The visions of England Lyrics on leading men and events in English history by Francis T. Palgrave |
WHITEHALL GALLERY
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The visions of England | ||
WHITEHALL GALLERY
February 11: 1685
'Mid Babylonian gold,
And picture-woven walls, and lamps that gleam'd
Unholy radiance, sate,
And with some smooth slave-mate
Toy'd, and the wine laugh'd round, and music stream'd
Voluptuous undulation, o'er the hall,—
Till on the palace-wall
And wrote the judgment-sign,
And Babylon fell!—So now, in that his place
Of Tudor-Stuart pride,
The golden gallery wide,
'Mid venal beauty's lavish-arm'd embrace,
And hills of gambler-gold, a godless King
Moved through the revelling
And lips of gay reply;
Wise in the wisdom not from Heaven!—as one
Who from his exile-days
Had learn'd to scorn the praise
Of truth, the crown by martyr-virtue won:
Below ambition:—Grant him regal ease!
The rest, as fate may please!
Not by the bitter sword,
But when the heart
The weariness of England under the triple yoke of Puritanism, the Independents, and the Protector, has been already noticed: (Note on p. 125).
‘The Restoration,’ says Professor Seeley, in an able essay on current perversions of seventeenth-century-history, ‘was not a return to servitude, but the precise contrary. It was a great emancipation, an exodus out of servitude into liberty . . . As to the later Stuarts, I regard them as pupils of Cromwell: . . it was their great ambition to appropriate his methods,’ (and, we may add, to follow his foreign policy in regard to France and Holland), ‘for the benefit of the old monarchy. They failed where their model had succeeded, and the distinction of having enslaved England remained peculiar to Cromwell.’
Full, triple, unison beat
The Martyr's son to greet,
Rethroned,—not thus!—in this inglorious hall
Of harem-festival,
The blaze is on thy brow
Scored by the shadowy hand of him whose wing
Knows neither haste nor rest;
Who from the board each guest
In season calling,—knight and kerne and king,—
Where Arthur lies, and Alfred, signs the way;—
—We know him, and obey.
The visions of England | ||