The visions of England :: :: University of Virginia Library

The visions of England

Lyrics on leading men and events in English history by Francis T. Palgrave

Palgrave, Francis Turner (1824-1897)

[section]

Collapse All | Expand All expand section

132

THE BALLAD OF KING MONMOUTH

1685

Fear not, my child, though the days be dark,
Never fear, he will come again,
With the long brown hair, and the banner blue,
King Monmouth and all his men!

The summer-smiling bay
Has doff'd its vernal gray;
A peacock breast of emerald shot with blue:
Is it peace or war that lands
On these pale quiet sands,
As round the pier the boats run-in their silent crew?

Bent knee, and forehead bare;
That moment was for prayer!
Then swords flash out, and—Monmouth!—is the cry:
The crumbling cliff o'erpast,
The hazard-die is cast,
'Tis James 'gainst James in arms! Soho!

the watch-word on Monmouth's side at Sedgemoor; his London house was in the Fields, (now Square), bearing that name.

and Liberty!

—Fear not, my child, though he come with few;
Alone will he come again;
God with him, and his right hand more strong
Than a thousand thousand men!

They file by Colway now;
They rise o'er Uplyme brow;
And faithful Taunton

here the Puritan spirit was strong; and here Monmouth was persuaded to take the title of king (June 20), symbolized by the flag which the young girls of Taunton presented to him. It bore a crown with the cypher J.R.—Monmouth's own name being James.

hails her hero-knight:
And girlhood's agile hand
Weaves for the patriot band
The crown-emblazon'd flag, their gathering-star of fight.

—Ah flag of shame and woe!
For not by these who go,
Scythe-men and club-men, foot and hunger-worn,

133

These levies raw and rude,
Can England be subdued,
Or that ancestral throne from its foundations torn!

Yet by the dour deep trench

Sedgemoor lies in a marshy district near Bridgewater, much intersected by trenches or ‘Rhines.’ One, the Bussex Rhine, lay between the two armies as they fought; July 6. Monmouth was caught hiding in Cranborne Chase, July 8; executed, after a vain attempt to move the heart of his uncle the king, July 15, on Tower Hill.

Their mettle did not blench,
When mist and midnight closed o'er sad Sedgemoor;
Though on those hearts of oak
The tall cuirassiers broke,
And Afric's tiger-bands

Kirke's savage troops from Tangier.

sprang forth with sullen roar:

Though the loud cannon plane
Death's lightning-riven lane,
Levelling that unskill'd valour, rude, unled:
—Yet happier in their fate
Than whom the war-fiends wait
To rend them limb from limb, the gibbet-withering dead!

—Yet weep not, my child, though the dead be dead,
And the wounded rise not again!
For they are with God who for England fought,
And they bore them as Englishmen.

Stout hearts, and sorely tried!
—But he, for whom they died,
Skulk'd like the wolf in Cranborne, torn and gaunt:—
Till, dragg'd and bound, he knelt
To one no prayers could melt,
Nor bond of blood, nor fear of fate, from vengeance daunt.

—O hill of death and gore,
Fast by the tower'd shore,
What wealth of precious blood is thine, what tears!
What calmly fronted scorn;
What pangs, not vainly borne!
For heart beats hot with heart, and human grief endears!

134

—Then weep not, my child, though the days be dark;
Fear not; He will come again,
With Arthur and Harold and good Saint George,
King Monmouth and all his men!

Monmouth's invasion forms one of the most brilliant,—perhaps the most brilliant,—of Lord Macaulay's narratives. But many curious details are added in the History by Mr. G. Roberts (1844).

The belief, which this poem represents, that ‘King Monmouth,’ as he was called in the West, would return, lasted long. He landed in Lyme Bay, June 11, 1685, between the Cobb (Harbour-pier) and the beginning of the Ware cliffs: marching north, after a few days, by the road which left the ruins of Colway House on the right and led over Uplyme to Axminster.