, Kentigern,
All the roving Scots that be,
Slopeth eastward to the sea.
Patrick brought the Gospel grace;
The Irish saint was a Scot, born at Kilpatrick in Dumbartonshire. See the article “Patricus” in Smith's ‘Dictionary of Christian Biography,’ by Dr Stokes of Dublin University; and Bishop Forbes's ‘Calendar of Scottish Saints,’ Edinburgh, 1872. Anyhow, he was a Celt, not a Saxon—as the body of the Scottish people, up to the time of Malcolm Canmore, specially in those western parts, was decidedly Celtic.
But brawls and battles, feuds and factions,
Swayed the old untempered race
From the wooded hill of Derry,
Through the foamy Loch Foyle waters
Northward sailed in wicker wherry.
For that once in plunge of passion
He had drawn the sword of vengeance,
In a hot unpriestly fashion,
In the barony of Carberry, between Drumcliff and Sligo, on the borders of Ulster and Connaught, a.d. 561. The whole details of the text are taken from Adamnan's life of the saint by Reeves, and from local study of the ground at Iona, where I resided ten days in a comfortable inn apart from the hasty sweep of steamboat tourists.
When from all the brave O'Neills
Diarmid and the men of Connaught
Fled with terror at their heels.
On Columba laid the ban,
Through Hebridean seas to voyage
And convert the Pictish clan.
He cut through the briny spray,
Till he came where whistling west winds
Flout the front of Colonsay.
When the sun unveiled the morn,
Thence he saw the dear-loved Erin
Which his chaste vow had forsworn.
Through the wild waves' tumbling roar,
Where through ragged drift of storm-cloud
Frowned the dark cone of Ben More.
Plash of waves, and windy roar,
Steeply piles her southmost shore.
Tempt his chaste eye to look back,
Tempt his heart with homeward longings
To retrace the briny track.
In the lone rock-girdled bay,
Where with wondering eye the stranger
Notes it fossiled in the clay.
The landward air a little space:
Eastward then with foot unwearied
He pursued the holy chase;
His brave apostleship, he bound
Not to rest till they should greet
The Pictish king on Pictish ground.
From a lofty seat looks forth,
Where the Ness his broad stream mingles
With the salt sea of the North.
O'er the granite ridge he sped,
Where Ben Nevis, king of mountains,
Stoutly rears his massive head.
O'er the broad moor's purple breast,
Where link on link of sistered waters
Join the North sea to the West.
Where King Brude in shaggy state
Cinctured sits with hoary Druids,
Brooding o'er the coming Fate.
And with Kenneth of Achaboe
To lay a host of demons low.
Gods of earth and air and sky,
Peopling land and peopling water
With the glamour of a lie.
They did bind the heart of Brude,
That he closed his gates against
The bearers of the holy rood.
High the virtue of the rood,
And from it flashed a light that smote
With blindness all the sorcerer brood.
Voice like thunder rolling near,
Quelled the king's obdurate stoutness
With a thrill of holy fear.
Wont to sing when he arose,
Girt with godlike strength, to prostrate
The dread muster of his foes.
Thus he sang—no idle tale,—
“How the true God o'er the false gods
Where He came did still prevail.
And Thy people did prevail,
Not by sword and not by horses,
Not by panoply of mail;
And by favour from above,
For that Thou didst hold Thy children
In the strong embrace of love.”
From the Druid's spell, the king
And like a bird with folded wing
Kissed the rood uncrowned and bare:
And with water from the fountain
Gladly they baptised him there.
And he told his people all
From the demons' thrall to loose them
At Columba's saintly call.
Where he landed for his dower,
There to work in sacred college
God's soul-healing work with power.
Feuds and wars without release,
There the saintly son of Phelim
Taught the gentle arts of peace.
There he drained the miry bog,
There he wove the wattled cabin,
Hewed the tree and piled the log.
He laid bare Earth's fruitful breast,
To the wooing of the breezes
Wafted from the genial West.
Where the grass once sourly grew,
And where prickly furze was rampant
Apple-blossoms came to view.
Wisely in warm hives he stored;
Milk and eggs and fish supplied
Chaste feeding to his sober board.
There were fed the saintly men,
Writing with a faithful pen.
Evermore at matin chime,
They made sweet their souls with music
From pure text and holy rhyme.
Each man to his function true,
With ungrudging sweet obedience
To high-saintly wisdom due;
And the weak man loved the strong,
And brothered work with work was mingled
Like sweet notes in cunning song.
Nicely reared in learnèd school,
To subdue the lawless-roving
Heathen to the Christian rule.
Sent them missioned o'er the sea,
Sent them southward to Bernicia,
Sent them northward to Maree.
Shedding smiles and blessings round,
At the solemn hour of midnight
Kneeling upon holy ground,
In his memory wisely stored,
“No good thing shall e'er be wanting
To His saints that seek the Lord.”
All alone with God in prayer;
And he raised his eyes to heaven,
And beheld in vision fair
And he heard with raptured ear
Angel-voices hymning near.
Shone; the church was filled with light,
And the white-smocked brethren saw it
Gleaming through the hazy night.
Presence of the prayerful man,
Where he lay with sideward-drooping
Head, and visage pale and wan.
And he mildly looked around,
And he raised his arm to bless them,
But it dropped upon the ground.
On the arms that held him dear,
And his dead face looked upon them
With a light serene and clear.
Surely hovered round his head,
For alive no loveliest ever
Looked so lovely as this dead.
ALFRED.
Alfred, king, and clerk, and bard;
Triple name, and triple glory,
By no stain of baseness marred.
Blood of Egbert in his veins;
Reaper of the past, and sower
Of the future, Alfred reigns.
Slept well-cradled in his breast,
Grew to world-wide reach of lordship
From the Saxon of the West.
Oak and beech in breezy play,
'Mid green England's gardened beauty,
Up he shot into the day;
'Neath a mother's gentle care,
Osburh, with a soul as kindly
As the balmy summer air.
And he drank with greedy ear
Tales of old ancestral glory,
When no plundering Danes were near.
And his eye with joy did swell,
When with mother's love she mingled
Matin chant and vesper bell.
From a song or from a book;
Of a gesture or a look.
Linnet, finch, or crow, or sparrow,
Pecking seed with lively beak,
From brown track of hoe or harrow;
In bright glow of summer weather,
Wise the thorny spray to plunder,
Or the tufts of purple heather.
But with soul untaught to fear,
He, in Hubert's craft the foremost,
Lanced the boar and chased the deer.
Grew, and kind embrace of home,
But with wondering eye young Alfred
Saw the pomp of mighty Rome.
And more wise with vagrant ken,
What to shun and what to gather
From the works of diverse men.
From the rude sea-roving clan,
Storms to front with manly stoutness,
When the youth should be a man.
From the sharp and biting East,
Growing with the greed of plunder,
Ever as their spoil increased,
Of the Ouse, ship-bearing, sweep
Round the palace of the Cæsars;
Where on Durham's templed steep
Slept in keep of holy men;
Clave the clod and drained the fen,
Trampling under foot profane,
Revelling in blood and murder,
Lust and rapine, came the Dane.
Where the fruitful fields are spread,
From its trunk the savage Ingvar
Severed Edmund's holy head.
Thames with gentle-flowing water
Shrank perturbed, and castled Reading
Wept o'er fields of crimson slaughter.
With the young man's pride of daring,
Scaled the bristling steep of Ashdown,
Fined them there with loss unsparing.
Big with ever new supplies,
Widely spread the snow-fed waters
O'er the green embankment rise,
Self-recruited more and more,
Sweep with swelling devastation
All the vexed Devonian shore.
Alfred fled, but might not yield;
In a tangled maze of marshes,
Westmost Somerset did shield
With the lowliest in the land,
There, a cowherd with the cowherds,
And a scanty faithful band,
Wandering in poor harper's guise,
Alfred waits with faithful eyes.
With King David's holy psalm,
'Mid the swell and roar of danger
He doth keep his spirit calm.
Holy Cuthbert, from the Tyne,
Came and filled with bread his basket,
Filled his scanted cup with wine.
In the isle of Athelney,
Where the creeping stream disputes
Its doubtful border with the sea:
Till the favouring hour; and then,
At his call the golden dragon,
Over forest, moor, and fen,
Spread its wing. With heavy loss,
At Ethandune, the savage Viking
Bit the ground, and kissed the cross.
King as few great kings may be;
He hath gained his crown by labour,
He hath set his people free.
With a faith that never failed,
With an eye that watched and waited,
With a strong arm that prevailed,
What remains for him to do?
What the great man ever doeth,
From the old to shape the new:
But with gently guiding hand,
As a father guides his children,
Spreading union through the land.
Turned rude souls to loyal awe;
Christ and Moses, nicely blended,
Swayed his soul and shaped his law.
He might knock at Alfred's gate;
If a rich man wronged a poor man,
He must fear a felon's fate.
By the road in Alfred's time,
No rude hand might dare remove it,
Such sure vengeance followed crime.
Touch he swayed the pulse of home,
And the sacred state of Rome,
Saxon Alfred's greeting came,
And the remnant of St Thomas
Hailed the omen of his name.
Alfred triumphed with the sword;
O'er the scholar's book of learning
He with pious patience pored.
Doing Thought is rightful lord;
And the pen indites the wisdom
That gives honour to the sword.
He embraced his kingly throne,
And their wisdom, freely subject,
Paid rich tribute to his own.
Healing herbs from field and shore,
So from Saxon books and Latin
Alfred swelled his thoughtful store.
Everywhere he culled the best;
Gospel grace and Stoic sentence
Warmed his heart and mailed his breast.
Greekish school and monkish college,
Where the seed of truth was scattered,
Alfred reaped the crop of knowledge;
Darkness, all that loved the light,
All that called him England's darling,
Champion of the Saxon right.
Long from troublous clouding clear;
Taints the summer joy with fear.
Dashed his cup of bliss with bale,
And the Viking oared his galleys
Up the tide of Kentish Swale.
Where the Land's End flouts the main,
Up fair Bristol's tideful channel,
Winged with ruin came the Dane.
High-ridged Cambria bowed her head,
Where in pride of devastation
Hasting came with iron tread.
Stands amid the crashing wood,
Rooted in the strength of Alfred
Stout old Wessex bravely stood.
Must devise the needful wile;
On the sea to meet the sea-king
Alfred knew by Vectis'isle.
England's navy in the germ,
And the sea-king's wingèd pinnace
With unwonted swift alarm
Breathed with full lungs free from fear;
Nor again in face of Alfred
Might the plundering Dane appear.
Laves the fort of stout King Lud,
Westward where the bluff-faced granite
Mocks old Ocean's fretful flood,
Once a field of wasteful strife,
By the labour of his life;
Down to sleep, and down to die,
Finished with the earthly, ready
For new launch of life on high.
WALLACE AND BRUCE.
Sons of Jove to help our need,
Then when Norman Edward lusted
For wide sway benorth the Tweed.
In rude rapine born and bred,
Bold as lion, fierce as tiger,
When they came with iron tread,
Wise to weave a web of lies,
Where a lie might seem the shortest
Way to snatch a glittering prize.
Drew his state, and drew his blood,
Drew the despot-lust to trample
All free manhood in the mud.
He would hang him for a knave;
When he found a weakling, he
Would gild the chain that bound the slave.
Of more land to swell his state;
And he forged the name of Scotland
In proud England's book of Fate.
Romans, Normans, to make better
What they steal, and let the weak man
Wisely wear the strong man's fetter.
Who made haughty Haco mourn,
From the steep cliff of Kinghorn;
Sailed and sickened on the sea,
And the crown without a wearer
Waited where the right might be,
Then the robber knew his hour,
Like a hawk upon the pigeons
Down to swoop, and to devour.
And a venal Romish scribe,
To the castled steep of Norham
Edward came, with craft to bribe
Norman-bred, that would kneel down,
Swearing fealty to a swindler
For the bauble of a crown.
Just recorder, set it down,
Baliol reigns, the traitor-slave,
Who sold his people for a crown.
And with service cringing low,
He shall swallow down the spittle
Of his high contemptuous foe.
Whelmed with shame and swift disaster,
He shall kiss the clay oare-headed,
And from England's haughty master
Longshanks now had played his game,
And Cimbric Wales and Celtic Albyn
Bowed before the Norman name,
Much to make his deeming true;
But a vile and venal crew,
Dangling round a stranger throne;
But the people prayed and waited
For a leader of their own;
Starred with no heraldic pride,
But with proof of thews and sinews,
From the bosom of Strathclyde
And with heart unbribed to stand
Stoutly 'gainst a thousand Edwards,
For the honour of the land.
In an hour of danger; tall,
Strong, broad-shouldered, well-compacted,
Grandly furnished forth with all
Bold; in speech persuasive, mild,
Mingling firm stern-purposed manhood
With the sweetness of a child.
And nothing slow to strike was he,
When he laid the insolent Selby
Breathless in the fair Dundee.
When he fished in Irvine water,
Spoilers of his scaly booty,
He sent home to tell of slaughter.
Where they killed his bonnie bride,
Many a haughty Norman hireling
With their heart's blood stained the Clyde.
When thy pride usurped a throne,
Drove thy titled slave from Scone.
Strong Dunottar by the sea,
Perth fair-meadowed, tall-towered Brechin,
Shook the fetters from the free.
Sent the creatures of his will,
Belted priests and knights of prowess,
Trained in war and tactic skill,
But the Wallace from the Tay
Marched with thunder-pace, and smote
Their serried ranks with sore dismay,
Where the Forth with fruitful pride
Round the cloistered Cambuskenneth
Slowly rolls its mossy tide.
Spurred by fear, with rattling speed,
Till the near-seen England cheered them
From the forted banks of Tweed!
For a space; her traitor lords,
Norman-bred and Norman-blooded,
Drooped their crests and sheathed their swords
Who, to tyrant wisdom true,
Marched with well-massed weight of numbers,
To down-tramp the patriot few.
There his bristling lines he drew;
There with sweep of circling thousands
He outwinged the faithful few.
Beaten stood, not broken; he
Reigned the free king of the free.
He withdrew, and sought in France
And in Rome a strong assertor
Of his rightful-wielded lance.
Year by year his wasteful course
Followed, till high-forted Stirling
Fell before his battering force;
Only one man's head stood high,
Wallace, for his truth to Scotland
Marked for death by Edward's eye;
By the false Menteith, who sold
Scotland's grace and Scotland's honour
For a bag of English gold.
Tried him there in mock of right,
Doomed him to the death of felons,
Gibbeted in public sight.
With a cold unfeeling eye,
Drawn and quartered, disembowelled,
Saw the noblest Scotsman die.
None might mock his purple state;
Like a dog with gilded collar,
Scotland watched at England's gate;
Fed on bones from groaning board,
That his life may do good service,
Nosing game to feed his lord.
But the Fates can bide their time;
Slow and sure the God-sent Fury
Follows on the track of crime.
With the servile Norman crew,
Bruce had nursed in faithful memory
Scotland's crown to Scotland due.
With the breath of courts and kings,
To his country, late-repentant,
Loyal heart and sword he brings.
He had seen a ghastly sight—
Norman foplings staring, jeering,
At the head of Wallace wight.
Had forsworn his natal right,
Bowed his head to lawless might.
To the death the Christian clan,
Came new-fashioned to Damascus,
And to blessing changed his ban;
Came the Bruce a reborn man,
For his crown and for his country
To fight nobly in the van;
Where the thanes, with glad acclaim,
Crowned him Robert King of Scotland,
Freed from England's yoke of shame.
Flashed the fact—“King crowned at Scone!”
On the seat of the MacAlpine,
Whence he stole the fateful stone.
He had boldly robbed and won,
Like a Roman, like a Norman;
Could such proud work be undone?
Like a white squall on the sea,
Like a vulture keen for carrion,
Down on Scottish land swooped he.
Almond water flowed with blood;
Rough Glendochart's rocky current,
Far Loch Awe's long-gleaming flood,
By the proud usurper's host;
Many bravest fell around him,
But he stood, and stoutly crossed
'Twixt the Loch-side and the brae,
The MacDougalls of Dunolly, Oban, the best of people now, were unfortunately on the wrong side in those days. As a memorial of their unhappy alliance with the English invader, the brooch torn from the plaid of Bruce in the encounter alluded to in the text, is still shown to the stranger. The best authority for all the facts mentioned in the text is unquestionably the ‘Scottish War of Independence,’ by W. Burns: Glasgow, Maclehose, 1874.
Strove to block his kingly way.
Pembroke now held all the plain;
He must watch and wait in hardship
Till the good hour come again.
Never mortal man was great
In the evil hour who knew not
How to suffer and to wait.
By Loch Lomond, in Cantire,
In peaked Arran's rocky cincture,
Nursing Scotland's heart's-desire,
Bruce did bravely wait and bear,
While the victor, tiger-hearted,
Valiant knights and ladies fair
Glib with blood of noble men.
In his native wilds of Carrick,
Like a beast from den to den
Stout, high-purposed faith, did stand
Dauntless, with a loyal-hearted
Few, for honour of the land.
Twice a hundred men to hound him;
All alone, beside a boggy,
Black, slow-winding stream they found him.
Strong before a barking dog;
And twice five and four he stretched them
Breathless on the crimsoned bog.
Host, well massed with ordered skill;
On his spears at Loudon Hill.
On the bleeding worm, the Scot;
But the worm, the hydra-headed,
Should have died, but die would not.
Down he shot, the Scots to hammer;
But o'er his eye with vengeance flashing
Fate had spread a deathful glamour.
Curses on the Scottish clan;
But He did laugh who sits in heaven,
And into blessing changed the ban.
Died his fell and forceful doing;
Edward's Edward rushed to ruin.
Bruce now spread his ampler wing;
Inverness and granite-fronted
Aberdonia hailed him king.
Here no Norman lord we know!
Swelled from central Perth the slogan,
Lay the proud usurper low!
With red blood from English slaughter
Gallant Douglas stained the tide
Of Ettrick's mountain-girdled water.
Brothered to King Robert; he
Loose as mist the vauntful St John
Drave from granite banks of Cree.
John of Lorn was clothed with shame;
And thy sea-fronting hold, Dunstaffnage,
Hailed the Bruce with loud acclaim.
But on heights of fair Dundee
All the crosier-bearing people
Signed a bond to Scotland free.
Eight men from a wain of hay
Leapt, and like a drift of pigeons
Drave the Normans in deray.
Fearless now might front the sky,
There where on thy steepest steepness
Randolph cast his daring eye.
As a sailor climbs a rope,
Hurrying down the eastern slope.
Marched the God-predestined time,
When the son should answer prostrate
For the father's lofty crime.
Flows a brook, slow-winding, through
Boggy meads and ragged fringes,
'Neath green slopes of ample view.
Massed his men in order fair;
Gallant Randolph, Keith, and Douglas,
Sworn to death or victory there.
Where the foeman's charge would be,
Pits he dug, and stakes he planted,
Roofed with grass that none might see.
On the fragrant grassy sod
Knelt at holy mass devoutly,
And confessed his sins to God.
Flashing, dashing, horse and man,
Norman, Gascon, Welsh, and Irish,
Brave De Bohun in the van.
From Jove's chair on stormy wing,
On he rushed, with lance hot thirsting
For the blood of Scotland's king.
Rose, and with a mighty strain
Hove his battle-axe, and sheerly
Clave the knight through helm and brain.
Nor the fight may linger long
And the strong man leads the strong.
Charged, in clattering multitude;
But the Scots with steady frontage
Like a bristling forest stood.
With five hundred knights in mail,
Prostrate laid the English archers,
As corn falls before the hail.
While the gillies on the hill,
Spreading show of sheets for banners,
Downward rushed with forward will;
Fled like children from a ghost;
And their king, with floating bridle,
Galloped from the dwindling host.
Of ten times ten thousand slain;
Who escaped, like chaff were drifted
Where the west wind sweeps the plain.
Fled the land and found the sea;
From Dunbar a light skiff brought him
Where his breathing might be free;
Backward ploughed fair Helle's tide,
Reaping, as the proud man reapeth,
Lowest fall from topmost pride.
Scotland's Muse no more shall mourn;
England no more toss her haughty
Crest o'er glorious Bannockburn.
A Song of Heroes | ||