A Song of Heroes :: :: University of Virginia Library

A Song of Heroes

by John Stuart Blackie

Blackie, John Stuart (1809-1895)

[section]

[dedication]

CANTO I. THE OLD WORLD

II.

CANTO II. THE MIDDLE AGES

COLUMBA.

ALFRED.

WALLACE AND BRUCE.

III.

CANTO III. THE NEW WORLD

LUTHER.

CROMWELL

WASHINGTON.

NELSON AND WELLINGTON.

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CANTO III. THE NEW WORLD

127

LUTHER.

I will sing of Saxon Luther,
Who from lowly peasant-home,
With brave word of truth forth-thundered,
Shook the throne of mighty Rome.

Not for sway of sceptred Pontiffs,
Gilded pomp, and purple pride,
High-poised domes and painted porches,
Christ had lived and Christ had died.

Not the great and not the mighty,
Not the lords of princely hall,
But the mean unvalued people,
Answered to His holy call.

128

Not the churchman, not the learnèd
Rabbis felt a Saviour's need,
In the lofty pride of station,
In the nice conceit of creed.

Not for crowns and not for kingdoms
Soldier Paul went forth to fight,
With the sharp sword of the Spirit,
In the banded world's despite;

But for truth, and for redemption
From crude faiths and fancies odd,
And for love to all who own
A common fatherhood in God.

But old times were gone. The bishop
Now on Cæsar's earthly throne
Sate, and lust of domination
Crept into him, blood and bone;

Lust of wealth and lust of splendour,
And the charm in priestly eyes

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To be worshipped by the millions
For a god in mortal guise;

And the lust of sacred wrath,
To hurl the thunderbolt of ban
On who dared with contradiction
To confront the mitred clan;

And the lust with mighty Cæsars
To conspire for forceful deed,
Or to lie with subtle statesmen
When a lie might serve the need.

God was mocked in His own temple:
When their sin was at full tide,
He prepared a Saxon miner's
Son to lop their mounting pride.

Little Luther little fancied
Such high honour on his head,
When he made the rounds at Eisenach,
Singing Christmas hymns for bread.

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But the poor street-boy had broodings,
Books he loved, and lute and lyre,
And beneath a breast of hardship
Nursed a holy glowing fire;

Holy fear, and holy reverence
For the voice that speaks within;
Holy fear of God, that judgeth
Sinners self-condemned in sin;

Fears of death, that in a moment
Might strike down a guilty head:
By such holy terrors haunted,
From the bustling world he fled

Into cloistered life at Erfurt;
Thence was called to learnèd school,
O'er the high-souled youth of Deutschland
There to bear high-thoughted rule;

There to teach to prince and people,
Not trite lessons of the hour,

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But with flaming inspiration,
And with touch of Spirit-power.

And they held him high in honour,
And they missioned him to Rome,
There to see strange sights undreamt of
In his honest German home;

There to see a swearing Pontiff,
Jesters dressed in priestly guise,
Monks with luxury bloated, bishops
Juggling souls with holy lies.

And he saw with sacred shudder
Dark-stoled salesmen, blushless, bold,
Selling grace of God for silver,
Opening gates of heaven for gold.

And he came back to his teaching,
Far from purple sins to dwell;
And he preached to Saxon princes,
“Surely Rome is built on hell.”

132

Tetzel came, a monk with red cross;
In the market-place he stood,
Vending pardons by the sixpence
To a gaping multitude.

In the market-place at Wittenberg
High he stood, and lit a fire
To consume all bold protesters
Who should cross the Pope's desire.

Luther heard—not made for skulking
When a lie parades the street,
When the feeder of the people
Vends a tainted drug for meat—

And he rose; and as a prophet,
Fearing none but God on high,
Planted words of strong denial
Boldly, in the public eye,

On the church door, five-and-ninety.
Truth is mighty, and it spread

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Like the blazing furze in summer,
Like a voice that wakes the dead.

Leo heard it in his palace;
Tetzel heard, and foamed with ire,
And at Frankfurt flung the truthful
Witness in the public fire.

He too marshalled forth his sentence,
Blushless prophet of a lie,
And would plant his strong denial
Boldly in the public eye.

But the students, with young heart's blood
Boiling hot and mounting high,
'Mid the market throngs applausive,
Burnt them in the public eye.

Trembled Leo in his palace,
Trembled while he seemed to jest,
Humming tunes and twirling verses,
With no churchly cares oppressed.

134

And he missioned glib discoursers,
Legates, sophists, doctors, bred
In the school of high-conceited
Insolence, with fatness fed.

And he hurled a ban against him,
Puny creature of the clod,
Launching bolts of mimic thunder
In the mimic name of God!

Foolish Pope! that boastful ban
Is paper, nothing more, which brings
Fear to none who claims his right
Of thinking from the King of kings.

All your marshalled pomp of curses,
Blastful swell of priestly ban,
Like a whiff of breath it passes
O'er the free soul of a Man.

Luther brought his troop together,
Men with learnèd cap and gown,

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Teachers and the taught together,
To the east gate of the town.

And they piled a heap of fagots,
And at touch of torch the flame
Rose; and forward to the crackling
Pile the bold monk gravely came.

In his hand the false Decretals
And the big-mouthed boastful Bull,
Priest-made laws, and subtle dogmas
Of an empty-witted school.

And to the flame he freely gave them,
And he said with solemn cheer,
“Let the wrath of God consume them
As this flame consumes them here!

“Canon law and false Decretals!
Long, too long have lies prevailed—
Tiger-hearted, cruel monsters,
Baby-brained and serpent-tailed!”

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And loud echoes rose applausive,
And at Wittenberg each man
Freely breathed that day, rejoicing
O'er the ashes of the ban.

Bulls are cindered, Popes are scouted;
What shall startled Europe do?
Let the holy Roman Cæsar
Calm the strife with judgment true.

Charles hath come to Worms; and with him
His great lords in courtly show,
Waiting on his high decision,
Big with mighty weal or woe!

Luther comes: no fear might hold him,
Not the deathful shadow cast
From plotting priests and perjured kaisers
In the memory of the past.

The Council of Constance, a.d. 1414, in which the Emperor Sigismund, to the disgrace of the imperial name, broke his word of honour, and allowed his safeconduct given to John Huss to be trampled under foot by priestly insolence, and the preacher of Gospel truth to be sacrificed to the blind vengeance of those who had a secular interest in the advocacy of lies. See Menzel's ‘Geschichte der Deutschen,’ 298-301.

Rome had seen the axe of Nero
Red with blood of holy Paul;

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Constance taught that oaths were worthless
When Popes bribed the judgment-hall.

Luther came: it might rain devils;
Devils bring no fear to him;
In the drowning of a world,
He who trusts in God will swim.

Luther stands before the Kaiser:
In the power of truth, that day,
Stood the miner's son of Mansfeld
Mildly firm, nor knew dismay,

'Fore the banded might of princes,
'Fore the purple Pope's array,
Stamping lies with name of Jesus,
With red murder in their pay.

There he stood, like Paul when Nero
Fixed on him his hangman's eye,
Ready for all fiery torture,
But not ready for a lie.

138

Sooner would he swear that night
Was day, and flout the front of fact,
Than of God's truth, in God's eye spoken,
One smallest honest word retract.

Fumed the priest, and lowered the legate;
Luther heard his sure death-knell,
“Let the fire consume his body,
As his soul shall burn in hell!”

But Charles was young, and Charles was prudent;
Worms might milder show than Rome:
So he gave half-hearted licence,
And brave Luther wandered home.

But a ban was sent behind him,
That he breathed his breath in fear,
Doomed to wander, marked for judgment,
With a lurking terror near.

But God keeps watch o'er His prophets.
He had friends; and they, not blind,

139

From the ambushed murder snatched him,
And in kindly ward confined

High upon the castled Wartburg:
There his soul had time to brood
For what end the Lord had caught him
From the murtherous multitude.

There he prayed and there he doubted,
Doubted, prayed, and prayed again,
Tossed on sleepless pillow, doubting
If his life had been in vain;

Doubting if he should not rather
Break the shell of his disguise,
And face to face in deadly grapple
Perish as a brave man dies;

By a host of terrors haunted,
Demons mocking in despite,
Heaven close barred, and hell wide gaping,
As he floundered through the night.

140

“De profundis, De profundis!
Hear, dear God, O hear my cry!”
And a voice came through his slumber
With an answer from on high:

“Take the Book; the Book shall help thee;
Teach thy folk to read and think:
Priests may fight with axe and fagot;
Thou shalt gain with pen and ink.”

Luther rose, new-born, from slumber,
Vanished clean all shapes of fear,
Braced for battle like a soldier,
And he saw his mission clear.

Give the Book, the Book to all men,
Let them see God face to face,
Let them hear the words of healing,
Let them drink the well of grace.

From no priest that mumbles Latin
With dumb gesture and grimace,

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Tinkling bells, and smoking incense
To becloud the holy place,

But from God's own mouth, or prophet's
Clearly signed with faithful pen,
They shall hear God's word to Germans
In the speech of German men!

Here was work, and here was plainly
What the Lord would have him do;
Better here to write and ponder,
Than abroad, in public view,

Talking, wrangling, and disputing
With a school-bred sophist crew
Using sleight of logic deftly
Into false to twist the true.

And he worked with pious patience,
As a German loves to plod,
Strong in lexicon and grammar,
Till he sent the Word of God,

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In its primal strength and freshness,
Full of quickening spirit-power,
To bring forth the Gospel seed-time
From the ferment of the hour.

And he sent it forth electric,
And it travelled like the fire,
Through the heart and through the pulsing
Veins, to reach the heart's desire,

Till the Council of the Princes,
Each man master in his home,
Doffed the badge of base subjection
To usurping priests in Rome;

Recking not if Popes might bluster,
Legates rage both North and South;
In the Book, the Book, were written
Words that gagged each boaster's mouth;

Recking not if witless weavers,

On Nicholas Storch, the inspired weaver, and other mad prophets, whose weak brain the volcanic movement of the Reformation had shaken, see Menzel, 347, 348, and D'Aubigne, Book ix. ch. vii.

Or hot doctors of the school,

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With a self-blown inspiration,
Scorned the rein of healthy rule.

They had God's Book for their teacher,
They had Luther for their guide;
And he came with fervid shrewdness
To rebuke the windy pride

Of each brainless preaching braggart.
And the word of soundness grew,
And new thousands mustered daily,
Swore allegiance to the true.

Popes were raging; kings and kaisers
Counsel took against the Lord;
But the Book, the Book was stronger
Than the crosier and the sword.

Wars had been, and wars were brewing—
War and strife will ever be;
But the truth of God will triumph
When the Word of God is free.

144

Luther triumphed with the Bible;
And the Bible, now as then,
Peals the knell of death to despots,
Peals the psalm of life to men.

145

CROMWELL

I will sing of English Oliver,
Who, when kings were led by fools,
Led by fools, and served by brainless
Pedants trained in priestly schools,

When the ship of State was tossing,
And the storm-wings were abroad,
Seized the helm and gave it guidance,
With a right direct from God.

Not in softly-curtained cradles
Kings are nursed who claim from God,
But in labour's school He trains them,
And He lifts them from the sod.

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In the marshes of the Eastland,
Where the gently-gliding Ouse
Creeps through fringe of sedge and willow,
Grew the boy whom God did choose.

Erect he grew, of goodly stature,
With strong limbs well knit together,
And stout ruddy cheeks that borrowed
Freshness from the breezy weather.

As a yeoman's son might well be,
Manly-browed with flowing hair,
Nose of power, and eyebrows shaggy,
With keen lightnings lurking there.

Hot was he for bold adventure,
Quick to share the riskful joy,
When a dovecot or an orchard
Tempted any daring boy.

But not merely in the dash
Of venture he would lead the van;

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Thoughts of mighty mark grew with him,
As the boy grew to the man.

Oft at evening you might find him
Pacing by the grassy fen,
Pondering o'er God's mystic counsel,
And the tangled ways of men;

Brooding o'er life's strange enigma,
Spirit mingled with the clay,
Devils wrestling with good angels
For the young heart's doubtful sway.

There he brooded, prayed and pondered,
O'er the passioned yeast within,
Till by grace divine he trampled
Out each lustful creeping sin,

And stood forth a God-devoted
Victor o'er the carnal man,
To build up for lofty uses
A new life with godly plan.

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Then his soul went outward, reading
The strange omens of the time,
When to be a king meant licence
To give holy names to crime;

When a man who dared to stand
Erect, uncowed, before a king,
With old law and right behind him,
Was the first to feel the sting

Of the waspish vengeful weakling
Who, when propped up on a throne,
Deemed all power in earth and heaven
Centred in his whim alone.

Oliver had seen the Stuart
In his uncle's hall of state,
With big rolling eye, and dribbling
Mouth, and loosely-shambling gait;

Mighty man to round a sentence
That might serve a schoolman's need,

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Weak to know what, how, or whither,
When the hour called for a deed.

Bridled long by kilted chieftains,
Now, like bird with uncaged wing,
On the ample stage of England
James would grandly play the king.

Like a Cæsar he would king it;
He would teach them to behave,
As a master flogs a schoolboy,
As an owner whips a slave.

He would be a god, and god it
Bravely, bravely like the Pope;
And whose tongue denied his godship,
His stiff neck should know the rope.

Fool! a fresh young blood was pulsing
In the people; and a school
Of stout-hearted God-taught teachers
Kicked against all despot rule.

150

People now with eyes untutored
Freely read the Word of Grace,
Seeing God, as Moses saw Him
On the mountain, face to face.

Not from Pope or priest or patriarch
Tamely now they took command;
But true brother common-blooded
Walked with brother hand in hand,

Children of no earthly father;
Kings might stamp for right the wrong,
But with God's still voice within him
Each man for himself was strong.

This he knew not, the unkingliest
King that ever fed on pride,
Deeming with fine-woven speeches
To drive back the ocean's tide:

And so died; but not with him
Died the whim that fooled his brain:

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In the son, more finely moulded,
All the father lives again;

All the lust to king it rarely,
Like a Cæsar, like a god,
Like a Jove that all might tremble
At the shadow of his nod;

All the joy to shine supremely
Like a sun on central throne,
Whence all fine vivific virtue
Flows in strength from him alone;

All the dear conceit of kingship
To invest his royal home
With the purple pomp of priesthood,
With the sacred pride of Rome.

Charles, and Laud, and haughty Strafford,
They have sworn, all undismayed,
Or by daring, or cajoling,
They will rule, and ask no aid

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From the niggard cross-grained people,
Looking with a jealous frown
On the gold which gilds the mitre,
On the gems that star the crown.

But not reasoned thus the people;
Norman blood and Saxon bone,
They had minds, and they had muscle,
They had hearts they called their own.

They had souls to God devoted,
Leal to law, and sworn to right;
For the chartered use of England
They will stand and they will fight.

In the North a storm was brewing:
In Dunedin, in Dunbar,
From the bristling breasts of Scotsmen
Came the harsh alarm of war.

O'er the grave-stones of their fathers
Holy hands were lifted high,

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Solemn oaths by peer and peasant,
Sworn in God's all-seeing eye,

Nevermore, with open Bibles
And sharp swords to serve their need,
Shall an English priest for Scotsmen
Clip the pattern of their creed.

Not in courtly phrase, or rubric
Framed to please a pedant's whim,
But as free as bird in greenwood
They will pour the heart-felt hymn.

They will preach in plain presentment
From a freeman's manly breast,
Even as Paul, sans cope, sans surplice,
Freely gospelled all the West.

They will pray at no dictation
To compel unfelt desires,
Bend the knee at no man's bidding,
As a puppet owns the wires.

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And in England king and people,
Pulling each his diverse way,
Left the State ship in the middle
Leaking more from day to day.

Thrice five years of fretful talking
Brought no fruit but bitter strife,
More and more the knots were tangled
That called loudly for the knife.

And the knife began its mission
With much din, now here now there,
Blindly plunging, grandly dashing,
Blood and blunders everywhere,

Half right, half wrong. Not all who struck
The nail for right, would drive it in,
Weak of purpose, slow to finish
What they hasted to begin.

Dukes and earls, half-hearted weaklings,
Fearing much the monarch's pride,

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Fearing more the people's strong arm
When they cast all fear aside!

Courtly men will deal no blows
To make a strong-willed despot pause;
When the people fight, a captain
From the people wins their cause.

Cromwell came; nor came alone,
But with him, to do or die,
Honest men of his own choosing,
Fighting in the master's eye.

Not gay youths with knightly titles,
Riding, dancing, gambling, swearing,
Waving plumes, and prancing horses,
With light-hearted dash of daring;

Such were good to fight for courtly
Ladies' smile and grace of kings;
But with firm persistent purpose,
Through the stress and strain of things,

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For the truth they loved to risk all,
Sinking low or mounting high,
Doing daily prayerful duty,
As in God's all-seeing eye;

For such feats of high-souled manhood,
Where God's supreme law presides,
Other tools must shape his action,
Hearts of steel, and iron sides.

Men in yeomen's craft well trained
To split the rock and cleave the sod;
Hands made strong by sweatful labour,
Hearts made strong by faith in God.

Men in hour of sharpest strain,
Who, mildly strong and sternly calm,
Braced their thought with memoried Scripture,
Cheered their heart with chaunted psalm.

“Gentlemen are good,” quoth Cromwell,
“Softly bred, and smoothly dressed;

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But a man, to win a battle,
Must bear victory in his breast;

“Plainly fed and russet-coated,
And with hands inured to toil,
And a cause he joys to fight for,
Let Dame Fortune frown or smile.

“Princes love to lead great armies;
But when God has work to do,
Or for gospel or for battle,
He makes strong a chosen few.”

Other men might loosely waver;
But when Cromwell eyed the foe,
Or at Marston or at Naseby,
Like Jove's bolt came down the blow.

Other men might dash and rattle;
But with thoughtful plan prepared,
In the hour of quick decision
Cromwell was the man who dared.

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Charles was vanquished: like a hunted
Fox from shift to shift he flew;
When a fair-faced lie might fail him,
Ever spinning something new.

Ever sowing seeds of faction,
Never to his promise true;
Throwing yeast into the ferment
Where dissension rankly grew.

But not Cromwell might be juggled
By fair speech or slippery word;
Shifty king, and friends half-hearted,
Both should know he bore the sword.

Time is none for talking, tinkering,
When storms rage and seas o'erwhelm;
Let him die whose faithless purpose
Brought confusion on the realm.

King or cobbler born, what matter,
With a crown or with a hat;

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Who would crush his people's freedom,
Let the false king die for that!

And they tried him for a traitor;
And they brought him forth to die
At Whitehall upon a scaffold,
In the people's wondering eye.

Who shall rule a headless nation?
Charles had left a son, a youth,
Like himself a shuffling schemer,
Foe to goodness and to truth.

Him the Scots, unwisely loyal,
Crowned with kingly grace at Scone,
Unprophetic of the falsehood
Bred in every Stuart's bone.

Not so Cromwell—he who never
Helped a serpent's brood to sting,
Trained too well to know the Devil's
Game played with the name of king.

160

At Dunbar he took his station;
There with scanted strength stood he,
Where the old grey castle looks forth
Grimly on the old grey sea.

Westward to the hills he turns
His watchful glance both quick and sure,
And there the Scots he saw in thousands
Marshalled on the old grey moor.

Meagre hope was there for Cromwell;
They might hedge him round and round,
From their chosen post of vantage
On the high and heathy ground.

Leslie was a stout old soldier,
Wary as a Scot may be,
And he saw sure prey in Cromwell,
With his back beside the sea.

But strange things will chance; and Leslie,
To his vantage-ground untrue,

161

Down the hill with forward rashness
Strangely came to Cromwell's view.

“Pounce upon them! on, brave boys!
On through mist and moony gleam;
On! the Lord of hosts is with us;
On! yon sun's first rising beam

“Shines on victory! pounce upon them!
By my faith, they run, they run!
God hath scattered them before us
As the mist flies from the sun!”

On he rushes like a torrent;
Back they flee in blank amaze;
On he rolls with volleyed thunder,
On with swelling hymns of praise.

They are routed. Stout old Scotland
Stands a public fool confessed,
When she took a wounded adder
Blindly to her kindly breast.

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But where is Charles? With fond assurance
He hath risked to front his foes
'Mid fair England's wooded greenery,
Where the Severn gently flows.

Vainly; for, with pace of thunder,
Sleepless Cromwell follows there,
And like houseless wild beast drives him,
Hunted hot from lair to lair,

Till he changed high-hearted England
For a land beyond the seas,
Where kings, by fretful parties' goad
Unvexed, might eat and drink at ease.

Now the stage is cleared from kings;
But Parliaments in high debate
Nurse dissent, and breed confusion
With their never-ending prate.

Cromwell hath no craft of talking,
Loves to go the shortest road;

163

Right into the hall of council,
As a soldier strides, he strode.

“Take away that bauble—shadows
Are ye of what once ye were!
England hath no need of shadows;
I am Cromwell; I am here,

“Weighted with no trifling business;
This poor farce will never do;
Better men must fill your places;
Hence! the Lord hath done with you!”

And they went as wanton schoolboys,
When the master shows his rod,
Or as idols from the presence
Vanish of the rightful God.

He hath conquered. Clad in plain grey
Hose, and worsted stockings grey,
And a hat without a hat-band,
He is England's king to-day.

164

No more shaking now and shuffling,
No more swaying to and fro;
Now the strong man rules, all England
Feels, and Europe soon shall know.

Now no more to haughty Spaniards
Britons basely bow the head,
No more paid by Frankish bounty
Hireling troops are basely fed.

No more hordes of plundering pirates
Fill our well-stored ports with fears,
Turk and Tuscan strike their colours
Where the flag of Blake appears.

At the mighty word of Cromwell
Popes are dumb, and curses cease;
And in Alpine valleys godly
Peasants sing their psalms in peace.

England's hand is felt in Europe
Now, as in the good old time

165

Of Plantagenets in their glory,
Of the Tudors in their prime.

But no man is blest in all things:
Feared at Paris, feared in Rome,
Hot contention grew around him,
With unkindly thoughts at home.

He had saved them from the despot,
He had helped them in their need,
And with best heart's blood of England
Watered freedom's precious seed.

But the tumult and the grating
Jar of jealous power with power,
Not even his strong will might charm it
To sweet music in an hour.

And he died with work unfinished;
But, with life's flood ebbing low,
“I have sown good seed,” he said,
“And God will know to make it grow.”

166

WASHINGTON.

I will sing the grand New World,
I will sing God's elect man,
Dowered with strength divine to found it
On a new high-fortuned plan.

Meagre souls there be who fancy
God as meagre as themselves,
That His tale of things was ended
With the books upon their shelves!

With the record of their glories,
Battles, blunders, brawls and blood,
When high-vaulting Whigs and Tories
Clutched the stars, or kissed the mud!

167

Foolish! sooner might a starveling,
Begging pence from door to door,
Know what millions mean, when counted
In a rich man's golden store,

Than the self-spun speculation
Of the mole-eyed minion man,
Tell the bearings of the broad-winged
Stretch of God's far-sweeping plan!

Poets dream, and scheming sages
Pile Utopias all their own;
But the greatest of all dreamers
Is a fool upon a throne.

James the Scot was king and coward,
Pedant, fool, and fox to boot,
With a brain that fondled fancies,
And a deft tongue for dispute.

Born was he in fretful Albyn
Where the prickly thistle grows,

168

Which he grasped with bleeding fingers:
Now he dwells in soft repose,

Dwells in majesty of Whitehall,
Where the Tudors had their will;
Here the Scot shall heir their fortunes
With a braver mission still.

He will king it grandly, grandly,
Like crowned heads beyond the sea,
From his ring of stiff-souled barons,
From his rude-mouthed preachers, free.

Preachers, curs! an unwhipt nation,
Barking in their master's face,
Who should wear their gilded collars
At his feet with crouching grace,

Bring them hither! He hath seen them,
He hath heard them for his sport,
With brave show of Latin learning,
From his throne in Hampton Court.

169

He hath heard their humble craving,
Loyal suit for mild release
From harsh Tudor-laws that hindered
Pious souls to pray in peace.

Only as a priest might drill them,
Or a king with penal rod,
Might they pour the heavy burden
Of their sins before their God.

But the good and godly people
Read God's holy book with awe,
And they read no praise of bishops
There, or kings above the law.

Cæsar's things they gave to Cæsar,
Things of God they gave to God;
But to stint free breath in prayer
To bishop's mace and monarch's rod,

God denies. But James took counsel
Blindly with his blinded mind:

170

“Let them go!—we may not harbour
Vermin of this saucy kind!

“Let them wander far from England,
There to hug their private notion,
To the land of dykes and ditches,
To wide wastes beyond the ocean!

“Kings were useless might each unlearned
Bible-speller forge a creed;
Kings bear rule from God's fair garden
Forth to pluck the baneful weed!”

Thus he spake. The godly people
From crowned folly wisely fled
To the land of dykes and ditches,
Where young Freedom reared her head;

Nor there tarried long. More faithful
To their king than he to them,
They would draw their sapful virtue
Still from England's lusty stem.

171

From the land of dykes and ditches,
Down the sluggish Maas they creep,
On to Plymouth, where Old England
Stout her naval watch doth keep.

Thence with hearts to God devoted,
And with souls from slavery free,
They have sailed, the godly people,
Westward, westward o'er the sea.

Through the heaving high-towered billows
Storms that rage with savage glee,
With split masts and creaking timbers,
To a land where thought is free.

There to found a brave New England,
Mighty tree from little seed,
Where no sophist-king might dare
To twist a text, or carve a creed.

They have landed in the shallows
'Neath thy sheltering wing, Cape Cod;

172

There they knee the sand in thankful
Worship to their Saviour God.

They have looked about with wonder
On the strange new-customed strand,
Trees on trees in plumy grandeur
Waving fragrance from the land.

They have looked upon the broad bay
Where huge whales are spouting high,
On the creeks where ducks and wild geese
Sport, all gleefully and shy.

They have sent their best and bravest,
Standish fearles and adroit,
To explore the riskful traces
Of the red-skinned Massasoit.

They have seen the black-haired nation
Plumed and feathered like a fan,
Wild, uncouth, uncomely people,
Like the roving gipsy clan!

173

And they made truce with the people,
Faithful vows that they should be
Free from harm from sons of England,
Born with birthright to be free!

And they built their town beside them,
Nicely measured; row on row
Each man built his rough-hewn dwelling,
That the work might bravely grow.

And they built a church and schoolhouse
With fair front and goodly show,
That the town, with God's good blessing
On the work, might chastely grow.

And it grew; but slowly, slowly,
As sweet flowers 'neath frosty dew;
Cold and sickness and starvation
Made them dwindle to a few;

Few but faithful; though with bleeding
Foot the unschooled soil they trod,

174

Still they plied their earth-subduing
Task, and praised their Saviour God.

And they piled a brave new Plymouth,
Founded by the salt sea-foam,
On a rock like that Tarpeian ridge
That cradled mighty Rome!

Nor alone on Nausite waters,
Where the grampus spouts and rolls
For a grand new world of freemen
God prepared His ransomed souls.

Southward too, beyond the Hudson,
Where Potómac pours his flood
Grew to manly firm consistence
English life from English blood.

There from civil feud and faction,
Hatred, jealousy, and strife,

175

Noble men of pith and prudence
Sought and found a peaceful life;

Life like Adam's in the garden,
Digging, delving, planting, sowing,
Like the stout old Cincinnati,
When the pride of Rome was growing.

There in use of hardy nurture,
From wise father wiser son,
To the strength of stately manhood
Grew the noble Washington.

God had shaped him for a leader:
With his playmates in the school
George was mild and George was modest,
But they felt that he must rule.

First was he in every youthful
Sport; supreme in mimic wars,
Racing, leaping, wrestling, swimming,
Pitching quoits and tossing bars.

176

If a horse was fierce and furious,
With kick and start and caracole,
Only George could hold the rider's seat
With kingly firm control.

Thoughtful too; not hot and heady,
But with measured grace and slow;
Where his cool eye made the survey,
There he launched the well-poised blow.

Not a man of random plunges,
Dash, and dart, and snatch was he;
But he stood, as stands a pilot
In the many-tossing sea,

Master of himself; the planets,
In their measured going on,
Wheel not with a march more steady
Than the soul of Washington.

With no wavering consecration
Of the manliest thing in man,

177

He had gaged his life to duty
On a holy-purposed plan.

Trained in field-work, trained in camp-work,
Like his work, his mind was true;
Line by line, like wise besieger,
To his aim he nearer drew.

Times are ripening for his counsel,
For his strength, and for his daring;
West beyond the Alleghany,
Seeds of prickly strife are bearing

Bloody fruit. On the Ohio,
With huge lust of large command,
France with vulture-wings was hovering
O'er Virginia's happy land,

Where the Shenandoah, daughter
Of the stars, with fruitful flood
Grandly rolling, softly swirling,
Waters many a pine-clad rood.

178

With delayful and unskilful
Counsel England saw the Franks,
In the Northland and the Westland
Pile their forts in bristling ranks;

Saw, and sent a boastful captain,
In the strange wild warfare rude,
With sharp word and stroke to humble
Haughty Gaul's defiant mood.

Vainly; wilful-counselled Braddock,
With proud front and haughty nose,
Fell, as evermore the braggart
Falls who lightly holds his foes.

Not so Washington, who followed
Where the beaten boaster fell;
Wise and wary, in wild warfare
At Potomac practised well.

Well he knew the red-skinned nations,
Ever threatful, never sure,

179

Quick to start from unseen covert,
Like the wild bird on the moor;

Skulking now in leafy ambush,
Rattling now like stony hail,
Weak to stand in serried phalanx,
Where the marshalled lines prevail.

He their flooded streams had breasted,
Slept in rain and camped in snow,
With an eagle eye had followed
Where a hunter's foot might go.

With quick start of fiery venture,
Like the spreading of a flame,
To the fork of mighty waters
In Ohio's vale he came;

To the strong fort where the Frenchman,
Sweeping all the Western plain
From the Lakes down Mississippi,
Claimed the haughty right to reign.

180

And the British flag he planted
On the steep brow of Du Quesne,
At the forking of the waters,
Whence the Frenchmen vexed the plain.

And they fled as flee the pigeons,
When the hawk swoops down amain,
From the forking of the waters
Nevermore to vex the plain;

Never from that height to flourish
Trenchant blade and supple wit,
New baptised for England's glory
With the noble name of Pitt!

Pittsburg.—Since its rebaptism in 1755, it has become famous as a manufacturing town in such a fashion as to have been styled the American Birmingham.

Years rolled on. In lusty boyhood,
With brave front and shining face,
From Virginia to St Lawrence
Grew the grand New World apace.

181

But the mother of the brave boy,
Far with blindly groping hands
Deemed the boy was still a baby,
Needful of her swaddling-bands.

And she sent unskilful nurses
'Cross the wide Atlantic flood,
Some to spur the baby's pulses,
Some to suck the baby's blood.

Motley nurses, titled nurses,
Soldiers, courtiers, lords, and earls,
Talking much of needful nursing,
Dreaming much of gold and pearls.

But the boy was rough and rampant,
Baby would be hight no more,
He would use his legs at pleasure,
Keep the key of his own store.

Lusty babes disown the mother's
Tearful cares and fingering hands;

182

Sturdy boys fling back the father's
Word that cramps while it commands.

So the quarrel grew. In London,
Ignorance from haughty breast
Vowed a vow of sharp correction
To the baby in the West.

But the baby, like Alcmena's
Jove-born son, when Greece began,
Snapt his bands, and stood erect
With face of boy and soul of man.

Men of Plymouth and of Boston,
Had they fled beyond the waves
Only for a change of masters,
With the unchanged name of slaves?

Had the evil-counselled Stuarts
Bled and fled and fought in vain,
And shall dull-brained Hanoverians
Tempt the despot's game again?

183

No! Stout Saxon-blooded yeomen
Never kissed a tyrant's rod;
They too had their Magna Charta
From wise William and from God.

They would pay their own State-servants,
Measured work for measured fee;
They would drink, untaxed, unrated,
Their own wine and their own tea.

Free is none who owns a master
On far throne beyond the sea;
Only those who use a home-bred
Ruler, know that they are free.

Thus outspake brave Boston's freemen,
And with one stroke snapt their gyves;
But the pig-brained Hanoverian
Still would stir the fire with knives.

With wise prophet's voice of warning,
Burke their courtly ears assailed;

184

But the brainless and the boastful
In the strife of words prevailed;

Words that meant sharp swords. To Boston's
Island-fretted ample bay
England sent her hireling Hessians,
And her ships in brave array,

There to stamp out holy Freedom,
And to block Time's forward way,
And to bind the arms of labour
'Neath a wilful despot's sway.

And she did so—for a twelvemonth
And a day. The storm was brewing,
Doomed to whelm the rash offender,
When God's hour was ripe for doing.

Short-lived was her hour of triumph,
Harsh command and lawless will;
Roaring cannon, blazing rafters,
Tumbling forts at Bunker Hill,

185

Spurred the breath they could not stifle;
Prick a lion, and he stands
Ten times lion, like a Titan
Flailing with a hundred hands.

From the South a cry resounded,
Manful pulse to pulse replied,
Nevermore to free-born brother
Be a brother's help denied!

And they made a league together,
And they sent their noblest son,
Tried in fight and tried in counsel,
Faithful-hearted Washington,

From his pleasant home at Vernon,
With fair prospect far and wide,
With rich stretch of wealthy culture,
With its amply-flowing tide.

Him they made their elect-captain,
Him they missioned sans delay,

186

With free-mustered bands to Boston's
Island-fretted ample bay.

There he watched, and there he waited,
With a firm and faithful caring,
Shaping cosmos from the chaos,
Till the hour was ripe for daring.

Then with swift assault unfearing,
Scaled a ridge above the bay,
And with iron hail tremendous,
Sent in startled disarray

Howe and Percy, and the boastful
Troop that crossed the Western waves,
With an arm of sharp compulsion
To teach freemen to be slaves.

Outward, Eastward, swiftly, swiftly,
Swiftlier than they came, they fled,
Nevermore in face of Boston's
Free-sworn front to lift their head!

187

War has many chances; not one
Swallow makes the spring, one bud
Not the summer. Born in sorrow
Sharply, and baptised in blood,

Grows the babe that makes the people;
Not one victory for the right
Could prevail to lop the crest
Of England, ever stiff in fight.

Howe was not a name to marry
With defeat and blank dismay;
Southward he would steer his warships,
With fresh hope and larger sway.

Where the strong son of the Highlands,
Hudson, rolls his ample flood,
He would stamp out the untutored
Growth of freedom in the bud.

In New York's fair water-belted,
Island-forted, busy mart,

188

He would rise from short prostration,
Strong to play the conqueror's part.

He would prove here that Old England,
Or with fair or adverse breeze,
In Pacific or Atlantic,
Ever knows to rule the seas.

And he did it. O'er Manhattan's
Long-drawn isle his might prevailed,
And at peaceful Philadelphia
Him the meek-souled Quakers hailed.

He hath wiped the blot of Boston
From his scutcheon. Delaware
And wide Hudson roll their floods,
To teach the West that Howe is there.

There indeed; but towns and rivers
Which proud England called her own,
Never cast a shade of shrinking
O'er the heart of Washington.

189

He had sworn to stand for freedom,
If not safely here, then there;
Hearts were brave, and men had mettle,
Westward of the Delaware.

Doubting oft, despairing never,
With a starved and shoeless host;
Firm in faith and wise in daring,
While he breathed all was not lost.

Never is the greatness greater
Than when dangers grimly swell,
Like a tide of mighty billows
Rushing, racing, fierce and fell.

Never is the bright hope brighter
In a God-devoted soul,
Than when clouds in massy volume
Blot the sky and blind the pole.

As a tiger in the jungle
Patient waits day after day,

190

Till the moment comes, then pounces
Sudden on his 'scapeless prey;

So Virginia's elect captain,
Wise to wait nor slow to dare,
With his band of true-sworn freemen
Eastward crossed the Delaware.

“Now, brave boys, be ready, ready,
Use the chance the moment brings;
When their strength is loosely scattered,
Now's the time to clip their wings!

“'Tis the day of Merry Christmas;
Through the river's chilly flow,
Through the snowdrift and the ice-blocks,
March we now against the foe,

“Merrily, merrily! Hireling Hessians,
Smoking, bousing, soon shall know
How to hold a bloody Christmas
When they face a patriot foe!”

191

So said, so done. The towers of Trenton
Nod submission to his word;
North from Trenton, on to Princeton,
All New Jersey's heart is stirred;

And the proud invading foeman
Shorn of hope, of glory bare,
And with wings well pruned, retreated
From the banks of Delaware.

Nor alone in reborn Jersey;
Freedom grew where Washington
Made the country and the river
Breathe a spirit all his own.

In the North at Saratoga,
Where the healthful water flows,
Boastful Burgoyne caught, in 'scapeless
Trap by many-circling foes,

Piled his arms in meek surrender;
And through all the banded States

192

Rose with firmer pulse the patriots'
Hope to greet the beckoning Fates.

Turn we now to Carolina,
On a softlier-nurtured folk,
Where Cornwallis and stout Hastings
Laid the sharply-galling yoke

For a season; but not longer;
Though they strewed the plains with death,
Ever from the free-souled Northland
Came the fresh reviving breath;

From the Northland, where the elect
Captain, hoping against hope,
Watched and waited for the moment
When his purpose might have scope.

And he found a friend to aid him
In the pressure of the hour,
France, that ever looked with jealous
Eye on England's branching power;

193

France he won to do his bidding,
That she sent in pennoned pride
Lines of bravely mounted war-ships
O'er the broad Atlantic tide,

With young Freedom to hold counsel,
And with common soul conspire,
How for England's castigation,
Saxon strength and Celtic fire

Might be banded. From the Hudson
Swift to move, and strong to dare,
To his own Virginian waters
Came the elect captain, there

With his presence to turn England's
Forward marches to retreat,
And strike the gyves through all the Southland
From young Freedom's sacred feet.

In a nook by long-drawn waters
Fenced around, as in a net,

194

How can brave Cornwallis slip
From Washington and Lafayette?

Like a baited beast in York Town,
With stout English heart he stands,
With redoubts and batteries many,
Restless raised by sleepless hands.

Vainly; as storm-clouds come creeping
Slowly, darkly from the West,
So the circling death-lines nearer
Came and nearer to his breast.

For three days and four the fatal
Fire-mouths bellowed round the town;
Rafters blazed, and towers of triple-
Forted strength came crashing down.

All the day was streaked with blackness,
Blotting beauty from the air;
All the night was bright with meteors,
Streaming with a deadly glare.

195

Nearer still and ever nearer
Came the stern avoidless lines,
Brighter still and still more bright
The flaring belt of terror shines.

Then, as storm-nursed waves Atlantic
Overlash the steep rock's crown,
So with fearless sweep the scalers
Clomb the walls and held the town.

Ever in the van of danger,
Cool and firm stood Washington,
Careless where a shot might wander,
If the work was bravely done.

Where he stood in an embrasure,
Open to a deathful shot,
One with friendly fear besought him
Back to step to safer spot.

“Seek your safety,” said the Captain,
“If it like you; I will not.

196

I will stand where honour calls me,
Though red Death may mark the spot.”

Thus he stood and thus he conquered,
With the strength that arms the free,
Till the stout heart of Cornwallis,
Vexed by land and vexed by sea,

Bowed his head in meek surrender,
And, from dreams of victory free,
Found a second Saratoga
Where York river seeks the sea.

Little now remained for Freedom's
Sons to do; the work was done
By the patient, long-enduring,
Steadfast faith of Washington.

There was talking much in London,
Much in Paris; but all knew
Freedom's cause was safe, while freemen
To their chief's high will were true.

197

Parleys and negotiations
Had their hour; with wisdom late,
Fretful king and fuming courtier
Signed the deed that sealed their fate.

On the banks of Hudson river,
When the peace-sworn foe was gone,
In New York, at Whitehall ferry,
Stood the noble Washington.

Not alone: in brothered sadness
Round him stood his comrades brave,
Who for eight long years of hardship,
Strong to suffer and to save,

Strove with him, and served him gladly,
As an angel serveth God,
Drawing strength from his sereneness,
Reaping victory from his nod.

And he spoke as one that could not,
Broken words, and slow to come;

198

Shallow grief delights in phrases,
Grief that holds the heart is dumb.

“Brim this glass,” he said, “brave brothers,
Here in wine, and here in tears—
Wine for the great joy that crowned us,
Tears for wounds that gashed the years.

“God be with you in your peaceful
Harvest, as He stood by you
When you sowed the seed of honour,
Watered with the bloody dew!”

And they came with head low drooping,
Each man, and with eyes all dim,
This last once to feel a brother's
Love in kindly grasp from him.

Not a word was spoken; silent
They; and silent he moved on,
Where a modest barge was waiting
For the noble Washington.

199

And with homeward heart he hied him
To the town of good Queen Anne,
Where the People's congress waited
To receive their Saviour-man.

And he came and stood before them,
As a modest servant stands,
And with few plain words he gave
His missioned power into their hands.

And they gave with solemn plainness
All the thanks that words could give;
And he went to sweet Mount Vernon,
As a plain man lives to live.

Some had been once that would make him
King, that he might grandly reign
O'er them like a Roman Cæsar;
But with high-souled proud disdain

Back he flung the base suggestion;
For his country he had fought,

200

He had gained his country's freedom,
That was all he wished or sought.

Not for gold, and not for glory,
He the thorny path had trod,
But in name of sacred duty
To his country and his God.

So he then; and now, as only
Lofty self-poised souls can do,
All the public pomp behind him
Like a cumbrous coat he threw.

Even as Roman Cincinnatus,
In the days when Rome was wise,
He would watch his old paternal
Acres with paternal eyes.

And he lived in homely sweetness,
Deeming pride the worst of sinning;
Planting, pruning, delving, draining,
From the soil its riches winning.

201

Ever on the work before him
Fixed with kindly-searching eyes,
Great in small things as in greatest,
And in daily service wise.

Till they brought him from his covert,

In the year 1789, a year doubly notable in the annals of modern history as at once the date of the outbreak of the great French Revolution, and the inauguration of the great Transatlantic Republic by the Presidency of George Washington.

To their march of storied fame,
To give grace and goodly omen
With the blazon of his name.

202

NELSON AND WELLINGTON.

I.

I will sing of England's glory,
Daring dash, and cool command,
When her brave high-hearted captains
Rode the sea and ruled the land;

When amid the strife of nations,
Wise by war to purchase peace,
Her firm hand compelled the plundering
Lust of lawless France to cease,

France the beacon of the nations;
France, aflame with wrath—and why?

203

Lords with no wise craft of lordship,
Kings unkingly make reply.

Loveless laws that knew no poor man,
Loveless lords that knew no shame,
When they starved the sweatful ploughman,
When they fed the guarded game.

Loveless kings that knew no measure
When their pride was mounted high,
Knew no manhood when well-baited
Hooks seduced the sensual eye.

Insolence and lust and riot
Of the few in pampered state,
With the lean-eyed many grimly
Pining at the palace gate.

Creed that brooked no talk with reason,
Churches hollow, priests unwise
Mumbling spells in name of Jesus,
To give saintly gloss to lies.

204

Sin was rank in court and castle,
Earth was sick; the hour was nigh
When the sure slow-footed Fury
Marched with vengeance from the sky;

When the smothered grudge of ages
From dark womb of discontent
Burst in flames of blood-red portent
On the lowering firmament.

Woe to them that in their dreaming
Think that God with them may sleep!
Through their sleeping He is raising
Earthquakes from the fiery deep;

Through their sleep their thrones are rocking,
Towers of pride are falling low,
And they start up from their slumbers
To behold a march of woe!

Blood-red banners, flags of terror,
Surging tumult, grim affright,

205

Tocsin from a hundred churches
Sounding through the startled night;

Thick as wasps with stings well pointed,
Glaring eyes, hands high to strike,
Dusty doublets red with murder,
Heads of traitors on a pike.

Frantic women, screaming children,
Raving Mænads drunk with hate,
Through the fevered streets parading
In tempestuous foaming state.

Vengeance raging, Fury blazing,
Madness marching in the van;
All the tiger, all the demon,
Leaping from the depths of man.

Woe to them that through the ages
Sleep, when watchmen should have eyes!
They shall wake when red-eyed Terror
Floods the earth and blots the skies.

206

Terror, terror, ghastly terror,
Now the order of the day;
Every shape and sign of terror
Stalking forth in red display.

Terror now with pace of thunder,
Spectre dance, and ghostly skipping,
Sightless eyes all blind with weeping,
Sundered heads all gory dripping;

Heads of kings that knew no sinning,
Heads of queens that knew no fear,
Heads of hero-hearted maidens,
Trundled on a butcher's bier!

As the grass before the mower
Falls in swathes upon the green,
So fall fairest heads and noblest
'Neath the wide-jawed guillotine!

Guillotining, fusilading,
One by one is far too slow;

207

Shoot them, crush them, overwhelm them
In one thunder-peal of woe!

Fusilading and noyading!
In an ark with no salvation
Huddled, they are swamped with deluge
From the mad wrath of the nation.

Lo! they mingle glee with madness:
Drunk with rancour to the brim,
They have made a painted harlot
Goddess of their godless whim;

All that charmed the chaste-souled reason,
Order, beauty, trampled low,
Liberty with beastly licence,
All the piety they know.

Such a revel of the Furies,
Such red train of ghastly mirth,
God hath sent from depths demoniac
To chastise the sons of earth.

208

Learn, ye kings! be wise, ye peoples!
Let not lusty sin grow strong;
Weeds that grow to poison-blossoms
Should be plucked when they are young.

II.

The fit is o'er, the fever fit
Of blind rage and red confusion—
The five years' fever of wild France,
'Clept by mortals Revolution.

Who hath banned it? A young soldier.
He, in force a firm believer,
With a weighty whiff of grape-shot
Swiftly banned the raging fever.

Sobered now, proud France looks round her;
And, behold! on sounding wings,
All the banded monarchs gathered
To avenge her slight of kings.

209

Prince and princeling on the Rhineland,
Purse-proud merchants on the sea,
All that dare to scowl on freedom
Now shall know that France is free!

France is free; and, like Alcides
When he snapt his baby-bands,
She decrees sharp war on tyrants,
East and west, in slavish lands.

She will free the peoples; chiefly
Free herself, to hold in awe
All the cowering, crouching millions,
When her sword hath shaped the law.

She hath sent that strong-brained youngling,
With keen glance, and lips compressed,
And an ocean of far-reaching
Deep devisings in his breast,

To the land where Pope and Kaiser
Long had held our souls in thrall,

210

There to preach the red Evangel,
Forged in France for great and small.

As an eagle on the quarry,
Swiftly pounced that wondrous boy,
Playing with a Titan foeman
As a child plays with a toy.

Light, and with no lumbering baggage
Groaning o'er the stony path,
His own herald; as when thunder
Bursts with unexpected wrath,

He hath turned the Alps the Punic
Captain crossed with sweatful pains,
And his eye prophetic ranges
O'er wide wealth of green domains.

And he scans their crescent barrier
Crowned with peaks of shining snow,
And his proud heart beats exultant
As his fancy doomed the foe.

211

Vainly Alps shall shield the Austrian,
Vainly shield the hireling Swiss,
When old lordship's frost-work melteth
At young Freedom's fiery kiss.

So said, so done. Small time for breathing
In Turin's well-watered seat
He allows; at half-way stations
Whoso tarries courts defeat.

Austrians will be doubting, dreaming,
Germans heavy, dull, and slow,
While he plants his flag three-coloured
On the north bank of the Po.

Lo! and at the bridge of Lodi,
Where their legions block the tide,
He o'erleaps the many-throated
Jaws of death, and stands in pride

On the road to Milan. Milan,
With its many-statued fane,

212

Hails the wondrous boy, whose strong arm
Snaps the hated German chain.

On to Mantua, to Lonato,
By fair Garda's gustful water,
There to fine the stiff old Austrian,
Slow to learn, with double slaughter.

What will stop him? Aulic councils
In Vienna? Nevermore.
Swift as tiger in the jungle,
Through the rattle and the roar

Of the volleyed death, defying
Fate, he stands; and Fate, that knew
Him to strange high ends predestined,
Brought the gallant bravely through.

Adige and Tagliamento
Set no bounds to his career;
Save and Drave flow crisped with terror
When his thunder-pace is near.

213

At Vienna, at Vienna,
Hearts are faint and eyes are dim;
Be he god, or be he devil,
They must purchase peace from him.

He hath caught the holy Roman
Cæsar in a mountain trap;
Sulky Venice with one weighty
Word he blotteth from the map.

And the Pope, that once made largess
Of whole kingdoms like a god,
See him now meek doom receiving
From a belted stripling's nod.

Wondrous boy, the scourge of nations!
Whither now with lordly whim
Shall he wend him? Not in Paris
Is the fruit yet ripe for him.

He can wait. And what if Europe
Were too scant a reach for him?

214

Conquering Alexanders ever
Sought the golden East, to swim

On the top wave of dominion.
Let the ferment work; and, while
Time breeds blunders, crowned with glory,
From the famous loam of Nile,

He will come, and from Euphrates
And great Babel's fatted plain,
Where the Nimrods of the old time
Taught the primal kings to reign.

Thus he dreamed; and thirsting ever
For new venture and new spoil,
And new harm to stout Old England,
On he thunders to the Nile.

III.

And the Nile he holds; but only
For an hour. His check is nigh.

215

He who sits in heaven shall laugh
When proud man would scale the sky.

When the golden-headed image
Loftiest looks, with insolence crowned,
Lo! a stone rough from the mountain.
Smites it level with the ground.

In the sandy loam of Norfolk,
Where the farmer hath his joy,
Where the church bells ring at Barnham,
Nelson grew, a weakly boy.

Weak in body, strong in spirit,
Brave as bravest boy may be;
Never shrinking, ever climbing
To the top branch of the tree.

You might note him on the playground,
You might mark him in the school,
With an air of swift decision,
Born to venture and to rule.

216

If a nest were to be plundered,
Or a pear-tree on the wall,
High, too high for vulgar riskers,
Nelson dared at danger's call.

Nursed in hardship, not on softly-
Cushioned couch of ease, grew he
But in use of sailors roughly,
Where the Medway seeks the sea

Learning as the sailor learneth,
In the sunshine, in the shower,
In the near and in the far land,
Waiting wisely on the hour.

In the land where fog and snowdrift
Nurse the walrus and the bear,
'Neath the bright green-glancing icebergs,
Wooing danger, he was there.

In the land of swamps and serpents,
Where pale fever taints the air

217

Deadly, where the trees drop poison,
Death-defying, he was there.

Through the wear and tear of service,
Strong, erect, alert he stood,
True to honour, sworn to duty,
Great in every manful mood.

Great men wait for great occasions;
Great occasions wait for them,
To put forth the hand of daring,
And to pluck the diadem

From unworthy brows. For Freedom
Not, but for free hand to rule,
France now swept the globe with legions
Trained in rapine's lawless school.

Like a watchman on a watch-tower,
From her white cliffs on the sea

218

Stout Old England saw the Frankish
Fetters forged to bind the free;

Nor might stand alone, unfriending,
Safely cased in selfish joy,
When all human rights were trampled
'Neath that strong remorseless boy

Marching on to empire. Never,
While her ships might plough the main,
Shall that fell respectless Titan
Vex free souls with galling chain.

Far from Nile and from Euphrates,
Scornful of inglorious ease,
England sends her sailor-hero
East and west to sweep the seas;

Where the Frenchman, like a tiger,
Whets his tusk and plants his paw,
There to hoist the flag of England,
Pledge of honour and of law.

219

To the land that bore the Titan,
Through the mid-sea's stormy swell,
Nelson hied, and at his coming
Every bristling fortress fell.

Bastia bowed her towering crescent
To his strength, and heard him say,
“One stout son of England matches
Three deft Frenchmen in the fray.”

Stately Calvi would defy him
With four bastions mounted high,
But in vain—whose heart grew greater
With the greater danger nigh.

Bravely done; and, if not bravely
Blazed before the public eye,
Days are coming, surely, swiftly,
When Gazettes will fear to lie.

At St Vincent, with the Jervis,
Where he came the Spaniard quailed;

220

English pith and English mettle
O'er his proud display prevailed.

With a forward spring of venture
Light from ship to ship leaps he,
Strong as thunder, deft and agile
As a squirrel on a tree.

England now is full of praises;
London town with loud acclaim,
Bristol with her merchant princes,
Lauds the gallant seaman's name.

Every ballad-singer knows him;
Crowded streets, with shrill delight,
Hear the Jervis and the Nelson
Sounded through the rainy night.

Joy was theirs; but Nelson, eager,
Like a hound that holds the scent,
O'er the blastful mid-sea's windings
Chased the Gallic armament

221

Till he found it, where Canopus,
With his boldly jutting horn,
Bounds the broad bay, where the westmost
Reach of Nile is seaward borne.

There he found them close-embattled,
Thirteen ships in dense array,
With a deadly front of terror
Eastward breasting all the bay.

Terror was delight to Nelson;
On the quarter or the bow
Of each ship he doubled round them,
Pouring ruin on the foe!

On the fight down fell the darkness,
And they saw with strange amaze,
Of the proud French line, the proudest
Skyward shooting in a blaze.

Off they fled, like startled night-birds;
From the ruin of the fray,

222

Only two of all the thirteen
Scuttled home in dire deray.

Off they fled; and drifting with them
Fled the dazzling dream like smoke,
Nile to bind, and eastmost Ganges,
'Neath the Frenchman's haughty yoke.

Through the mid-sea's ransomed waters
Nelson steered with steady might,
Leaving that proud boy to flounder
Back to France in fretful flight.

Alp and Apennine nod welcome;
Naples, from her sun-bright bay,
Comes with streamers and with music,
And with festive fair display,

Him to greet, high-hearted hero,
Who had cleared the waters blue
From the rapine and the ravage
Of the regicidal crew.

223

And the swart-faced Lazzaroni,
In the transport of their glee,
To their birds unbarred the cages,
In their plumy circuit free;

And the fairest dame in Naples,
When she saw that hero-boy,
Fell upon his arms and kissed him
In grand ecstasy of joy.

Malta next, and fair Valetta,
Hailed the chief, and blest the day
That saved her Christ-devoted waters
From the godless Frenchman's sway.

Whither next? No rest for Nelson.
Foiled and flouted in the East,
Now in Borean seas the Frenchman
Sows his hot fermenting yeast.

He hath cowed the stiff old Austria;
Russia, Denmark, and the Swede,

224

Crouching 'neath his costly friendship,
Now shall serve the tyrant's need.

But not England tholed a barrier
Planted on the Baltic shore,
And she sent her son, her Nelson,
Through the Sound by Elsinore,

Up to queenly Copenhagen,
Where the bristling batteries be,
There to make the pride of Denmark
Know the Power that sweeps the sea.

And they knew it. As a hunter
Brings the antlered troop to bay,
So with circling belt of thunder
He enclosed their proud array,

Till their subject flag they lowered,
And made free each Baltic isle,
From the Gallic bondage ransomed
By the hero of the Nile.

225

England now with hymns of triumph
Hails her hero. For a while,
Worn with labour, crowned with glory,
He shall rest on British soil.

'Mid the leafy shades of Merton,
Where the fishful Wandle flows,
With the friends that dearly love him,
He will woo the sweet repose.

Here, instead of crested billows,
Greening grass shall cheer his sight,
Greening grass and yellow waving
Corn in summer's kindly light.

He will cherish pigs and poultry,
Clip the sheep, and tend the hay;
In the parish church on Sunday
With the poor man he will pray.

Happy Nelson! full of human-
Hearted loving joy was he,

226

To the peasant, or the sailor
Tossed upon the fretful sea.

And they loved him—how they loved him!
For they said, “Our gallant Nel
Holds a heart wherein a lion
Knows in kindly peace to dwell

With a lamb.” A sweet-souled mother
Not more gently tends her boy,
Than Nelson with all men, the meanest,
Shared the sorrow and the joy.

Love and Peace in leafy Merton
Grew for Nelson; but not long.
When his scourge again was needed
To chastise a giant wrong,

Forth he leapt at call of duty,
Leapt and dashed without delay
Right into the jaws of danger,
Where his presence signed the way

227

To bright issues. The French Titan,
With unsated lust for war,
Now hath yoked the haughty Spaniard
To his proud imperial car;

And he sent his masted army
O'er the mid-sea's swelling tide,
Through the billowy broad Atlantic,
To bring down stout England's pride.

Nelson knows; and he will chase them
Through rude waves and stormy roar;
Malta now, and now Palermo,
Knows him; now swart Barbary's shore.

He will chase them to the Indies,
West and East, o'er all the seas,
With an eye that knows no sleeping,
With a heart that knows no ease,

Till he find them. He hath found them
Where Trafalgar fronts the brine,

228

Fiery Frank and haughty Spaniard,
In a four-decked double line.

He hath gone below and prayed,
With an holy consecration
Yielding up his life to God
In a glorious consummation.

He hath gone aloft, and, breasted
With four stars of honour, stands
On the deck, with his brave captains
Waiting their great chief's commands.

And he gave the high-souled watchword,
Not for glory or for booty,
But this only, “England looketh
That each man shall do his duty.”

Right into the foeman's centre
With a double wedge they broke,
Collingwood with noble Nelson
Leading on the hearts of oak.

229

Where hot death poured from the Spaniard's
Huge four-tiered Leviathan,
Bright and fearless there stood Nelson,
Light as Hermes, in the van;

Light as Hermes, as Alcides
Strong, and breathing valiant breath,
But not wisely with his four-starred
Breast of honour courting death.

Him they marked, and from the foeman's
Mizzen-top a whizzing ball
Shot the brave man through the shoulder,
And he fell as bird doth fall

On the moor before the sportsman.
On his face he fell, and cried
To his faithful comrade Hardy,
“Hardy, now I die; the tide

“Of disrupted life is rushing
Through unlicensed chambers. I

230

Would not live, but let me hear
The shout of victory rend the sky!

“How goes it, Hardy?” “Well! ten ships
Have struck, the rest will strike anon;
Maimed and mauled, they drift asunder,
All their front of bravery gone.”

“Then I die. My love be with you!
I have lived and loved not long;
But, thank God, I did my duty,
And I leave my country strong.”

IV.

Nelson died; and England triumphed,
Mistress of the briny tide;
But no hint from Fate brought warning
To Napoleon's high-blown pride.

Like the Babylonian boaster,
His vain heart was lifted up,

231

And he drank intoxication
From the despot's giddy cup.

Like a god his will shall portion
Kingdoms here and kingdoms there,
Where a field is free to plunder,
There the robber claims his share.

Stiff old Austria cowered before him,
Russia quailed, and Prussia bled;
Now the hot high-hearted Spaniard
Writhed beneath his iron tread;

Writhed and raged and foamed, and madly
Spat out rancour like a well,
Sowed the peaceful homes with murder,
Turning sweet life to a hell.

But not he for hell or heaven
Cared: so long his crested pride
On the back of harassed Europe
With high-booted strength might ride.

232

Europe shall be French; a greater
Now than Cæsar knows to reign;
All her streams from Rhine to Danube
Flood for him the fruitful plain.

Only England will not vail
The high top-gallant of her might;
She for justice, law, and freedom
Still hath fought, and still will fight.

Not at Nile or at Trafalgar
Her high-destined task was done;
The seed brave Nelson sowed shall rise
To full-grown strength in Wellington.

In the castled hold of Dangan,
On the peep of rosy May,
There, when moody France was brewing
Horrors for no distant day,

233

Oped his baby eyes on sunlight
Wellington, sent forth by God
To give freedom to the nations
Bleeding 'neath a despot's rod.

Not he shot up like a comet,
Making every gaper stare,
But through sober scheme of schooling,
Wisely planned and used with care.

As the stars forth march in order
Noiseless on their measured way,
So he set his foot firm-planted
On life's highroad day by day.

Not with gleam of bright romancing,
Not with far-off dream of glory,
But 'neath stern control of duty
Working out his human story.

Wise, with clear and far-viewed purpose,
Steady head, and faithful heart,

234

To make small things swell to great things,
This was Arthur's noble art.

In the far East, where Old England's
Merchant-kings, with proud display,
Taught a false, fierce-blooded people
To respect a righteous sway;

Fierce as tigers, false as foxes,
Who came near them found a school
Where a wakeful soul like Arthur's
Learned to conquer and to rule.

When beneath French flagellation
Europe bled at every pore,
Arthur tames a tiger tyrant
In the Sultan of Mysore.

'Gainst the fierce Mahratta robbers
Then he marched with measured might,
Wise to foil with nice contrivance,
Strong with weighty arm to smite.

235

Cool was he; but, like a hawk,
When the moment came he darted,
And was there to crush the foe
Before they knew that he had started.

While they rage, and while they quarrel
Who shall plunder most, and where,
With a close-compacted cincture
Of wise warriors he is there.

There; but not with tiger vengeance
O'er the trampled foe to ride,
But in train of armèd Justice,
With mild Mercy at her side.

Ever prone to peaceful issues,
But, where seeds of strife were sown,
Firm as flint, and calm as Jove
High seated on his thunder-throne.

Who shall match his caution, ever
Slow to strike a doubtful blow?

236

Who shall match his courage, never
Shrinking from a stronger foe?

At Assaye, where bristling warriors
To his one were counted ten,
Rock and river might not stay
His weighty push of bayonets then.

He hath triumphed. Feud and faction,
Force and fraud, shall rage no more;
Peace shall reign with law firm-handed
From Nerbudda to Mysore.

He hath based a mighty empire;
In the East his work is done;
To a sterner task in Europe
England calls her noblest son.

Shall the pride of Spain be humbled?
Shall the Frank with iron foot
From the Ebro to the Tagus
Tramp on law nor fear dispute?

237

All may fail; but stout Old England
Knows to stand the sorest strain:
While she holds the keys of ocean,
France shall never rule in Spain.

She hath sent her gallant Arthur
O'er the broad Biscayan flood,
To stay Gaul's rude robber-legions
From their godless work of blood.

Not with flaunting promise came he
To avenge the Spaniard's wrong,
But with steeled determination,
Weak in show, in purpose strong.

As a workman works worked Arthur:
Not on couch of ease lay he;
Sleepless oft, or rudely sleeping
Where a turfy sod might be.

Where a wounded man lay bleeding,
With quick hand of help he ran;

238

Where the doubtful battle wavered,
There he stood the foremost man;

Sharing labour with the meanest,
With the boldest risking all,
Standing with his star of honour
To maintain his ground or fall.

On the Douro, on the Tagus,
Doubt departs when he is nigh;
Jarring forces chime sweet music
'Neath his calm-disposing eye.

But not all were wise like Arthur;
When the sun shone to make hay,
Spanish traitors, London praters,
Vexed his soul with sore delay.

Big in boasting, blank in doing,
Strong to promise and betray;
Hollow, windy-hearted, useless
To command or to obey.

239

These would blame him, then, when wisest;
They might force him to retreat
From the field where lay the vanquished
Bleeding at the victor's feet.

But he knew to wait: who knows not
This, shall reap not where he sowed;
Marked by tread of all the heroes,
Patience is the great highroad.

Showers may come with dark-winged hurry,
Thunder-clouds pile mass on mass;
But clouds and showers are not for ever;
Who can wait will see them pass.

On the heights of Torres Vedras,
With broad breast of bristling barriers,
'Twixt the Tagus and the ocean,
There he waits their rush of warriors.

Waits and bears, as Ardnamurchan,
When the western blast is frantic,

240

Waits and bears, and stands before
The thunder-rush of the Atlantic;

Waits and bears, and stands, nor fears
The Gallic Cæsar's banded power;
Massena, Soult, Ney, Suchet, all
Shall fail when time makes ripe the hour.

Now 'tis come; and, as when hounds
Rush unkennelled to the chase,
So the fleeing Frenchmen Arthur
Follows with a thunder-pace.

At Rodrigo, at Rodrigo,
Lion-hearted, all and each
Leapt with Campbell and with Napier,
Deft as goats, into the breach.

They have stormed, and they have mounted;
Like an eagle on a crag,
See, in three-crowned union glorious,
Flaunting high the British flag.

241

Where, at Badajos lofty-seated,
Hard-faced walls red flames are spouting,
Kempt and Walker, and the Picton,
Light and buoyant, nothing doubting,

Upleapt to the topmost rampire,
As a rider mounts his steed,
Looking down in pride of conquest,
Where the river floods the mead.

From the heights of Salamanca,
Where they largely learned to bleed,
Eastward, eastward fled the Frenchmen,
Like scared birds with drifting speed!

Arthur to Madrid. 'Mid thunders
Of applausive patriot glee,
Showers of flowers, and smiles of beauty,
Marched the man whose march made free

Spain from galling yoke of bondage;
Cadiz on the billowy main,

242

And Seville, with Moorish grandeur,
Breathes free Spanish breath again.

Onward, northward! Not the Douro's
Sudden-swelling rapid water,
Not the Ebro, which the Roman
Oft had stained with Celtic slaughter,

Might give check to hot-spurred Arthur:
Where he came, their bristling chain
Snapt; and, in hot drift of terror
From Vittoria's blood-drenched plain,

Like a cloud they fled; like locusts
Swift before the swelling breeze,
Fled the fear-struck myriads Francewards,
O'er the cloud-capt Pyrenees.

Pampeluna, where proud Pompey
Stamped his triumph on the rock,
St Sebastian's sea-swept stronghold
From their bases felt the shock.

243

On the Bidassoa water,
With well-ordered rank on rank,
Lo! the conquering banner waveth
O'er the proud soil of the Frank!

In the vale where Karl the Kaiser,
With the paladins of France,
Turned his rear-guard on the foe,
And checked the fiery Moor's advance.

As the sandhill owns the spring tide
Swelling strong and stronger on,
Haughty Gaul now finds her master
In the strength of Wellington.

Where he comes the dread tricolor
Pales; the heart of the Garonne
Beats with loyal pulse; the white flag
Flaunts to welcome Wellington.

Onward! blood shall mingle largely
With the blood of the Garonne;

244

But in vain; the fair Toulouse
Must vail her top to Wellington.

What remains? look northward; lo!
God, who reigns in starry hall,
Hath hung forth this flaming scripture,—
“He who rose by pride shall fall.”

From his vauntful, vain believing,
Down that son of thunder fell;
Fire and Frost conspired to blast him
With the double scourge of hell.

From the flaming domes of Moscow,
From Fate's fearful-sounding knell,
From the crumbling of the Kremlin,
As a falling star he fell.

As Darius from the Scythian
Wastes, and Danube's swampy swell,

245

Clothed with shame and crushed with ruin,
As the proud man falls he fell.

Round him, as a troop of vultures,
Cossacks hover where he fled;
Beresina's purpled channel
Groans beneath her up-heaped dead.

Like a thief that flees from Justice,
With sharp vengeance in his rear,
Through the storm and through the darkness,
Lonely, with no helper near.

Vistula and Warta know him
As they knew him not before;
Then the master, now the outlaw,
Pale with rage and red with gore.

All the troops of trampled peoples
Rise to hound him where he falls;
Elbe to Rhine and Rhine to Weser
For a swift redemption calls.

246

Prussia, from her sore prostration,
Stiff old Austria, and the Swede,
Rose, as vengeful Furies rise,
To teach the bloody man to bleed.

On the storied plain of Leipzig,
Where the brave Gustavus bled,
Ages now shall tell to ages,
“Here the French usurper fled.”

They have chased him, they have found him,
They have bound him, as a man
Binds a bear or chains a tiger,
Hateful to the human clan.

They have prisoned him in Elba,
In the mid-sea's briny swell,
Iron-hearted rocky Elba,
With his own proud heart to dwell.

But not Elba long might hold him;
Like a lion from his den,

247

Bolting madly 'cross the mid-sea,
Lo! he stands in France again!

And a soldier-people rises
To his call with eyes of wonder,
With the reborn lust of battle,
Dreams of glory and of plunder.

From the bristling Belgian barrier,
Like a Jove he thunders down;
Prussia's Eagle cowers at Ligny,
From the terror of his frown.

But not England, lion-hearted,
Flinched till the great work was done;
Crowned with conquest, braced with purpose,
Forth she sends her Wellington,

With red scourge to scourge the scourger;
Not his eye with terror saw,
Clouds of deathful thunder drifted
From the woods at Quatre Bras.

248

Cool as Neptune when his Tritons
Bear him o'er the foamy tide;
Light as Hermes, from the festive
Hall at Brussels he did ride

Forth to battle, when the whistling
Blasts around him fiercely blew,
Till he stood with calm assurance
On high-fated Waterloo.

Stood and faced the Gallic charges,
Hoofs of fire, and iron hail,
Firm as granite rock the billows
Spurred by the Atlantic gale.

Let them launch their thunder wildly
O'er the field and up the steep,
Ever ready, ever steady,
English Arthur knows to keep

His chosen ground; and knows to wait
The fateful hour, when, hand in hand

249

With brave Blücher faithful-hearted,
He on conquered ground shall stand.

He firm-planted, they wide-scattered,
Hither, thither, in deray,
With the lawless lust of empire
Nevermore to vex the day.

And the Power that stirred the slaughter,
Pride's fell minion, where is he?
To a lone rock they have bound him
In the far Atlantic sea,

There to chew the cud of self-sown
Sorrows; for the gods are just;
And 'tis written: “Whoso madly
Tempts the sky shall bite the dust.”

Hippomane Mancinella; order Euphorbiaceæ.