University of Virginia Library

VII
OUR DAY

Basil Vivian
Basil
The chill wind whispers winter: night sets in;
And now, by many a sounding thoroughfare,
Life, like a tidal wave, begins to fill
The theatres and halls and hidden nooks,
Wherein it clangs and seethes and spends itself. Enter Lionel

And whence come you?

Vivian
From wandering to and fro
Somewhere in London—London the unknown;
Which none can ever know, none ever see,
But only wonder at and wander in!

Basil
The City of the World, ancient and proud,
Vast, thronged, and awful; richer than the floor
Of ocean and its unsacked treasure-house;
An insolent city and a beautiful;
A place of mirth and sadness infinite:
Of infinite horror, infinite despair,
Infinite courage and felicity.
What! Do we read your thoughts, your eyes that speak
Of greatnesses beheld?

Lionel
All day I saw
A greater thing than London; now at night
The ample vision looms more excellent—
The vision of a thing that shall endure
When London is as Babylon; shall shine
A jewel in eternal memory;
Shall on the summit of achievement burn,
A challenge and a beacon for the brave:
The perfect battle-pageant of the deep,
Trafalgar.

Basil
You beheld Trafalgar?

Lionel
Now!
I watch it now!

Vivian
Show us this sight of sights!
Make us behold Trafalgar and the pride
Of England, Nelson!

Lionel
Look and see; who looks
With insight, can! A fragile form,
The delicate sheath of valour absolute;
Ambition, daring, honour, constancy,
Prescience, dominion, passion, scope, design,
A woman's tenderness, an infant's awe,
An adamantine courage, mercy, power
Attuned and fateful in an invalid!
Sea-lord, sea-god, his clear, transcendent love
Endowed his friends with lustre of his own,
And saw no blemish for excess of light
Which his great spirit shed: his glittering scorn,
His hate for England's sake of England's foes,
Diviner than his love, at England's need
O'erthrew the splendid Titan who essayed
To wrest the loyal sea from English hands,
Holding in trust that greatest gift of Fate.
The Nile, the Baltic, saw his pregnant war;
The palsied navies shrivelled at his touch;
So suddenly he came, so swiftly smote,
So wholly conquered, that his deeds remain
The bulwark maritime of England's power.
Nothing could tame his soul: that ocean-hunt
About the Atlantic and about in quest
Of action France and Spain denied,
Whetted his lust of battle; long delay,
That withers enterprise and rots desire
Even of enduring things, augmented all
His purpose and matured the valiant seed
Of utmost victory. Wherefore upon the dawn
Foreknown of battle—for the Admiral said
“The twenty-first will be our day”—he paced
His quarter-gallery subtly clad already
In the shadow of his glory; prepossessed
Besides with death; and like a spirit calm
That treads the threshold of eternity.
Now, when the morning brimmed the western world,
And on the weather-gleam a headland rose
Assured of fame, and the confederate fleets
Appeared between, hull crowding hull, five miles
Of armament, our great sea-warrior bade
The battle be. Southward the ships of France,
The ships of Spain, northward the English sailed,
As if they meant to pass each other by
In some majestic ritual of the tide.
But Nelson's signals, winged like thought aloft,
Undid that minuet! Twelve sail of his,
The weather line, with Collingwood to lee,
Bore up amain—the wind west by nor'-west—
And eastward stood athwart the banded fleets,
That veered unwieldily and headed north
With safe retreat on Cadiz, till Nelson's touch
Precipitated battle—he on their van
And Collingwood against their southern flank:
Two columns opportunely; yet to the end
The sailing order held the battle-line—
Our Admiral's prophecy and inspired device.
That happy signal first: “England expects
That every man will do his duty”; then
Drums beat to quarters: gunners, stripped and girt,
The naked flesh of England against the fire
And rending bolt of England's foes, unlashed
Their ordnance: frowning crews, equipped
With linstock, priming-iron, rammer, wad,
Crowbar and handspike, cartridgé, wreaths of shot,
Stood by each carronade, each red-lipped gun;
Topman and boarder, trimmer, musketeer,
Marine and powder-boy fulfilled his post,
His deed, his errand, transfigured suddenly.
The ceremonial wind controlled the approach,
Keeping a pageant-pace; and towering sails
Of England's navy, sheeted to the sky,
Slumbered at ease, a dulcet, virgin sleep,
So placid in their bosoms the breath of heaven
Dwelt like a dream, as every vessel, groomed
For war and marshalled on the vagrant surge
Of coming tempest, rode to victory.
France fired the nuptial gun; the flags broke out
Of every nation, and the battle joined.
In front of England the Royal Sovereign first
Achieved the enemy's range. The Victory next,
Silent against a navy's broadsides, forged
Ahead; and when her double-shotted guns,
One after one, at twenty feet had ploughed
The Bucentaure endlong, aboard the doomed
Redoubtable she ran. Forthwith amid
The din of cannon against cannon, mouth
To bellowing mouth, the shriek of timber crashed
And rent, the thund'rous voice of men absorbed
In the wild trance and waking dream of war,
Carnage and agony and the rhythmic swing
And travail of the deed, as Nelson paced
His quarter-deck awaiting the superb,
Unmatched event his genius had ordained,
The fatal marksman in the enemy's top
Espied his honours and England's hero fell.
Down in the winepress of the war where blood
O'erflowed the orlop, where the wounded strewed
The noisome cockpit and the grimy sweat
Cooled on the labouring surgeons, Nelson died:
The swarthy smoke that coiled from poop to hold
Obscured the glimmering lanterns; overhead
The cannon leapt; like a taut rope the hull
Quivered from stem to stern with every shot;
And still above the thunder of the strife,
Cresting the uproar, pealed the great hurrah
Of all the English crews, as ship by ship
The baffled navies struck and Nelson's name
Became immortal.

Vivian
Such a dying deed!

Basil
So great a life, so great a death, so great
A legacy of Empire!

Lionel
All are ours,
And will be ours while Nelson's fame endures:
Great lives, great deaths for England the sea!