Sonnets Round the Coast :: :: University of Virginia Library

Two thousand years have not unseated thee,
Thou dauntless rider of the dolphin king.
Thy father's horses with their brass hooves ring
In the deep watery stall, but o'er the sea
Thou, with exultant arm stretched forth in glee,
Wilt guide thy lustrous steed that curvetting
Moves thro' the flood, a joyous-hearted thing,
Glad as the waves that bound towards Italy.
Earth has its charms, the vales, the moveless hills
Can soothe the unimpressionable mood
And mould the heart they prison—but the waves
Call with a voice of jubilance that thrills
All souls who thirst for swift vicissitude,
We clap our hands—we are no longer slaves.

II. OCEAN, THE CAPTIVE.

Men call thee free, and I have heard the wind
Pass landward, breathed of liberty and thee,
Have watched thy white-maned horses prancing free,
As if their courses could not be confined:
But deeper than the hand of man has mined
Are set the bolts of thy captivity;
From higher than the eyes of man can see
The jealous moon thy limbs doth strangely bind.
Thou moanest, “I that am the heaven's own child,
Why, laid within the cruel, cradling shores,
Should I but grow to feel a prisoner's pains?”
And, like a giant fretting in his chains,
Thou thunderest at Earth's never-yielding doors,
Untamed and tameless and unreconciled.

III. THE ISLE OF WIGHT.

Isle of the blossoming myrtle and the bay,
Of elm, and snowy cliff, and sunny down,
King-makers can assure no lasting crown,
Song-makers bear the sceptre that must stay.
With Beauchamp passed thy dynasty away,
But to thy royal seat of high renown
Came one whom all the gentle muses own:
His reign is young, albeit his locks are grey.
Thou hast thy king—nor yet unqueened thou art,
Crown-wearied, here, our Sovereign finds her rest,
Where, like a jewel that chance blows may turn,
Set in the gleaming Solent, thou dost burn
To fence from wind and foe our sailor heart—
Thou fairest island-gem on England's breast!

VII. AFTER THE EPILOGUE TO THE CHARGE OF THE HEAVY BRIGADE.

When blackbirds fluted 'twixt the day and night,
And you clomb up the down toward the stars,
My heart went with you, for the thoughtful bars
Of that last music had possessed me quite.
True seer, I cried, you have delivered right
The only message that, to heal our scars,
Unriddling these dread necessary wars,
Can crown with song the soldier's deed of might.
For till these bastions crumble with the frost,
Or earth shall meet the sun and melt in fire,
Some new-won land shall court the jealous eye,
Some voice shall startle lust and tyranny,
Some heart refuse to own the battle lost,
Some patriot find in death his soul's desire.

VIII. AT THE NEEDLES, ISLE OF WIGHT.

When the Phœnician sailors, for their store
Of moon-white metal, dropped to yonder bay,
These broken cliffs were memories day by day
Of that far land from whence they plied the oar.
For ever 'twixt the sunset and the shore
With chalk-hewn hunch the monster camel lay
Beneath the bellowing cape, and through the spray
They seemed to hear the bull of Babel roar,
Giant and human-headed; so they passed
With prayer to mighty Melkarth and to Bel,
And steered towards the island's furnace fire,
They felt o'ershadowed by the walls of Tyre,
In fancy saw the smoke of Sidon cast
Upon the waters Ashtoreth loved well.

IX. BY THE BARROW ON AFTON DOWN, FRESHWATER, ISLE OF WIGHT.

Buried beneath this mound, whoe'er ye be,
Briton, or Cerdric's sons that smote old Rome,
And dispossessed her of this island home,
And scared her yelping eagles out to sea—
Before ye slept upon this solemn lea,
Between the tranquil Solent and the foam,
Ye heard the same voice with the springtime come
That fills mine ears and sets my fancy free.
For still from winding Yar the peewits call,
The waves are loud beneath the white cliff wall,
Still from the landward pastures at my feet
Lambs tremulous cry and anxious mothers bleat,
And in the gorse, new-gilded by the spring,
With notes ye knew I hear the blackbird sing.

XI. THE LIGHTHOUSE AT THE NEEDLES.

Thro' the blue mist that mingled night and day,
Down the deep Solent's melancholy tide,
We, passing swift, three phantom vessels spied,
Their sails full set—but neither swing nor sway;
Full to the front toward the darkening bay
The reddest moon of harvest seemed to ride,
“The Needles, ho!” a sturdy seaman cried,
And all my dream of fancy passed away.
Yet much I marvelled how the waters' hand
Could rend the rocks, and pierce the Needles thro';
But most at him whose potent skill had planned
Such sure protection for the homebound crew,—
Who raised this tower, and filled with rosy light
The star that sets not upon any night.

XII. PORTLAND.

Here Hope is dead, and Love has flown away,
And only here the beast within the man;
By bolt and cage and fortress barbican
Curbed, and in chains, can pass hard hours away;
Till the red hand is raised again to slay,
And feet that once so innocently ran
Strive against desperate odds for larger span—
Then the swift bullet sings, and all is clay.
Dark like a gibbet, o'er the quarry hangs
The frequent crane, and with its funeral dirge
The far-off sea-bell sounds upon the height,
And only fear of death avails to urge
The sullen toil of the laborious gangs,
Till death in mercy bring the dreaded night.

XIII. THE MIGUEL D'AQUENDA: WEYMOUTH.

The shepherd Britons, dwellers by the sea,
Who watched the dark Phœnicians hither come,
Or later heard, along the banks of Frome,
The Roman eagles scream, and turned to flee
To that green rampart on the Dorset lea,
Were not more troubled for their gods and home
Than when our fathers saw above the foam
The great D'Aquenda's galleon going free.
Men clenched their first and muttered; women pale,
Pale as the Lulworth cliffs, went sobbing by:
“And is all lost, and are we prize to Spain?
And have our Weymouth gallants fought in vain?”
When out above the huge D'Aquenda's sail
They saw old England's glorious ensign fly.

XIV. PLYMOUTH HARBOUR-SUNDAY.

Is it not well that England sends her sons
From such proud harbours, such fair haunts as these,
To wage their battle with the roaring seas,
And shout for victory with their cloudy guns;
Here where the shifting wall of white foam runs
For ever Soundward, where baronial trees
Blend the waves' whisper with the hum of bees
And sweet church bells ring down their benisons?
Yes, when the sailor's heart is strung for fight
Thou, Edgecumbe, shalt be present in that hour,
The Hoe and Hamoaze, clear before his sight,
Shall nerve his arm and lend his spirit power;
And if he fall, yet falling will he smile,
Dead for the love of this his native Isle.

XV. OLD EDDYSTONE LIGHTHOUSE, PLYMOUTH HOE.

Not often do we find old age like this,
After long tempest perdurable proved,
From out the rush of water floods removed
And set on sunny earth of calm and bliss;
But it is well, brave tower, though here we miss
The fire of resolute-heartedness we loved,
The zeal for lives, that, lost in darkness, roved
Through booming surges and the breakers' hiss.
And if within thy granite-builded core
No longer tempest shakes the heart of man,
Nor waves without lift hands to quench thy star,
The centuries still shall bless thee, and from far,
While nations gather marvelling at thy plan,
Thine age shall grow in honour more and more.

XVI. SIR FRANCIS DRAKE, THE HOE.

Mould him in bronze, or hew him out of stone,
His name shall live beyond what hands can make,
Who with his fifty fighting men durst rake
That sea which, heaving cloth of gold, had shone
Since first those long grey eyes had looked thereon,
And he had felt the South Pacific wake
Unconquerable daring,—gallant Drake,
Prince, sailor, soldier, buccaneer, in one.
Three years 'neath flying suns and wandering moons
He sailed his Hind, the sea-scourge of the world,
Then, round the Horn, as full as hull could hold
Of Devon's courage and of Spain's doubloons,
Steered home, but England never since has furled
Her sails of enterprise in lust for gold.