A Song of Heroes | ||
Τινα θεον, τιν' ηρωα, τινα δ' ανδρα κελαδησομεν;
—Pindar.
CANTO I. THE OLD WORLD
ABRAHAM.
Crowned with manhood's diadem,
Men that lift us, when we love them,
Into nobler life with them.
To their God-sent mission true,
From the ruin of the old times
Grandly forth to shape the new;
Come with freshness and with power,
Bracing fearful hearts to grapple
With the problem of the hour;
Stirs the dull, and spurs the slow,
Till the big heart of a people
Swells with hopeful overflow.
Abraham in tented state,
With his sheep and goats and asses,
Bearing high behests from Fate;
Where cool Orfa's bubbling well
Lured the Greek, and lured the Roman,
By its verdurous fringe to dwell;
Sun by day and Moon by night,
To believe in something deeper
Than the shows that brush the sight,
To a practised guide and true,
So he owned the Voice that called him
From the faithless Heathen crew.
Southward where the torrent tide
Of the sons of Ammon mingles
With the Jordan's swelling pride,
To the flowered and fragrant ground
'Twixt Mount Ebal and Gerizim,
Where the bubbling wells abound;
And to Hebron's greening glade,
Where the grapes with weighty fruitage
Droop beneath the leafy shade.
'Neath an oak-tree tall and broad,
Built there to the one true God.
And the angels of the Lord
'Neath the broad and leafy oak-tree
Knew his hospitable board;
For all peoples richly stored,
Father of the faithful, elect
Friend of God, Almighty Lord.
With high heart and weighty arm,
Wise to rein their wandering worship,
Strong to shield their homes from harm.
As a strong God-favoured man,
Like Osiris, casting broadly
Largess to the human clan.
To the pure high-thoughted creed,
That in the ripeness of the ages
Grew to serve our mortal need.
From all proud pretension free,
Shepherd-chief and shepherd-warrior,
Human-faced like you and me;
To the pure religion true;
Purer than the gay and sensuous
Grecian, wider than the Jew.
Turk and Arab, name with praise;
Common as the sun that shines
On East and West with brothered rays.
Edessa, according to a very general Jewish tradition, was the Ur of the Chaldees; but some modern inquirers prefer Mugheir, on the right bank of the Euphrates, in the bitumen district, about 120 miles above the sea.
MOSES.
By the Nile's sweet-watered stream,
In a land of strange taskmasters,
Brooding o'er the patriot theme;
Of his dear-loved Hebrew home,
Whence the eager pinch of Famine
Forced the Patriarch to roam;
Lifting vengeful arm to smite
Stint the Hebrew of his right;
Where on holy ground unshod,
He beheld the bush that burned
With unconsuming flame from God.
With his outstretched prophet-rod
To stir plagues upon the Pharaoh,
Scorner of the most high God;
From the strange taskmaster free,
And merged the Memphians, horse and rider,
In the deep throat of the sea.
Harp and timbrel, song and dance;
And with firm set will the hero
Led the perilous advance.
As a shepherd leads his flock,
Breaking spears with cursed Amalek,
Striking water from the rock.
High-embattled rock; and there,
'Mid thick clouds of smoke and thunder
That like trumpet clave the air,
And with reverent awe unshod,
As a man with men discourseth,
So he there communed with God.
Not in visions of the night,
Not in flashes of quick fancy,
Darkness sown with gleams of light,
As a builder knows his plan,
And His wondrous ways with man;
Ways of vengeance strong to smite,
Ways of large unchartered giving,
Ever tending to the right.
What no mortal sees he saw,
And from hand that no man touches
Brought the tables of the Law,
Lest untutored wit might stray,
Each man where his private fancy
Led him in a wanton way,
Of loose Arabs wandering wild,
And to fruitful acres bound them
Where ancestral virtue toiled;
With a creed divinely true,
Which subtle Greek and lordly Roman
Stooped to borrow from the Jew.
DAVID.
Whom the prophet's voice did call,
Not by haughty-hearted bearing,
Lofty looks, and stature tall;
And by locks of golden hue,
And by limbs of agile lightness,
Fair and comely to the view;
And by heart that knew no fear,
And a quick-discerning spirit
When a danger might be near.
And from tending of the ewes,
To be ruler of the people,
Samuel's prophet-eye did choose.
Grassy mead, and rocky scars;
From lone converse with the mild-faced
Moon and silent-marching stars;
When they leapt the wattled pen,
To a fight with worse than lions,
Tiger-hearted, bloody men.
To confusion of his foes,
To the splendid cares of reigning,
Him the God-sent prophet chose;
Reigned in bosom of the boy,
Leapt to find a king's employ.
Philistine of haughty Gath,
With a boastful, proud defiance,
Mailed in insolence, crossed his path.
Quailed King Saul upon his throne,
Quailed the marshalled heads of battle;
Strength in David lived alone.
But with calm composèd look,
In his hand he took a sling,
And five smooth pebbles from the brook;
And in 'mid the host alone
Prostrate laid the boastful champion
With a sling and with a stone.
On the right hand of the throne
High he sate; but mighty monarchs
Love to reign and rule alone.
With keen hatred's heavy stress,
From rock to rock, from cave to cave,
Of the houseless wilderness,
From all bonds of fealty free,
Till the hour to honour David
Came in God's foreknown decree.
Judah's trumpet-note; and all,
From Hermon's mount to well of Sheba,
Streamed to royal David's call.
Where the rock-perched Jebusite
Vainly strove to prove his might.
And the fierce Philistian crew,
And o'er the ruddy cliffs of Edom
Passed, and proudly cast his shoe.
Home he brought the golden spoil,
And Phœnician Hiram sent him
Greeting from his sea-girt isle.
The God-hewn tables of the Law,
Safely on the rock of Zion
To be kept with reverent awe;
With a sounding march of glee,
Harp and hymn, and shouts of holy
Triumph, billowing like the sea!
Not with spear, and not with sword,
With a linen ephod girded,
Danced the king before the Lord;
In the stoutness of his cheer,
How solemn fools and dainty maids
Might curve their lofty lips and jeer.
From all foes a proud release,
What remained to top his fulness?
David now might die in peace.
To the God of David's line
On the summit of Moriah
High to pile a costly shrine!
To his son, the wisest man,
To crown his life's high-reaching plan,
Seated on a kingly seat,
Shepherd, soldier, minstrel, monarch,
In all sorts a man complete.
SOCRATES.
In the case of a name of such wide significance as Socrates, it were superfluous to encumber the page with any display of learned notes. Suffice it to say that everything in the ballad is strictly historical, and taken directly from the original authorities. The indifference shown by Socrates to the αναγκαι or necessary laws of physical science, as contrasted with the freedom of practical reason in which moral science delights, is distinctly emphasised by Xenophon in the opening chapters of the ‘Memorabilia’; and the argument with the atheist—a little perking, self-sufficing creature, as atheists are wont to be—will be found at full length in the same sensible and judicious writer. It is this argument, commonly called the argument from design, that, passing through the eloquent pages of Cicero in his book ‘De Naturâ Deorum,’ has formed the groundwork of all works on Natural Theology up to the present time; and it is an argument that, however misapplied here and there by shallow thinkers and presumptuous dogmatists, has its roots so deep in the instincts of all healthy humanity, and in the very essence of reason, that, though it may be illustrated indefinitely
Of the land where wisdom grew
Native to the soil, and beauty
Wisely wedded to the true.
Of that best lore which teaches man
In a reasoned world with reason
Forth to shape his human plan.
Sun or moon, or any star,
From all human purpose far.
Feeds the Sun, or how much he
Than the lady Moon is bigger
When she sails up from the sea.
Plumbs the deep and metes the skies;
Only one great truth concerns thee,
What is nearest to thine eyes.
Idle dream and barren guess;
This the text of thy wise preaching,
Reason's prophet, Socrates.
Nature reared with pious pains,
With no blood from boasted fathers
Flowing in his sober veins.
Plied his task from day to day;
For scant silver pennies moulding
Tiny statues from the clay.
To the God-sent voice within,
Forth he walked on lofty mission,
Truth to preach and souls to win.
Brooding o'er some nice conceit;
But where the many-mingling strife
Of man with man made quick the street,
In the market where for gain
Eager salesmen tempt the buyer;
By Athena's pillared fane;
Thunders from a brazen throat,
The scales that tremble on a vote;
Where the dead most honoured sleep,
In Piræus, where the merchant
Stores the plunder of the deep.
Looking blithely round; and ever
He was centre of the ring
Where the talk was swift and clever.
Buzzing in bright summer weather,
Flocked, to hear his glib discourse,
Sophist, sage, and fool together.
Strong with suasive word to sway;
Alcibiades, bold and brilliant,
Dashing, confident, and gay.
Sharp to wield the despot's power;
Aristippus, wise to pluck
The blossom from the fleeting hour.
Said in gods he could believe
If with eyes he might behold them;
What we see we must believe.
“Do you see yourself, or me?
You may see my hand, my fingers,
But myself you cannot see.
Delicate with dainty fish,
Though unseen, unnamed, unnoted,
'Twas a cook that sauced the dish.
Rock, and river, well combined,
But the showman lurks behind.
Of the star-bespangled pole,
What we see is but the outward
Seeming of the unseen soul.
Nothing works from reason free;
All within, without, around thee,
Holds a god that speaks to thee.”
Casting seeds of truth abroad,
Seeds that grow with faithful tendance
Up to central truth in God.
Weak eyes shrink when light is nigh,
Many love the dear delusion
That lends glory to a lie.
Idle danglers in the street,
When from front of vain pretender
Deft he plucked the crude conceit,
Rankling sore in bitter breast,
One departed, and another,
Like a bird with battered crest.
And with many a factious wile
Drugged the people's ear with slander,
Stirred their hearts with sacred bile.
At Religion's fretful call
He must answer for his teaching
In the solemn judgment-hall.
Subtle-tongued like any thong,
To convert most right to wrong.
And they doomed him there to die,
And he drank the deathful hemlock,
And he died, as wise men die,
With a bright, unweeping eye,
Marching with firm step to Hades,
When the word came from on high.
ALEXANDER.
Macedonia's peerless boy,
In whose veins the blood of heroes
Ran like rivers in their joy.
Up he grew in ruddy grace,
Lithe of limb and tight of sinew,
And with eager forward face.
First to mount the restive steed,
First to chase the stag fleet-footed
O'er the hills with flying speed.
But in tricks of wit excels,
Drinking wisdom at Stagira,
From the master-thinker's wells.
Went with him; and where he came,
Subtle Greek and rude Triballi
Owned the virtue of his name.
Great souls long for large expanse;
Europe's age-long feud with Asia
Claimed the service of his lance.
Where the Sea-nymph's fervid boy
With a thousand-masted navy
Crossed to curb the pride of Troy.
On that ten years' battle-ground,
Round Pelides' grassy mound
In devout self-dedication
Crowned his tomb with bloom of flowers,
And poured sweet oil of consecration.
And a soul that spurned delay,
On to thy steep banks, Granicus,
Where in bristling close array
In proud pomp of glittering mail,
And from bend of bows gigantic
Pouring arrows thick as hail,
Blocked to free-souled Greece the road;
Through surging tide and slippery bank
On the Macedonian strode,
Where the Sardian gold was stored,
Where the knot of Fate, the Gordian,
Gaped to greet the Grecian sword.
Where Pamphylia's tideful wave
Timed its swell to leave free passage
To the footsteps of the brave.
Towered o'er Issus' widespread waters,
Where Damascus' leafy gardens
Wove green bowers for Syria's daughters.
Sea-girt Tyre, his might defied;
But with heart that never fainted,
O'er its haughty-crested tide
Bowed her neck: stout Gaza yields,
To her broad sweet-watered fields,
Macedonia's marvellous boy.
He, unresting, through the sandy
Desert, with prophetic joy,
Where, with mystic word and sign,
Hornèd Ammon's priestly spokesman
Stamped his mission for divine.
In great Alexander's soul
Rose, God-sent, a pregnant fancy,
Where the Coptic waters roll,
By old Pharos' rocky isle,
There to found a mighty city
Where the Greek should rule the Nile,
Bravely streeted east and west,
With the name of Alexander
Stamped upon its stony breast.
Nurse of Commerce, queen of trade,
Whence Greek wit and Christian saintship
Rayed a glory largely shed;
Calmly measuring forth the true,
Shook hands with the prophet-passion
Of the fiery-hearted Jew,
Marched, blind pioneer of God,
With Fate behind and Fate before him,
Eastward on his conquering road;
Pours his fattening waters wide,
Tigris rolls her foamy tide
Where, in long-drawn tented show,
All the pride of golden Persia
Stood expectant of the foe!
Making wise Pausanias quake;
But in soul of Alexander
Swelled a tide no bar could break.
Drifting helmless from the blast,
Great Darius with his princes
O'er the Zagrian mountains passed:
Refuge, which more wisely he,
From his generous-hearted victor,
Might have craved on bended knee
Where the gold is piled in bales,
And Choaspes laves the meadows
Where the fruitful green prevails.
Where Persepolis nursed the dream
Of the haughty-hearted Xerxes,
To lay bonds on Helle's stream.
Made short call on Alexander.
As a foam-faced mountain-torrent,
With a gentle slow meander
Of inglorious ease, his motion
Spurs, and with exultant billow
Roars at thunder-speed to ocean,
From golden bowls the red wine drinking,
And every power that strangles thinking.
Helmed his head, and looked around,
Finely pricked with eager joyaunce,
Like a keen unkennelled hound.
Where great Cyrus set a bound
To the loose unchastened Scythians,
Like a tempest drifting round.
Knew not back; and as on wings,
Up the steep-faced Bactrian fastness
Deftly climbs, and bravely brings
Of the king, to be his bride.
What remained? Paropamisus,
With its mountain-rampart wide,
Rest, till he prevailed to bind
With strong bonds of human kinship
Westmost Greece and Eastmost Ind.
Steep, Aornos, he prevailed,
Which the stout son of Alcmena
Three times dared, and three times failed.
Nysa, praised by the Hindoo,
With its wreaths of cooling ivy,
And its groves of laurel, knew.
Porus stood, high-statured king,
With his elephants and chariots
Bristling wide from wing to wing.
Through its flood, nor knew to cease
Bowed the subject knee to Greece.
Tideful ocean owned his rule,
And with grateful grace to Neptune
There he sacrificed a bull.
Through a wide unwatered waste,
Through thy burning sands, Gedrosia,
Back his stout-souled march he traced;
In the garb of gladness dressed,
Sent their missioned chiefs to greet him
Umpire of the East and West.
This conclusion of such a brilliant career may seem abrupt; but so it was in fact. The fatigues of his Indian and Gedrosian march, along with the heat of the season, not unassisted in all probability by the festive potations in which the Macedonians indulged, ended in a fever, which carried him off in a few days at the early age of thirty-two, b.c. 323. See Arrian, vii. 24-28.
What he proudly sought he gained:
Greece had conquered the Barbarian;
Where he throned her, she remained.
CÆSAR.
Now stands forth in iron mailed,
Who by patient plan, and manly
Will, and might of hand prevailed;
Rose, hard toil and sober cheer,
Stern-faced Law and strict obedience,
Sacred reverence and fear;
Fell, by insolence of sway,
When in pride of strength the strong man
Tramped the weak man in the clay;
All the trash that gold can buy,
Piles of grandeur, seas of glitter,
Shows that feed the lustful eye;
Fish-ponds, towers that flaunt the sky,
Purple pomp and pillowed pleasure,
And a wine-cup seldom dry,
Hearted zeal for common good,
With a fevered lust of getting,
Each man what he nearest could—
But with rage of tigerhood,
Plunging, tearing on to power
Through seas of bribery and blood.
Fought and foamed like fretted cattle;
And lofty aim controlled the battle.
Shrinking from a forceful blow,
Nor with insolent triumph trampling
In the mire a fallen foe.
In the soldier's kingly school,
In an age when only swords
Gave strength to stand or right to rule,
Wise to wait the ripening hour,
Quick to seize the breeze of favour,
Up the strong man clomb to power.
Sway the passion of the hour;
But when Fate will seal her charter,
Then the soldier comes with power.
Bravely in his curule chair,
With his rods and with his lictors,
What is Cæsar scheming there?
With sharp sword and strong decree,
O'er the Lusitanian mountains
Pushed the Empire to the sea.
Strangle violence with law,
Drag to public reprobation
Grasping hand and greedy maw.
Might not slake great Cæsar's thirst;
Where an arm might strike for mastery,
There he panted to be first.
Lopped the pride of Mithridates,
Wedded Tiber to Euphrates;
Memory nursed the glorious day
When mighty Marius, seven times Consul,
To the fierce Celts blocked the way,
He, like Marius, would go forth,
And with Roman sword and sentence
Tame the rude hordes of the North.
Nursed in Hyperborean snows,
Pour their wasteful swarms, like locusts,
Where fair-fielded Padus flows.
German and Helvetian hordes,
Westward with wild fury ramping,
Call for sweep of Roman swords.
And in fine short-sworded line,
Grappling as a Roman grapples,
Drave the Teuts across the Rhine.
Sober water-drinking men,
On the banks of Meuse and Sambre
Bowed the neck to Cæsar then.
Match for the immortal gods,
Felt that more than gods were near them,
Where great Cæsar showed his rods.
Flowed about with briny tides,
Can maintain their rocky townships
Where great Cæsar's soul presides.
Now his foot of venture knows:
Sweep, where Thames majestic flows,
Glance the time not distant saw
When the rude and painted Nomads,
In stern school of Roman law
In the grace of fixed abodes,
Roman towns and Roman villas,
Roman camps and Roman roads.
From Britannia's cloudy home
To blue Rhone, all breathe with safety
'Neath the sheltering wing of Rome.
Who hath made his country great?
Shall he march in pomp of triumph,
Crowned with laurel, through the gate?
Consul twice with loud acclaim;
Consul, Censor, every title
That can top a Roman name?
Thanks come from patrician breast,
Faction-mongers, plotters, hirelings,
In the robe of statesmen dressed.
Glance with conscious guilt they cower,
Who with unbribed hand will rudely
Stint their merchandise of power.
But when Cæsar claimed his right
At the gates of Rome, great Pompey
With his minions winged their flight
Thence across the Adrian foam,
'Gainst the noblest man in Rome.
Never sure and ever late,
But who strikes with swift directness
Is the minister of Fate.
Pompey, with thy craven crew;
Prideful greed that grew to rashness,
In God's time shall have its due.
Foplings in soft luxury born,
Them stout Cæsar's hard-faced veterans
Mowed like swathes of bending corn.
Foot adventurous reached the Nile;
There, from sacred seats, on Pompey
Frowning Fate might learn to smile.
In a friend oft finds a foe;
On the shores of Nile the headless
Pompey lies in ghastly show.
With stiff neck and lofty head,
Holding guard in Honour's temple,
Where the god within had fled.
Of old Rome the Fate defied,
And proudly on the coast of Afric
With self-planted dagger died.
What thing now shall Cæsar do,
Through those veins corrupt and fevered
Healthy pulses to renew?
By firm law and not by blood—
Strangling faction in the bud.
But a firm-compacted State,
Where every limb subserves the headship,
Shall make mighty Cæsar great.
At his word red slaughter flows,
But with large and free forgiveness
He repays the hate of foes.
Hollow hearts in purple dressed,
But from men he made the Senate,
Proved the bravest and the best.
Of the fine soft-feathered crew,
Lest the mud should soil their shoe.
Reverent show he might compel,
But their hearts with deadly rancour
And with bitter hatred swell.
To the dogs; before the swine
Pearls; and for his noble rashness
Cæsar now must pay the fine.
In petitioner's humble guise,
With the servile smile of falsehood
Gleaming in their traitor eyes.
Seated in his curule chair,
Uprightness clothed, they stabbed him there.
Fell great Cæsar; but not waned
His star with him. In world-wide Empire
Cæsar's work and name remained.
ST PAUL.
Stirs my soul and shapes my song,
March of love divinely fervid,
March of truth divinely strong.
How the lordly Roman drew
Fountain of new life pure-blooded
From the mean unvalued Jew.
With his cunning fence of wit,
At the feet of Hebrew teachers
Learned with greedy ear to sit.
Where grave judgment loves to dwell,
Wisest of the seventy wise men,
Sate the wise Gamaliel.
Of the wise words of the men,
Noting all their sharp decisions
With quick ear and faithful pen,
Slight of limb, and with an high-
Mounting forehead, and beneath
Well-massed brows a piercing eye.
Gave from God, and memoried well
Taught by wise Gamaliel.
Counting danger for a jest,
When strong love, or mighty hatred,
Flowed like spring-tide in his breast.
Bred in Jesus' lowly school,
With a loose unlicensed doctrine
Spurn the high priest's lawful rule.
With a death of heavy stoning,
For his rude-mouthed contradiction,
Give the Law its due atoning.
Vengeance, and with purpose fell,
In the holy city's cincture
Nevermore such brood shall dwell.
Chases with a keen-nosed hound,
To Gerizim, to Mount Tabor,
To Mount Hermon's utmost bound.
Where the hated sect prevailed,
Old and young, and to the prison's
Gloomy den of durance haled.
In the fever of his wrath—
When, behold! a flash from Heaven
Flared across his blinded path.
“Saul, O Saul! what moveth thee
With hot breath of persecution
Sharply thus to follow me?
Thou shalt learn there what to do.
There shall shape thy course anew.”
Where the white-walled splendour gleams
Through the wide-spread green, the dowry
Of the many-branching streams.
And the servant of the Lord
Touched him there with spirit-piercing
Power of truth and healing word.
From long death, into a new
Stretch of blissful life, with warmer
Pulse of love and larger view.
There with searching thought to pray
O'er the purpose of the Lord,
That led him in a wondrous way.
The inner soul of things he saw,
Soul of Right that for its service
Brooketh fleshly forms of Law,
Idle eye and wandering foot,
Till the bud grow to the blossom,
Till the blossom grow to fruit.
Feasts that wait upon the moon,
Prayers with formal iteration
Conned at matin-bell or noon.
Sanctities that brush the skin,
Making clean the fleshly cover,
Leaving foul the soul within.
Hearts unholy big with pride,
Tithes and taxes multiplied.
Passed in penitent review;
And he cast old things behind him,
And he leapt into the new.
By Orontes' winding flood,
Here the new pure faith, firm rooted,
First shot forth a lusty bud.
Came; and holy brethren there
Sent him forth on wings of faith,
The message of God's love to bear
Where the foam-born Paphian queen
Turned to shame the grace of beauty
With unholy rites obscene.
Swayed the wise proconsul's mind,
But with ban of condemnation
Smote the godless sorcerer blind.
O'er the rough Pisidian ridges,
Over cliffs that knew no pathway,
Over floods that knew no bridges.
'Neath the scowling tempest's frown,
Lashed by scourge of persecution
From unfriendly town to town;
Dreary slope and cheerless meadow,
On to Derbe, on to Lystra,
Where the black mount casts his shadow.
Circling round to gaze on Paul,
At the preacher's potent call,
Come to earth in mortal guise;
And they came with ox and garlands,
And with smoke of sacrifice
Souled rebuke he raised his hand,
And named the God that owns all worship,
Lord of sky and sea and land.
Where the lewd unchastened priest
Serves the car-drawn mighty mother
Cybele, the Earth, and, as such, drawn by a car of lions; a representation familiar to the student of coins and marbles. The chief site of her worship was Pessinus in Phrygia (Strabo, xii. 567), whence, as identified with the Latin Rhea, her image was transferred to Rome in the time of the Hannibalian war (Livy, xxix. 11). Closely allied to her, perhaps only a local variation, is the many-breasted goddess seen on the coins of Ephesus, whom some Greeks superficially confounded with their own Artemis or Diana; referred to in the text, and familiar to readers of the Bible from the part she plays in Acts Apost., xix.
Of each huge-maned tawny beast;
And their carnal creed denied,
And new spirit-life within them
Sprang from Christ the crucified.
Touched by power of truth divine,
O'er the broad Ægean waters
Greece must bow to Palestine.
On Philippi's storied plains
Many a generous host received him,
Unbound from unworthy chains.
Gladly goes where dangers wait,
So the wisest of the wise men
Paul will front in high debate.
Where Athena's pillared shrine
Looks serenely o'er the gardened
Wealth of olive and of vine.
And a looser-girdled crew—
With quick ears for something new.
May amuse an hour to hear;
Dreamful Jews are wisely answered,
When a subtle Greek shall sneer.
Thus he spake,—“well known to me
Is your vague and wide-armed worship
Of all idol gods that be.
Scriptured to the god unknown;
God is known in all His doings,
God supreme, and God alone;
God whose love makes glad the earth,
God from whom this well-compacted
Cosmos takes its wondrous birth;
Common-blooded, great and small,
Breathing common breath that pulses
Through the oneness of the All;
As man in silver or in stone,
Broad as day, and wide as space,
And in no human likeness shown.
Born of Hebrew seed, declared,
And in fulness of the ages
His eternal counsel bared,
Fancy men may forge a lie,
Human gods to touch and handle,
Gods to sell, and gods to buy.
With a reasonable faith
What the God-sent teacher saith;
In dim gleamings scantly shed,
Now revealed; and with miraculous
Rising raised up from the dead;
To be judge of all below,
Greek and Hebrew, bond and freeman,
In the day that He doth know.”
Some denied; a noble few
Nursed the seed of truth that soon
To world-wide green luxuriance grew.
Courier pace that spurns repose,
Where the sickliest sick are pining,
There the good physician goes.
Pomp of art and golden splendour,
From the earthly Aphrodite
He redeemed the gross offender.
In her many-breasted pride,
From her many-pillared temple
Flings her glamour far and wide.
Nobly true and simply wise,
He dispersed a drift of babblers
Making merchandise of lies.
In rich Asia's fair domains,
Hoary Error feels a tremor
Travelling through her fretful veins.
Hasty-marching doom foretells,
Breast with sacred rancour swells.
Paul on pious quest doth go;
There he stands with calm assurance,
As a man that knows his foe.
They have vowed to work his woe;
He hath called for help to Cæsar,
And to Cæsar he shall go.
O'er the mid-sea's stormy roar,
Bound with fetters, heaped with slander,
To Imperial Latium's shore
The long Appian Way to Rome,
And beneath the Seven Hills' shelter
Found a prison and a home.
Showed more mercy than the priest;
Cæsar's truthful doom the true man
From their net of lies released.
Eagle to the extreme West,
Where Hispania's rocky barrier
Flouts wide Ocean's billowy breast.
Like the rain, now here now there,
Bringing increase to the Churches
Watered by his kindly care.
Lulled a moment, might not pass;
Where he comes, strong hate comes with him,
Snakes are lurking in the grass.
Groans—brute, madman, devil, fool;
Where a Nero bears the rule.
Where Corruption grossly grew,
With the leaven of the Hebrew
God was making all things new.
Revelled wildly in its shame,
And ramped through blood in heathen triumph
O'er the hated Christian name.
And the lust with feeding grew,
To glut the greed of wolf-nursed Rome
With blood of Christian and of Jew.
On the bristling front of lies,
In the Prætor's hall of justice,
Looking with untroubled eyes,
Well he knew his hour was nigh,
Bravely schooled in face of foemen
As a Christian dies to die.
Close by Caius Cestius' tomb,
On the road that leads to Ostia,
There they marched him to his doom.
Forth he marched, a motley crew,
Merchants, sailors, usurers, wondering
At the calm front of the Jew.
Where three bubbling fountains flow,
O'er the dry growth of the summer
Spreading freshness from below.
And the headsman with a sword
Headless by the bubbling fountains
Laid the servant of the Lord.
“In Klopstock's ‘Messiah,’ the truths, the glorified facts being connected with more than historic belief, in the minds of men, the fictions came upon me like lies.”—Coleridge, Brandl., p. 364.
This has been my maxim throughout, specially with regard to St Paul.
CANTO II. THE MIDDLE AGES
COLUMBA.
When the ages rang the knell
Of the iron-hearted Rome,
That like a palsied Titan fell.
Where the rank corruption grew,
Paul's sure word made sweeping clearance;
Old things passed away, and new
Born far West in sea-girt home,
In the clovered green Ierne
Named, not known, by mighty Rome.
Things unvalued, worthless, weak,
To abase the lordly Roman,
To confound the subtle Greek.
Like a sanguine deluge spread,
When the axe of Diocletian
Severed Alban's holy head.
Bar from light their dark dominion;
In the far Galwegian outland
Rose the pure white shrine of Ninian.
When sweet showers uncoil the fern,
Came a host of God-sent teachers,
Serf, Palladius, Kentigern,
All the roving Scots that be,
Slopeth eastward to the sea.
Patrick brought the Gospel grace;
The Irish saint was a Scot, born at Kilpatrick in Dumbartonshire. See the article “Patricus” in Smith's ‘Dictionary of Christian Biography,’ by Dr Stokes of Dublin University; and Bishop Forbes's ‘Calendar of Scottish Saints,’ Edinburgh, 1872. Anyhow, he was a Celt, not a Saxon—as the body of the Scottish people, up to the time of Malcolm Canmore, specially in those western parts, was decidedly Celtic.
But brawls and battles, feuds and factions,
Swayed the old untempered race
From the wooded hill of Derry,
Through the foamy Loch Foyle waters
Northward sailed in wicker wherry.
For that once in plunge of passion
He had drawn the sword of vengeance,
In a hot unpriestly fashion,
In the barony of Carberry, between Drumcliff and Sligo, on the borders of Ulster and Connaught, a.d. 561. The whole details of the text are taken from Adamnan's life of the saint by Reeves, and from local study of the ground at Iona, where I resided ten days in a comfortable inn apart from the hasty sweep of steamboat tourists.
When from all the brave O'Neills
Diarmid and the men of Connaught
Fled with terror at their heels.
On Columba laid the ban,
Through Hebridean seas to voyage
And convert the Pictish clan.
He cut through the briny spray,
Till he came where whistling west winds
Flout the front of Colonsay.
When the sun unveiled the morn,
Thence he saw the dear-loved Erin
Which his chaste vow had forsworn.
Through the wild waves' tumbling roar,
Where through ragged drift of storm-cloud
Frowned the dark cone of Ben More.
Plash of waves, and windy roar,
Steeply piles her southmost shore.
Tempt his chaste eye to look back,
Tempt his heart with homeward longings
To retrace the briny track.
In the lone rock-girdled bay,
Where with wondering eye the stranger
Notes it fossiled in the clay.
The landward air a little space:
Eastward then with foot unwearied
He pursued the holy chase;
His brave apostleship, he bound
Not to rest till they should greet
The Pictish king on Pictish ground.
From a lofty seat looks forth,
Where the Ness his broad stream mingles
With the salt sea of the North.
O'er the granite ridge he sped,
Where Ben Nevis, king of mountains,
Stoutly rears his massive head.
O'er the broad moor's purple breast,
Where link on link of sistered waters
Join the North sea to the West.
Where King Brude in shaggy state
Cinctured sits with hoary Druids,
Brooding o'er the coming Fate.
And with Kenneth of Achaboe
To lay a host of demons low.
Gods of earth and air and sky,
Peopling land and peopling water
With the glamour of a lie.
They did bind the heart of Brude,
That he closed his gates against
The bearers of the holy rood.
High the virtue of the rood,
And from it flashed a light that smote
With blindness all the sorcerer brood.
Voice like thunder rolling near,
Quelled the king's obdurate stoutness
With a thrill of holy fear.
Wont to sing when he arose,
Girt with godlike strength, to prostrate
The dread muster of his foes.
Thus he sang—no idle tale,—
“How the true God o'er the false gods
Where He came did still prevail.
And Thy people did prevail,
Not by sword and not by horses,
Not by panoply of mail;
And by favour from above,
For that Thou didst hold Thy children
In the strong embrace of love.”
From the Druid's spell, the king
And like a bird with folded wing
Kissed the rood uncrowned and bare:
And with water from the fountain
Gladly they baptised him there.
And he told his people all
From the demons' thrall to loose them
At Columba's saintly call.
Where he landed for his dower,
There to work in sacred college
God's soul-healing work with power.
Feuds and wars without release,
There the saintly son of Phelim
Taught the gentle arts of peace.
There he drained the miry bog,
There he wove the wattled cabin,
Hewed the tree and piled the log.
He laid bare Earth's fruitful breast,
To the wooing of the breezes
Wafted from the genial West.
Where the grass once sourly grew,
And where prickly furze was rampant
Apple-blossoms came to view.
Wisely in warm hives he stored;
Milk and eggs and fish supplied
Chaste feeding to his sober board.
There were fed the saintly men,
Writing with a faithful pen.
Evermore at matin chime,
They made sweet their souls with music
From pure text and holy rhyme.
Each man to his function true,
With ungrudging sweet obedience
To high-saintly wisdom due;
And the weak man loved the strong,
And brothered work with work was mingled
Like sweet notes in cunning song.
Nicely reared in learnèd school,
To subdue the lawless-roving
Heathen to the Christian rule.
Sent them missioned o'er the sea,
Sent them southward to Bernicia,
Sent them northward to Maree.
Shedding smiles and blessings round,
At the solemn hour of midnight
Kneeling upon holy ground,
In his memory wisely stored,
“No good thing shall e'er be wanting
To His saints that seek the Lord.”
All alone with God in prayer;
And he raised his eyes to heaven,
And beheld in vision fair
And he heard with raptured ear
Angel-voices hymning near.
Shone; the church was filled with light,
And the white-smocked brethren saw it
Gleaming through the hazy night.
Presence of the prayerful man,
Where he lay with sideward-drooping
Head, and visage pale and wan.
And he mildly looked around,
And he raised his arm to bless them,
But it dropped upon the ground.
On the arms that held him dear,
And his dead face looked upon them
With a light serene and clear.
Surely hovered round his head,
For alive no loveliest ever
Looked so lovely as this dead.
ALFRED.
Alfred, king, and clerk, and bard;
Triple name, and triple glory,
By no stain of baseness marred.
Blood of Egbert in his veins;
Reaper of the past, and sower
Of the future, Alfred reigns.
Slept well-cradled in his breast,
Grew to world-wide reach of lordship
From the Saxon of the West.
Oak and beech in breezy play,
'Mid green England's gardened beauty,
Up he shot into the day;
'Neath a mother's gentle care,
Osburh, with a soul as kindly
As the balmy summer air.
And he drank with greedy ear
Tales of old ancestral glory,
When no plundering Danes were near.
And his eye with joy did swell,
When with mother's love she mingled
Matin chant and vesper bell.
From a song or from a book;
Of a gesture or a look.
Linnet, finch, or crow, or sparrow,
Pecking seed with lively beak,
From brown track of hoe or harrow;
In bright glow of summer weather,
Wise the thorny spray to plunder,
Or the tufts of purple heather.
But with soul untaught to fear,
He, in Hubert's craft the foremost,
Lanced the boar and chased the deer.
Grew, and kind embrace of home,
But with wondering eye young Alfred
Saw the pomp of mighty Rome.
And more wise with vagrant ken,
What to shun and what to gather
From the works of diverse men.
From the rude sea-roving clan,
Storms to front with manly stoutness,
When the youth should be a man.
From the sharp and biting East,
Growing with the greed of plunder,
Ever as their spoil increased,
Of the Ouse, ship-bearing, sweep
Round the palace of the Cæsars;
Where on Durham's templed steep
Slept in keep of holy men;
Clave the clod and drained the fen,
Trampling under foot profane,
Revelling in blood and murder,
Lust and rapine, came the Dane.
Where the fruitful fields are spread,
From its trunk the savage Ingvar
Severed Edmund's holy head.
Thames with gentle-flowing water
Shrank perturbed, and castled Reading
Wept o'er fields of crimson slaughter.
With the young man's pride of daring,
Scaled the bristling steep of Ashdown,
Fined them there with loss unsparing.
Big with ever new supplies,
Widely spread the snow-fed waters
O'er the green embankment rise,
Self-recruited more and more,
Sweep with swelling devastation
All the vexed Devonian shore.
Alfred fled, but might not yield;
In a tangled maze of marshes,
Westmost Somerset did shield
With the lowliest in the land,
There, a cowherd with the cowherds,
And a scanty faithful band,
Wandering in poor harper's guise,
Alfred waits with faithful eyes.
With King David's holy psalm,
'Mid the swell and roar of danger
He doth keep his spirit calm.
Holy Cuthbert, from the Tyne,
Came and filled with bread his basket,
Filled his scanted cup with wine.
In the isle of Athelney,
Where the creeping stream disputes
Its doubtful border with the sea:
Till the favouring hour; and then,
At his call the golden dragon,
Over forest, moor, and fen,
Spread its wing. With heavy loss,
At Ethandune, the savage Viking
Bit the ground, and kissed the cross.
King as few great kings may be;
He hath gained his crown by labour,
He hath set his people free.
With a faith that never failed,
With an eye that watched and waited,
With a strong arm that prevailed,
What remains for him to do?
What the great man ever doeth,
From the old to shape the new:
But with gently guiding hand,
As a father guides his children,
Spreading union through the land.
Turned rude souls to loyal awe;
Christ and Moses, nicely blended,
Swayed his soul and shaped his law.
He might knock at Alfred's gate;
If a rich man wronged a poor man,
He must fear a felon's fate.
By the road in Alfred's time,
No rude hand might dare remove it,
Such sure vengeance followed crime.
Touch he swayed the pulse of home,
And the sacred state of Rome,
Saxon Alfred's greeting came,
And the remnant of St Thomas
Hailed the omen of his name.
Alfred triumphed with the sword;
O'er the scholar's book of learning
He with pious patience pored.
Doing Thought is rightful lord;
And the pen indites the wisdom
That gives honour to the sword.
He embraced his kingly throne,
And their wisdom, freely subject,
Paid rich tribute to his own.
Healing herbs from field and shore,
So from Saxon books and Latin
Alfred swelled his thoughtful store.
Everywhere he culled the best;
Gospel grace and Stoic sentence
Warmed his heart and mailed his breast.
Greekish school and monkish college,
Where the seed of truth was scattered,
Alfred reaped the crop of knowledge;
Darkness, all that loved the light,
All that called him England's darling,
Champion of the Saxon right.
Long from troublous clouding clear;
Taints the summer joy with fear.
Dashed his cup of bliss with bale,
And the Viking oared his galleys
Up the tide of Kentish Swale.
Where the Land's End flouts the main,
Up fair Bristol's tideful channel,
Winged with ruin came the Dane.
High-ridged Cambria bowed her head,
Where in pride of devastation
Hasting came with iron tread.
Stands amid the crashing wood,
Rooted in the strength of Alfred
Stout old Wessex bravely stood.
Must devise the needful wile;
On the sea to meet the sea-king
Alfred knew by Vectis'isle.
England's navy in the germ,
And the sea-king's wingèd pinnace
With unwonted swift alarm
Breathed with full lungs free from fear;
Nor again in face of Alfred
Might the plundering Dane appear.
Laves the fort of stout King Lud,
Westward where the bluff-faced granite
Mocks old Ocean's fretful flood,
Once a field of wasteful strife,
By the labour of his life;
Down to sleep, and down to die,
Finished with the earthly, ready
For new launch of life on high.
WALLACE AND BRUCE.
Sons of Jove to help our need,
Then when Norman Edward lusted
For wide sway benorth the Tweed.
In rude rapine born and bred,
Bold as lion, fierce as tiger,
When they came with iron tread,
Wise to weave a web of lies,
Where a lie might seem the shortest
Way to snatch a glittering prize.
Drew his state, and drew his blood,
Drew the despot-lust to trample
All free manhood in the mud.
He would hang him for a knave;
When he found a weakling, he
Would gild the chain that bound the slave.
Of more land to swell his state;
And he forged the name of Scotland
In proud England's book of Fate.
Romans, Normans, to make better
What they steal, and let the weak man
Wisely wear the strong man's fetter.
Who made haughty Haco mourn,
From the steep cliff of Kinghorn;
Sailed and sickened on the sea,
And the crown without a wearer
Waited where the right might be,
Then the robber knew his hour,
Like a hawk upon the pigeons
Down to swoop, and to devour.
And a venal Romish scribe,
To the castled steep of Norham
Edward came, with craft to bribe
Norman-bred, that would kneel down,
Swearing fealty to a swindler
For the bauble of a crown.
Just recorder, set it down,
Baliol reigns, the traitor-slave,
Who sold his people for a crown.
And with service cringing low,
He shall swallow down the spittle
Of his high contemptuous foe.
Whelmed with shame and swift disaster,
He shall kiss the clay oare-headed,
And from England's haughty master
Longshanks now had played his game,
And Cimbric Wales and Celtic Albyn
Bowed before the Norman name,
Much to make his deeming true;
But a vile and venal crew,
Dangling round a stranger throne;
But the people prayed and waited
For a leader of their own;
Starred with no heraldic pride,
But with proof of thews and sinews,
From the bosom of Strathclyde
And with heart unbribed to stand
Stoutly 'gainst a thousand Edwards,
For the honour of the land.
In an hour of danger; tall,
Strong, broad-shouldered, well-compacted,
Grandly furnished forth with all
Bold; in speech persuasive, mild,
Mingling firm stern-purposed manhood
With the sweetness of a child.
And nothing slow to strike was he,
When he laid the insolent Selby
Breathless in the fair Dundee.
When he fished in Irvine water,
Spoilers of his scaly booty,
He sent home to tell of slaughter.
Where they killed his bonnie bride,
Many a haughty Norman hireling
With their heart's blood stained the Clyde.
When thy pride usurped a throne,
Drove thy titled slave from Scone.
Strong Dunottar by the sea,
Perth fair-meadowed, tall-towered Brechin,
Shook the fetters from the free.
Sent the creatures of his will,
Belted priests and knights of prowess,
Trained in war and tactic skill,
But the Wallace from the Tay
Marched with thunder-pace, and smote
Their serried ranks with sore dismay,
Where the Forth with fruitful pride
Round the cloistered Cambuskenneth
Slowly rolls its mossy tide.
Spurred by fear, with rattling speed,
Till the near-seen England cheered them
From the forted banks of Tweed!
For a space; her traitor lords,
Norman-bred and Norman-blooded,
Drooped their crests and sheathed their swords
Who, to tyrant wisdom true,
Marched with well-massed weight of numbers,
To down-tramp the patriot few.
There his bristling lines he drew;
There with sweep of circling thousands
He outwinged the faithful few.
Beaten stood, not broken; he
Reigned the free king of the free.
He withdrew, and sought in France
And in Rome a strong assertor
Of his rightful-wielded lance.
Year by year his wasteful course
Followed, till high-forted Stirling
Fell before his battering force;
Only one man's head stood high,
Wallace, for his truth to Scotland
Marked for death by Edward's eye;
By the false Menteith, who sold
Scotland's grace and Scotland's honour
For a bag of English gold.
Tried him there in mock of right,
Doomed him to the death of felons,
Gibbeted in public sight.
With a cold unfeeling eye,
Drawn and quartered, disembowelled,
Saw the noblest Scotsman die.
None might mock his purple state;
Like a dog with gilded collar,
Scotland watched at England's gate;
Fed on bones from groaning board,
That his life may do good service,
Nosing game to feed his lord.
But the Fates can bide their time;
Slow and sure the God-sent Fury
Follows on the track of crime.
With the servile Norman crew,
Bruce had nursed in faithful memory
Scotland's crown to Scotland due.
With the breath of courts and kings,
To his country, late-repentant,
Loyal heart and sword he brings.
He had seen a ghastly sight—
Norman foplings staring, jeering,
At the head of Wallace wight.
Had forsworn his natal right,
Bowed his head to lawless might.
To the death the Christian clan,
Came new-fashioned to Damascus,
And to blessing changed his ban;
Came the Bruce a reborn man,
For his crown and for his country
To fight nobly in the van;
Where the thanes, with glad acclaim,
Crowned him Robert King of Scotland,
Freed from England's yoke of shame.
Flashed the fact—“King crowned at Scone!”
On the seat of the MacAlpine,
Whence he stole the fateful stone.
He had boldly robbed and won,
Like a Roman, like a Norman;
Could such proud work be undone?
Like a white squall on the sea,
Like a vulture keen for carrion,
Down on Scottish land swooped he.
Almond water flowed with blood;
Rough Glendochart's rocky current,
Far Loch Awe's long-gleaming flood,
By the proud usurper's host;
Many bravest fell around him,
But he stood, and stoutly crossed
'Twixt the Loch-side and the brae,
The MacDougalls of Dunolly, Oban, the best of people now, were unfortunately on the wrong side in those days. As a memorial of their unhappy alliance with the English invader, the brooch torn from the plaid of Bruce in the encounter alluded to in the text, is still shown to the stranger. The best authority for all the facts mentioned in the text is unquestionably the ‘Scottish War of Independence,’ by W. Burns: Glasgow, Maclehose, 1874.
Strove to block his kingly way.
Pembroke now held all the plain;
He must watch and wait in hardship
Till the good hour come again.
Never mortal man was great
In the evil hour who knew not
How to suffer and to wait.
By Loch Lomond, in Cantire,
In peaked Arran's rocky cincture,
Nursing Scotland's heart's-desire,
Bruce did bravely wait and bear,
While the victor, tiger-hearted,
Valiant knights and ladies fair
Glib with blood of noble men.
In his native wilds of Carrick,
Like a beast from den to den
Stout, high-purposed faith, did stand
Dauntless, with a loyal-hearted
Few, for honour of the land.
Twice a hundred men to hound him;
All alone, beside a boggy,
Black, slow-winding stream they found him.
Strong before a barking dog;
And twice five and four he stretched them
Breathless on the crimsoned bog.
Host, well massed with ordered skill;
On his spears at Loudon Hill.
On the bleeding worm, the Scot;
But the worm, the hydra-headed,
Should have died, but die would not.
Down he shot, the Scots to hammer;
But o'er his eye with vengeance flashing
Fate had spread a deathful glamour.
Curses on the Scottish clan;
But He did laugh who sits in heaven,
And into blessing changed the ban.
Died his fell and forceful doing;
Edward's Edward rushed to ruin.
Bruce now spread his ampler wing;
Inverness and granite-fronted
Aberdonia hailed him king.
Here no Norman lord we know!
Swelled from central Perth the slogan,
Lay the proud usurper low!
With red blood from English slaughter
Gallant Douglas stained the tide
Of Ettrick's mountain-girdled water.
Brothered to King Robert; he
Loose as mist the vauntful St John
Drave from granite banks of Cree.
John of Lorn was clothed with shame;
And thy sea-fronting hold, Dunstaffnage,
Hailed the Bruce with loud acclaim.
But on heights of fair Dundee
All the crosier-bearing people
Signed a bond to Scotland free.
Eight men from a wain of hay
Leapt, and like a drift of pigeons
Drave the Normans in deray.
Fearless now might front the sky,
There where on thy steepest steepness
Randolph cast his daring eye.
As a sailor climbs a rope,
Hurrying down the eastern slope.
Marched the God-predestined time,
When the son should answer prostrate
For the father's lofty crime.
Flows a brook, slow-winding, through
Boggy meads and ragged fringes,
'Neath green slopes of ample view.
Massed his men in order fair;
Gallant Randolph, Keith, and Douglas,
Sworn to death or victory there.
Where the foeman's charge would be,
Pits he dug, and stakes he planted,
Roofed with grass that none might see.
On the fragrant grassy sod
Knelt at holy mass devoutly,
And confessed his sins to God.
Flashing, dashing, horse and man,
Norman, Gascon, Welsh, and Irish,
Brave De Bohun in the van.
From Jove's chair on stormy wing,
On he rushed, with lance hot thirsting
For the blood of Scotland's king.
Rose, and with a mighty strain
Hove his battle-axe, and sheerly
Clave the knight through helm and brain.
Nor the fight may linger long
And the strong man leads the strong.
Charged, in clattering multitude;
But the Scots with steady frontage
Like a bristling forest stood.
With five hundred knights in mail,
Prostrate laid the English archers,
As corn falls before the hail.
While the gillies on the hill,
Spreading show of sheets for banners,
Downward rushed with forward will;
Fled like children from a ghost;
And their king, with floating bridle,
Galloped from the dwindling host.
Of ten times ten thousand slain;
Who escaped, like chaff were drifted
Where the west wind sweeps the plain.
Fled the land and found the sea;
From Dunbar a light skiff brought him
Where his breathing might be free;
Backward ploughed fair Helle's tide,
Reaping, as the proud man reapeth,
Lowest fall from topmost pride.
Scotland's Muse no more shall mourn;
England no more toss her haughty
Crest o'er glorious Bannockburn.
CANTO III. THE NEW WORLD
LUTHER.
Who from lowly peasant-home,
With brave word of truth forth-thundered,
Shook the throne of mighty Rome.
Gilded pomp, and purple pride,
High-poised domes and painted porches,
Christ had lived and Christ had died.
Not the lords of princely hall,
But the mean unvalued people,
Answered to His holy call.
Rabbis felt a Saviour's need,
In the lofty pride of station,
In the nice conceit of creed.
Soldier Paul went forth to fight,
With the sharp sword of the Spirit,
In the banded world's despite;
From crude faiths and fancies odd,
And for love to all who own
A common fatherhood in God.
Now on Cæsar's earthly throne
Sate, and lust of domination
Crept into him, blood and bone;
And the charm in priestly eyes
For a god in mortal guise;
To hurl the thunderbolt of ban
On who dared with contradiction
To confront the mitred clan;
To conspire for forceful deed,
Or to lie with subtle statesmen
When a lie might serve the need.
When their sin was at full tide,
He prepared a Saxon miner's
Son to lop their mounting pride.
Such high honour on his head,
When he made the rounds at Eisenach,
Singing Christmas hymns for bread.
Books he loved, and lute and lyre,
And beneath a breast of hardship
Nursed a holy glowing fire;
For the voice that speaks within;
Holy fear of God, that judgeth
Sinners self-condemned in sin;
Might strike down a guilty head:
By such holy terrors haunted,
From the bustling world he fled
Thence was called to learnèd school,
O'er the high-souled youth of Deutschland
There to bear high-thoughted rule;
Not trite lessons of the hour,
And with touch of Spirit-power.
And they missioned him to Rome,
There to see strange sights undreamt of
In his honest German home;
Jesters dressed in priestly guise,
Monks with luxury bloated, bishops
Juggling souls with holy lies.
Dark-stoled salesmen, blushless, bold,
Selling grace of God for silver,
Opening gates of heaven for gold.
Far from purple sins to dwell;
And he preached to Saxon princes,
“Surely Rome is built on hell.”
In the market-place he stood,
Vending pardons by the sixpence
To a gaping multitude.
High he stood, and lit a fire
To consume all bold protesters
Who should cross the Pope's desire.
When a lie parades the street,
When the feeder of the people
Vends a tainted drug for meat—
Fearing none but God on high,
Planted words of strong denial
Boldly, in the public eye,
Truth is mighty, and it spread
Like a voice that wakes the dead.
Tetzel heard, and foamed with ire,
And at Frankfurt flung the truthful
Witness in the public fire.
Blushless prophet of a lie,
And would plant his strong denial
Boldly in the public eye.
Boiling hot and mounting high,
'Mid the market throngs applausive,
Burnt them in the public eye.
Trembled while he seemed to jest,
Humming tunes and twirling verses,
With no churchly cares oppressed.
Legates, sophists, doctors, bred
In the school of high-conceited
Insolence, with fatness fed.
Puny creature of the clod,
Launching bolts of mimic thunder
In the mimic name of God!
Is paper, nothing more, which brings
Fear to none who claims his right
Of thinking from the King of kings.
Blastful swell of priestly ban,
Like a whiff of breath it passes
O'er the free soul of a Man.
Men with learnèd cap and gown,
To the east gate of the town.
And at touch of torch the flame
Rose; and forward to the crackling
Pile the bold monk gravely came.
And the big-mouthed boastful Bull,
Priest-made laws, and subtle dogmas
Of an empty-witted school.
And he said with solemn cheer,
“Let the wrath of God consume them
As this flame consumes them here!
Long, too long have lies prevailed—
Tiger-hearted, cruel monsters,
Baby-brained and serpent-tailed!”
And at Wittenberg each man
Freely breathed that day, rejoicing
O'er the ashes of the ban.
What shall startled Europe do?
Let the holy Roman Cæsar
Calm the strife with judgment true.
His great lords in courtly show,
Waiting on his high decision,
Big with mighty weal or woe!
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.
Red with blood of holy Paul;
When Popes bribed the judgment-hall.
Devils bring no fear to him;
In the drowning of a world,
He who trusts in God will swim.
In the power of truth, that day,
Stood the miner's son of Mansfeld
Mildly firm, nor knew dismay,
'Fore the purple Pope's array,
Stamping lies with name of Jesus,
With red murder in their pay.
Fixed on him his hangman's eye,
Ready for all fiery torture,
But not ready for a lie.
Was day, and flout the front of fact,
Than of God's truth, in God's eye spoken,
One smallest honest word retract.
Luther heard his sure death-knell,
“Let the fire consume his body,
As his soul shall burn in hell!”
Worms might milder show than Rome:
So he gave half-hearted licence,
And brave Luther wandered home.
That he breathed his breath in fear,
Doomed to wander, marked for judgment,
With a lurking terror near.
He had friends; and they, not blind,
And in kindly ward confined
There his soul had time to brood
For what end the Lord had caught him
From the murtherous multitude.
Doubted, prayed, and prayed again,
Tossed on sleepless pillow, doubting
If his life had been in vain;
Break the shell of his disguise,
And face to face in deadly grapple
Perish as a brave man dies;
Demons mocking in despite,
Heaven close barred, and hell wide gaping,
As he floundered through the night.
Hear, dear God, O hear my cry!”
And a voice came through his slumber
With an answer from on high:
Teach thy folk to read and think:
Priests may fight with axe and fagot;
Thou shalt gain with pen and ink.”
Vanished clean all shapes of fear,
Braced for battle like a soldier,
And he saw his mission clear.
Let them see God face to face,
Let them hear the words of healing,
Let them drink the well of grace.
With dumb gesture and grimace,
To becloud the holy place,
Clearly signed with faithful pen,
They shall hear God's word to Germans
In the speech of German men!
What the Lord would have him do;
Better here to write and ponder,
Than abroad, in public view,
With a school-bred sophist crew
Using sleight of logic deftly
Into false to twist the true.
As a German loves to plod,
Strong in lexicon and grammar,
Till he sent the Word of God,
Full of quickening spirit-power,
To bring forth the Gospel seed-time
From the ferment of the hour.
And it travelled like the fire,
Through the heart and through the pulsing
Veins, to reach the heart's desire,
Each man master in his home,
Doffed the badge of base subjection
To usurping priests in Rome;
Legates rage both North and South;
In the Book, the Book, were written
Words that gagged each boaster's mouth;
Or hot doctors of the school,
Scorned the rein of healthy rule.
They had Luther for their guide;
And he came with fervid shrewdness
To rebuke the windy pride
And the word of soundness grew,
And new thousands mustered daily,
Swore allegiance to the true.
Counsel took against the Lord;
But the Book, the Book was stronger
Than the crosier and the sword.
War and strife will ever be;
But the truth of God will triumph
When the Word of God is free.
And the Bible, now as then,
Peals the knell of death to despots,
Peals the psalm of life to men.
CROMWELL
Who, when kings were led by fools,
Led by fools, and served by brainless
Pedants trained in priestly schools,
And the storm-wings were abroad,
Seized the helm and gave it guidance,
With a right direct from God.
Kings are nursed who claim from God,
But in labour's school He trains them,
And He lifts them from the sod.
Where the gently-gliding Ouse
Creeps through fringe of sedge and willow,
Grew the boy whom God did choose.
With strong limbs well knit together,
And stout ruddy cheeks that borrowed
Freshness from the breezy weather.
Manly-browed with flowing hair,
Nose of power, and eyebrows shaggy,
With keen lightnings lurking there.
Quick to share the riskful joy,
When a dovecot or an orchard
Tempted any daring boy.
Of venture he would lead the van;
As the boy grew to the man.
Pacing by the grassy fen,
Pondering o'er God's mystic counsel,
And the tangled ways of men;
Spirit mingled with the clay,
Devils wrestling with good angels
For the young heart's doubtful sway.
O'er the passioned yeast within,
Till by grace divine he trampled
Out each lustful creeping sin,
Victor o'er the carnal man,
To build up for lofty uses
A new life with godly plan.
The strange omens of the time,
When to be a king meant licence
To give holy names to crime;
Erect, uncowed, before a king,
With old law and right behind him,
Was the first to feel the sting
Who, when propped up on a throne,
Deemed all power in earth and heaven
Centred in his whim alone.
In his uncle's hall of state,
With big rolling eye, and dribbling
Mouth, and loosely-shambling gait;
That might serve a schoolman's need,
When the hour called for a deed.
Now, like bird with uncaged wing,
On the ample stage of England
James would grandly play the king.
He would teach them to behave,
As a master flogs a schoolboy,
As an owner whips a slave.
Bravely, bravely like the Pope;
And whose tongue denied his godship,
His stiff neck should know the rope.
In the people; and a school
Of stout-hearted God-taught teachers
Kicked against all despot rule.
Freely read the Word of Grace,
Seeing God, as Moses saw Him
On the mountain, face to face.
Tamely now they took command;
But true brother common-blooded
Walked with brother hand in hand,
Kings might stamp for right the wrong,
But with God's still voice within him
Each man for himself was strong.
King that ever fed on pride,
Deeming with fine-woven speeches
To drive back the ocean's tide:
Died the whim that fooled his brain:
All the father lives again;
Like a Cæsar, like a god,
Like a Jove that all might tremble
At the shadow of his nod;
Like a sun on central throne,
Whence all fine vivific virtue
Flows in strength from him alone;
To invest his royal home
With the purple pomp of priesthood,
With the sacred pride of Rome.
They have sworn, all undismayed,
Or by daring, or cajoling,
They will rule, and ask no aid
Looking with a jealous frown
On the gold which gilds the mitre,
On the gems that star the crown.
Norman blood and Saxon bone,
They had minds, and they had muscle,
They had hearts they called their own.
Leal to law, and sworn to right;
For the chartered use of England
They will stand and they will fight.
In Dunedin, in Dunbar,
From the bristling breasts of Scotsmen
Came the harsh alarm of war.
Holy hands were lifted high,
Sworn in God's all-seeing eye,
And sharp swords to serve their need,
Shall an English priest for Scotsmen
Clip the pattern of their creed.
Framed to please a pedant's whim,
But as free as bird in greenwood
They will pour the heart-felt hymn.
From a freeman's manly breast,
Even as Paul, sans cope, sans surplice,
Freely gospelled all the West.
To compel unfelt desires,
Bend the knee at no man's bidding,
As a puppet owns the wires.
Pulling each his diverse way,
Left the State ship in the middle
Leaking more from day to day.
Brought no fruit but bitter strife,
More and more the knots were tangled
That called loudly for the knife.
With much din, now here now there,
Blindly plunging, grandly dashing,
Blood and blunders everywhere,
The nail for right, would drive it in,
Weak of purpose, slow to finish
What they hasted to begin.
Fearing much the monarch's pride,
When they cast all fear aside!
To make a strong-willed despot pause;
When the people fight, a captain
From the people wins their cause.
But with him, to do or die,
Honest men of his own choosing,
Fighting in the master's eye.
Riding, dancing, gambling, swearing,
Waving plumes, and prancing horses,
With light-hearted dash of daring;
Ladies' smile and grace of kings;
But with firm persistent purpose,
Through the stress and strain of things,
Sinking low or mounting high,
Doing daily prayerful duty,
As in God's all-seeing eye;
Where God's supreme law presides,
Other tools must shape his action,
Hearts of steel, and iron sides.
To split the rock and cleave the sod;
Hands made strong by sweatful labour,
Hearts made strong by faith in God.
Who, mildly strong and sternly calm,
Braced their thought with memoried Scripture,
Cheered their heart with chaunted psalm.
“Softly bred, and smoothly dressed;
Must bear victory in his breast;
And with hands inured to toil,
And a cause he joys to fight for,
Let Dame Fortune frown or smile.
But when God has work to do,
Or for gospel or for battle,
He makes strong a chosen few.”
But when Cromwell eyed the foe,
Or at Marston or at Naseby,
Like Jove's bolt came down the blow.
But with thoughtful plan prepared,
In the hour of quick decision
Cromwell was the man who dared.
Fox from shift to shift he flew;
When a fair-faced lie might fail him,
Ever spinning something new.
Never to his promise true;
Throwing yeast into the ferment
Where dissension rankly grew.
By fair speech or slippery word;
Shifty king, and friends half-hearted,
Both should know he bore the sword.
When storms rage and seas o'erwhelm;
Let him die whose faithless purpose
Brought confusion on the realm.
With a crown or with a hat;
Let the false king die for that!
And they brought him forth to die
At Whitehall upon a scaffold,
In the people's wondering eye.
Charles had left a son, a youth,
Like himself a shuffling schemer,
Foe to goodness and to truth.
Crowned with kingly grace at Scone,
Unprophetic of the falsehood
Bred in every Stuart's bone.
Helped a serpent's brood to sting,
Trained too well to know the Devil's
Game played with the name of king.
There with scanted strength stood he,
Where the old grey castle looks forth
Grimly on the old grey sea.
His watchful glance both quick and sure,
And there the Scots he saw in thousands
Marshalled on the old grey moor.
They might hedge him round and round,
From their chosen post of vantage
On the high and heathy ground.
Wary as a Scot may be,
And he saw sure prey in Cromwell,
With his back beside the sea.
To his vantage-ground untrue,
Strangely came to Cromwell's view.
On through mist and moony gleam;
On! the Lord of hosts is with us;
On! yon sun's first rising beam
By my faith, they run, they run!
God hath scattered them before us
As the mist flies from the sun!”
Back they flee in blank amaze;
On he rolls with volleyed thunder,
On with swelling hymns of praise.
Stands a public fool confessed,
When she took a wounded adder
Blindly to her kindly breast.
He hath risked to front his foes
'Mid fair England's wooded greenery,
Where the Severn gently flows.
Sleepless Cromwell follows there,
And like houseless wild beast drives him,
Hunted hot from lair to lair,
For a land beyond the seas,
Where kings, by fretful parties' goad
Unvexed, might eat and drink at ease.
But Parliaments in high debate
Nurse dissent, and breed confusion
With their never-ending prate.
Loves to go the shortest road;
As a soldier strides, he strode.
Are ye of what once ye were!
England hath no need of shadows;
I am Cromwell; I am here,
This poor farce will never do;
Better men must fill your places;
Hence! the Lord hath done with you!”
When the master shows his rod,
Or as idols from the presence
Vanish of the rightful God.
Hose, and worsted stockings grey,
And a hat without a hat-band,
He is England's king to-day.
No more swaying to and fro;
Now the strong man rules, all England
Feels, and Europe soon shall know.
Britons basely bow the head,
No more paid by Frankish bounty
Hireling troops are basely fed.
Fill our well-stored ports with fears,
Turk and Tuscan strike their colours
Where the flag of Blake appears.
Popes are dumb, and curses cease;
And in Alpine valleys godly
Peasants sing their psalms in peace.
Now, as in the good old time
Of the Tudors in their prime.
Feared at Paris, feared in Rome,
Hot contention grew around him,
With unkindly thoughts at home.
He had helped them in their need,
And with best heart's blood of England
Watered freedom's precious seed.
Jar of jealous power with power,
Not even his strong will might charm it
To sweet music in an hour.
But, with life's flood ebbing low,
“I have sown good seed,” he said,
“And God will know to make it grow.”
WASHINGTON.
I will sing God's elect man,
Dowered with strength divine to found it
On a new high-fortuned plan.
God as meagre as themselves,
That His tale of things was ended
With the books upon their shelves!
Battles, blunders, brawls and blood,
When high-vaulting Whigs and Tories
Clutched the stars, or kissed the mud!
Begging pence from door to door,
Know what millions mean, when counted
In a rich man's golden store,
Of the mole-eyed minion man,
Tell the bearings of the broad-winged
Stretch of God's far-sweeping plan!
Pile Utopias all their own;
But the greatest of all dreamers
Is a fool upon a throne.
Pedant, fool, and fox to boot,
With a brain that fondled fancies,
And a deft tongue for dispute.
Where the prickly thistle grows,
Now he dwells in soft repose,
Where the Tudors had their will;
Here the Scot shall heir their fortunes
With a braver mission still.
Like crowned heads beyond the sea,
From his ring of stiff-souled barons,
From his rude-mouthed preachers, free.
Barking in their master's face,
Who should wear their gilded collars
At his feet with crouching grace,
He hath heard them for his sport,
With brave show of Latin learning,
From his throne in Hampton Court.
Loyal suit for mild release
From harsh Tudor-laws that hindered
Pious souls to pray in peace.
Or a king with penal rod,
Might they pour the heavy burden
Of their sins before their God.
Read God's holy book with awe,
And they read no praise of bishops
There, or kings above the law.
Things of God they gave to God;
But to stint free breath in prayer
To bishop's mace and monarch's rod,
Blindly with his blinded mind:
Vermin of this saucy kind!
There to hug their private notion,
To the land of dykes and ditches,
To wide wastes beyond the ocean!
Bible-speller forge a creed;
Kings bear rule from God's fair garden
Forth to pluck the baneful weed!”
From crowned folly wisely fled
To the land of dykes and ditches,
Where young Freedom reared her head;
To their king than he to them,
They would draw their sapful virtue
Still from England's lusty stem.
Down the sluggish Maas they creep,
On to Plymouth, where Old England
Stout her naval watch doth keep.
And with souls from slavery free,
They have sailed, the godly people,
Westward, westward o'er the sea.
Storms that rage with savage glee,
With split masts and creaking timbers,
To a land where thought is free.
Mighty tree from little seed,
Where no sophist-king might dare
To twist a text, or carve a creed.
'Neath thy sheltering wing, Cape Cod;
Worship to their Saviour God.
On the strange new-customed strand,
Trees on trees in plumy grandeur
Waving fragrance from the land.
Where huge whales are spouting high,
On the creeks where ducks and wild geese
Sport, all gleefully and shy.
Standish fearles and adroit,
To explore the riskful traces
Of the red-skinned Massasoit.
Plumed and feathered like a fan,
Wild, uncouth, uncomely people,
Like the roving gipsy clan!
Faithful vows that they should be
Free from harm from sons of England,
Born with birthright to be free!
Nicely measured; row on row
Each man built his rough-hewn dwelling,
That the work might bravely grow.
With fair front and goodly show,
That the town, with God's good blessing
On the work, might chastely grow.
As sweet flowers 'neath frosty dew;
Cold and sickness and starvation
Made them dwindle to a few;
Foot the unschooled soil they trod,
Task, and praised their Saviour God.
Founded by the salt sea-foam,
On a rock like that Tarpeian ridge
That cradled mighty Rome!
Where the grampus spouts and rolls
For a grand new world of freemen
God prepared His ransomed souls.
Where Potómac pours his flood
Grew to manly firm consistence
English life from English blood.
Hatred, jealousy, and strife,
Sought and found a peaceful life;
Digging, delving, planting, sowing,
Like the stout old Cincinnati,
When the pride of Rome was growing.
From wise father wiser son,
To the strength of stately manhood
Grew the noble Washington.
With his playmates in the school
George was mild and George was modest,
But they felt that he must rule.
Sport; supreme in mimic wars,
Racing, leaping, wrestling, swimming,
Pitching quoits and tossing bars.
With kick and start and caracole,
Only George could hold the rider's seat
With kingly firm control.
But with measured grace and slow;
Where his cool eye made the survey,
There he launched the well-poised blow.
Dash, and dart, and snatch was he;
But he stood, as stands a pilot
In the many-tossing sea,
In their measured going on,
Wheel not with a march more steady
Than the soul of Washington.
Of the manliest thing in man,
On a holy-purposed plan.
Like his work, his mind was true;
Line by line, like wise besieger,
To his aim he nearer drew.
For his strength, and for his daring;
West beyond the Alleghany,
Seeds of prickly strife are bearing
With huge lust of large command,
France with vulture-wings was hovering
O'er Virginia's happy land,
Of the stars, with fruitful flood
Grandly rolling, softly swirling,
Waters many a pine-clad rood.
Counsel England saw the Franks,
In the Northland and the Westland
Pile their forts in bristling ranks;
In the strange wild warfare rude,
With sharp word and stroke to humble
Haughty Gaul's defiant mood.
With proud front and haughty nose,
Fell, as evermore the braggart
Falls who lightly holds his foes.
Where the beaten boaster fell;
Wise and wary, in wild warfare
At Potomac practised well.
Ever threatful, never sure,
Like the wild bird on the moor;
Rattling now like stony hail,
Weak to stand in serried phalanx,
Where the marshalled lines prevail.
Slept in rain and camped in snow,
With an eagle eye had followed
Where a hunter's foot might go.
Like the spreading of a flame,
To the fork of mighty waters
In Ohio's vale he came;
Sweeping all the Western plain
From the Lakes down Mississippi,
Claimed the haughty right to reign.
On the steep brow of Du Quesne,
At the forking of the waters,
Whence the Frenchmen vexed the plain.
When the hawk swoops down amain,
From the forking of the waters
Nevermore to vex the plain;
With brave front and shining face,
From Virginia to St Lawrence
Grew the grand New World apace.
Far with blindly groping hands
Deemed the boy was still a baby,
Needful of her swaddling-bands.
'Cross the wide Atlantic flood,
Some to spur the baby's pulses,
Some to suck the baby's blood.
Soldiers, courtiers, lords, and earls,
Talking much of needful nursing,
Dreaming much of gold and pearls.
Baby would be hight no more,
He would use his legs at pleasure,
Keep the key of his own store.
Tearful cares and fingering hands;
Word that cramps while it commands.
Ignorance from haughty breast
Vowed a vow of sharp correction
To the baby in the West.
Jove-born son, when Greece began,
Snapt his bands, and stood erect
With face of boy and soul of man.
Had they fled beyond the waves
Only for a change of masters,
With the unchanged name of slaves?
Bled and fled and fought in vain,
And shall dull-brained Hanoverians
Tempt the despot's game again?
Never kissed a tyrant's rod;
They too had their Magna Charta
From wise William and from God.
Measured work for measured fee;
They would drink, untaxed, unrated,
Their own wine and their own tea.
On far throne beyond the sea;
Only those who use a home-bred
Ruler, know that they are free.
And with one stroke snapt their gyves;
But the pig-brained Hanoverian
Still would stir the fire with knives.
Burke their courtly ears assailed;
In the strife of words prevailed;
Island-fretted ample bay
England sent her hireling Hessians,
And her ships in brave array,
And to block Time's forward way,
And to bind the arms of labour
'Neath a wilful despot's sway.
And a day. The storm was brewing,
Doomed to whelm the rash offender,
When God's hour was ripe for doing.
Harsh command and lawless will;
Roaring cannon, blazing rafters,
Tumbling forts at Bunker Hill,
Prick a lion, and he stands
Ten times lion, like a Titan
Flailing with a hundred hands.
Manful pulse to pulse replied,
Nevermore to free-born brother
Be a brother's help denied!
And they sent their noblest son,
Tried in fight and tried in counsel,
Faithful-hearted Washington,
With fair prospect far and wide,
With rich stretch of wealthy culture,
With its amply-flowing tide.
Him they missioned sans delay,
Island-fretted ample bay.
With a firm and faithful caring,
Shaping cosmos from the chaos,
Till the hour was ripe for daring.
Scaled a ridge above the bay,
And with iron hail tremendous,
Sent in startled disarray
Troop that crossed the Western waves,
With an arm of sharp compulsion
To teach freemen to be slaves.
Swiftlier than they came, they fled,
Nevermore in face of Boston's
Free-sworn front to lift their head!
Swallow makes the spring, one bud
Not the summer. Born in sorrow
Sharply, and baptised in blood,
Not one victory for the right
Could prevail to lop the crest
Of England, ever stiff in fight.
With defeat and blank dismay;
Southward he would steer his warships,
With fresh hope and larger sway.
Hudson, rolls his ample flood,
He would stamp out the untutored
Growth of freedom in the bud.
Island-forted, busy mart,
Strong to play the conqueror's part.
Or with fair or adverse breeze,
In Pacific or Atlantic,
Ever knows to rule the seas.
Long-drawn isle his might prevailed,
And at peaceful Philadelphia
Him the meek-souled Quakers hailed.
From his scutcheon. Delaware
And wide Hudson roll their floods,
To teach the West that Howe is there.
Which proud England called her own,
Never cast a shade of shrinking
O'er the heart of Washington.
If not safely here, then there;
Hearts were brave, and men had mettle,
Westward of the Delaware.
With a starved and shoeless host;
Firm in faith and wise in daring,
While he breathed all was not lost.
Than when dangers grimly swell,
Like a tide of mighty billows
Rushing, racing, fierce and fell.
In a God-devoted soul,
Than when clouds in massy volume
Blot the sky and blind the pole.
Patient waits day after day,
Sudden on his 'scapeless prey;
Wise to wait nor slow to dare,
With his band of true-sworn freemen
Eastward crossed the Delaware.
Use the chance the moment brings;
When their strength is loosely scattered,
Now's the time to clip their wings!
Through the river's chilly flow,
Through the snowdrift and the ice-blocks,
March we now against the foe,
Smoking, bousing, soon shall know
How to hold a bloody Christmas
When they face a patriot foe!”
Nod submission to his word;
North from Trenton, on to Princeton,
All New Jersey's heart is stirred;
Shorn of hope, of glory bare,
And with wings well pruned, retreated
From the banks of Delaware.
Freedom grew where Washington
Made the country and the river
Breathe a spirit all his own.
Where the healthful water flows,
Boastful Burgoyne caught, in 'scapeless
Trap by many-circling foes,
And through all the banded States
Hope to greet the beckoning Fates.
On a softlier-nurtured folk,
Where Cornwallis and stout Hastings
Laid the sharply-galling yoke
Though they strewed the plains with death,
Ever from the free-souled Northland
Came the fresh reviving breath;
Captain, hoping against hope,
Watched and waited for the moment
When his purpose might have scope.
In the pressure of the hour,
France, that ever looked with jealous
Eye on England's branching power;
That she sent in pennoned pride
Lines of bravely mounted war-ships
O'er the broad Atlantic tide,
And with common soul conspire,
How for England's castigation,
Saxon strength and Celtic fire
Swift to move, and strong to dare,
To his own Virginian waters
Came the elect captain, there
Forward marches to retreat,
And strike the gyves through all the Southland
From young Freedom's sacred feet.
Fenced around, as in a net,
From Washington and Lafayette?
With stout English heart he stands,
With redoubts and batteries many,
Restless raised by sleepless hands.
Slowly, darkly from the West,
So the circling death-lines nearer
Came and nearer to his breast.
Fire-mouths bellowed round the town;
Rafters blazed, and towers of triple-
Forted strength came crashing down.
Blotting beauty from the air;
All the night was bright with meteors,
Streaming with a deadly glare.
Came the stern avoidless lines,
Brighter still and still more bright
The flaring belt of terror shines.
Overlash the steep rock's crown,
So with fearless sweep the scalers
Clomb the walls and held the town.
Cool and firm stood Washington,
Careless where a shot might wander,
If the work was bravely done.
Open to a deathful shot,
One with friendly fear besought him
Back to step to safer spot.
“If it like you; I will not.
Though red Death may mark the spot.”
With the strength that arms the free,
Till the stout heart of Cornwallis,
Vexed by land and vexed by sea,
And, from dreams of victory free,
Found a second Saratoga
Where York river seeks the sea.
Sons to do; the work was done
By the patient, long-enduring,
Steadfast faith of Washington.
Much in Paris; but all knew
Freedom's cause was safe, while freemen
To their chief's high will were true.
Had their hour; with wisdom late,
Fretful king and fuming courtier
Signed the deed that sealed their fate.
When the peace-sworn foe was gone,
In New York, at Whitehall ferry,
Stood the noble Washington.
Round him stood his comrades brave,
Who for eight long years of hardship,
Strong to suffer and to save,
As an angel serveth God,
Drawing strength from his sereneness,
Reaping victory from his nod.
Broken words, and slow to come;
Grief that holds the heart is dumb.
Here in wine, and here in tears—
Wine for the great joy that crowned us,
Tears for wounds that gashed the years.
Harvest, as He stood by you
When you sowed the seed of honour,
Watered with the bloody dew!”
Each man, and with eyes all dim,
This last once to feel a brother's
Love in kindly grasp from him.
They; and silent he moved on,
Where a modest barge was waiting
For the noble Washington.
To the town of good Queen Anne,
Where the People's congress waited
To receive their Saviour-man.
As a modest servant stands,
And with few plain words he gave
His missioned power into their hands.
All the thanks that words could give;
And he went to sweet Mount Vernon,
As a plain man lives to live.
King, that he might grandly reign
O'er them like a Roman Cæsar;
But with high-souled proud disdain
For his country he had fought,
That was all he wished or sought.
He the thorny path had trod,
But in name of sacred duty
To his country and his God.
Lofty self-poised souls can do,
All the public pomp behind him
Like a cumbrous coat he threw.
In the days when Rome was wise,
He would watch his old paternal
Acres with paternal eyes.
Deeming pride the worst of sinning;
Planting, pruning, delving, draining,
From the soil its riches winning.
Fixed with kindly-searching eyes,
Great in small things as in greatest,
And in daily service wise.
To their march of storied fame,
To give grace and goodly omen
With the blazon of his name.
NELSON AND WELLINGTON.
I.
Daring dash, and cool command,
When her brave high-hearted captains
Rode the sea and ruled the land;
Wise by war to purchase peace,
Her firm hand compelled the plundering
Lust of lawless France to cease,
France, aflame with wrath—and why?
Kings unkingly make reply.
Loveless lords that knew no shame,
When they starved the sweatful ploughman,
When they fed the guarded game.
When their pride was mounted high,
Knew no manhood when well-baited
Hooks seduced the sensual eye.
Of the few in pampered state,
With the lean-eyed many grimly
Pining at the palace gate.
Churches hollow, priests unwise
Mumbling spells in name of Jesus,
To give saintly gloss to lies.
Earth was sick; the hour was nigh
When the sure slow-footed Fury
Marched with vengeance from the sky;
From dark womb of discontent
Burst in flames of blood-red portent
On the lowering firmament.
Think that God with them may sleep!
Through their sleeping He is raising
Earthquakes from the fiery deep;
Towers of pride are falling low,
And they start up from their slumbers
To behold a march of woe!
Surging tumult, grim affright,
Sounding through the startled night;
Glaring eyes, hands high to strike,
Dusty doublets red with murder,
Heads of traitors on a pike.
Raving Mænads drunk with hate,
Through the fevered streets parading
In tempestuous foaming state.
Madness marching in the van;
All the tiger, all the demon,
Leaping from the depths of man.
Sleep, when watchmen should have eyes!
They shall wake when red-eyed Terror
Floods the earth and blots the skies.
Now the order of the day;
Every shape and sign of terror
Stalking forth in red display.
Spectre dance, and ghostly skipping,
Sightless eyes all blind with weeping,
Sundered heads all gory dripping;
Heads of queens that knew no fear,
Heads of hero-hearted maidens,
Trundled on a butcher's bier!
Falls in swathes upon the green,
So fall fairest heads and noblest
'Neath the wide-jawed guillotine!
One by one is far too slow;
In one thunder-peal of woe!
In an ark with no salvation
Huddled, they are swamped with deluge
From the mad wrath of the nation.
Drunk with rancour to the brim,
They have made a painted harlot
Goddess of their godless whim;
Order, beauty, trampled low,
Liberty with beastly licence,
All the piety they know.
Such red train of ghastly mirth,
God hath sent from depths demoniac
To chastise the sons of earth.
Let not lusty sin grow strong;
Weeds that grow to poison-blossoms
Should be plucked when they are young.
II.
Of blind rage and red confusion—
The five years' fever of wild France,
'Clept by mortals Revolution.
He, in force a firm believer,
With a weighty whiff of grape-shot
Swiftly banned the raging fever.
And, behold! on sounding wings,
All the banded monarchs gathered
To avenge her slight of kings.
Purse-proud merchants on the sea,
All that dare to scowl on freedom
Now shall know that France is free!
When he snapt his baby-bands,
She decrees sharp war on tyrants,
East and west, in slavish lands.
Free herself, to hold in awe
All the cowering, crouching millions,
When her sword hath shaped the law.
With keen glance, and lips compressed,
And an ocean of far-reaching
Deep devisings in his breast,
Long had held our souls in thrall,
Forged in France for great and small.
Swiftly pounced that wondrous boy,
Playing with a Titan foeman
As a child plays with a toy.
Groaning o'er the stony path,
His own herald; as when thunder
Bursts with unexpected wrath,
Captain crossed with sweatful pains,
And his eye prophetic ranges
O'er wide wealth of green domains.
Crowned with peaks of shining snow,
And his proud heart beats exultant
As his fancy doomed the foe.
Vainly shield the hireling Swiss,
When old lordship's frost-work melteth
At young Freedom's fiery kiss.
In Turin's well-watered seat
He allows; at half-way stations
Whoso tarries courts defeat.
Germans heavy, dull, and slow,
While he plants his flag three-coloured
On the north bank of the Po.
Where their legions block the tide,
He o'erleaps the many-throated
Jaws of death, and stands in pride
With its many-statued fane,
Snaps the hated German chain.
By fair Garda's gustful water,
There to fine the stiff old Austrian,
Slow to learn, with double slaughter.
In Vienna? Nevermore.
Swift as tiger in the jungle,
Through the rattle and the roar
Fate, he stands; and Fate, that knew
Him to strange high ends predestined,
Brought the gallant bravely through.
Set no bounds to his career;
Save and Drave flow crisped with terror
When his thunder-pace is near.
Hearts are faint and eyes are dim;
Be he god, or be he devil,
They must purchase peace from him.
Cæsar in a mountain trap;
Sulky Venice with one weighty
Word he blotteth from the map.
Of whole kingdoms like a god,
See him now meek doom receiving
From a belted stripling's nod.
Whither now with lordly whim
Shall he wend him? Not in Paris
Is the fruit yet ripe for him.
Were too scant a reach for him?
Sought the golden East, to swim
Let the ferment work; and, while
Time breeds blunders, crowned with glory,
From the famous loam of Nile,
And great Babel's fatted plain,
Where the Nimrods of the old time
Taught the primal kings to reign.
For new venture and new spoil,
And new harm to stout Old England,
On he thunders to the Nile.
III.
For an hour. His check is nigh.
When proud man would scale the sky.
Loftiest looks, with insolence crowned,
Lo! a stone rough from the mountain.
Smites it level with the ground.
Where the farmer hath his joy,
Where the church bells ring at Barnham,
Nelson grew, a weakly boy.
Brave as bravest boy may be;
Never shrinking, ever climbing
To the top branch of the tree.
You might mark him in the school,
With an air of swift decision,
Born to venture and to rule.
Or a pear-tree on the wall,
High, too high for vulgar riskers,
Nelson dared at danger's call.
Cushioned couch of ease, grew he
But in use of sailors roughly,
Where the Medway seeks the sea
In the sunshine, in the shower,
In the near and in the far land,
Waiting wisely on the hour.
Nurse the walrus and the bear,
'Neath the bright green-glancing icebergs,
Wooing danger, he was there.
Where pale fever taints the air
Death-defying, he was there.
Strong, erect, alert he stood,
True to honour, sworn to duty,
Great in every manful mood.
Great occasions wait for them,
To put forth the hand of daring,
And to pluck the diadem
Not, but for free hand to rule,
France now swept the globe with legions
Trained in rapine's lawless school.
From her white cliffs on the sea
Fetters forged to bind the free;
Safely cased in selfish joy,
When all human rights were trampled
'Neath that strong remorseless boy
While her ships might plough the main,
Shall that fell respectless Titan
Vex free souls with galling chain.
Scornful of inglorious ease,
England sends her sailor-hero
East and west to sweep the seas;
Whets his tusk and plants his paw,
There to hoist the flag of England,
Pledge of honour and of law.
Through the mid-sea's stormy swell,
Nelson hied, and at his coming
Every bristling fortress fell.
To his strength, and heard him say,
“One stout son of England matches
Three deft Frenchmen in the fray.”
With four bastions mounted high,
But in vain—whose heart grew greater
With the greater danger nigh.
Blazed before the public eye,
Days are coming, surely, swiftly,
When Gazettes will fear to lie.
Where he came the Spaniard quailed;
O'er his proud display prevailed.
Light from ship to ship leaps he,
Strong as thunder, deft and agile
As a squirrel on a tree.
London town with loud acclaim,
Bristol with her merchant princes,
Lauds the gallant seaman's name.
Crowded streets, with shrill delight,
Hear the Jervis and the Nelson
Sounded through the rainy night.
Like a hound that holds the scent,
O'er the blastful mid-sea's windings
Chased the Gallic armament
With his boldly jutting horn,
Bounds the broad bay, where the westmost
Reach of Nile is seaward borne.
Thirteen ships in dense array,
With a deadly front of terror
Eastward breasting all the bay.
On the quarter or the bow
Of each ship he doubled round them,
Pouring ruin on the foe!
And they saw with strange amaze,
Of the proud French line, the proudest
Skyward shooting in a blaze.
From the ruin of the fray,
Scuttled home in dire deray.
Fled the dazzling dream like smoke,
Nile to bind, and eastmost Ganges,
'Neath the Frenchman's haughty yoke.
Nelson steered with steady might,
Leaving that proud boy to flounder
Back to France in fretful flight.
Naples, from her sun-bright bay,
Comes with streamers and with music,
And with festive fair display,
Who had cleared the waters blue
From the rapine and the ravage
Of the regicidal crew.
In the transport of their glee,
To their birds unbarred the cages,
In their plumy circuit free;
When she saw that hero-boy,
Fell upon his arms and kissed him
In grand ecstasy of joy.
Hailed the chief, and blest the day
That saved her Christ-devoted waters
From the godless Frenchman's sway.
Foiled and flouted in the East,
Now in Borean seas the Frenchman
Sows his hot fermenting yeast.
Russia, Denmark, and the Swede,
Now shall serve the tyrant's need.
Planted on the Baltic shore,
And she sent her son, her Nelson,
Through the Sound by Elsinore,
Where the bristling batteries be,
There to make the pride of Denmark
Know the Power that sweeps the sea.
Brings the antlered troop to bay,
So with circling belt of thunder
He enclosed their proud array,
And made free each Baltic isle,
From the Gallic bondage ransomed
By the hero of the Nile.
Hails her hero. For a while,
Worn with labour, crowned with glory,
He shall rest on British soil.
Where the fishful Wandle flows,
With the friends that dearly love him,
He will woo the sweet repose.
Greening grass shall cheer his sight,
Greening grass and yellow waving
Corn in summer's kindly light.
Clip the sheep, and tend the hay;
In the parish church on Sunday
With the poor man he will pray.
Hearted loving joy was he,
Tossed upon the fretful sea.
For they said, “Our gallant Nel
Holds a heart wherein a lion
Knows in kindly peace to dwell
Not more gently tends her boy,
Than Nelson with all men, the meanest,
Shared the sorrow and the joy.
Grew for Nelson; but not long.
When his scourge again was needed
To chastise a giant wrong,
Leapt and dashed without delay
Right into the jaws of danger,
Where his presence signed the way
With unsated lust for war,
Now hath yoked the haughty Spaniard
To his proud imperial car;
O'er the mid-sea's swelling tide,
Through the billowy broad Atlantic,
To bring down stout England's pride.
Through rude waves and stormy roar;
Malta now, and now Palermo,
Knows him; now swart Barbary's shore.
West and East, o'er all the seas,
With an eye that knows no sleeping,
With a heart that knows no ease,
Where Trafalgar fronts the brine,
In a four-decked double line.
With an holy consecration
Yielding up his life to God
In a glorious consummation.
With four stars of honour, stands
On the deck, with his brave captains
Waiting their great chief's commands.
Not for glory or for booty,
But this only, “England looketh
That each man shall do his duty.”
With a double wedge they broke,
Collingwood with noble Nelson
Leading on the hearts of oak.
Huge four-tiered Leviathan,
Bright and fearless there stood Nelson,
Light as Hermes, in the van;
Strong, and breathing valiant breath,
But not wisely with his four-starred
Breast of honour courting death.
Mizzen-top a whizzing ball
Shot the brave man through the shoulder,
And he fell as bird doth fall
On his face he fell, and cried
To his faithful comrade Hardy,
“Hardy, now I die; the tide
Through unlicensed chambers. I
The shout of victory rend the sky!
Have struck, the rest will strike anon;
Maimed and mauled, they drift asunder,
All their front of bravery gone.”
I have lived and loved not long;
But, thank God, I did my duty,
And I leave my country strong.”
IV.
Mistress of the briny tide;
But no hint from Fate brought warning
To Napoleon's high-blown pride.
His vain heart was lifted up,
From the despot's giddy cup.
Kingdoms here and kingdoms there,
Where a field is free to plunder,
There the robber claims his share.
Russia quailed, and Prussia bled;
Now the hot high-hearted Spaniard
Writhed beneath his iron tread;
Spat out rancour like a well,
Sowed the peaceful homes with murder,
Turning sweet life to a hell.
Cared: so long his crested pride
On the back of harassed Europe
With high-booted strength might ride.
Now than Cæsar knows to reign;
All her streams from Rhine to Danube
Flood for him the fruitful plain.
The high top-gallant of her might;
She for justice, law, and freedom
Still hath fought, and still will fight.
Her high-destined task was done;
The seed brave Nelson sowed shall rise
To full-grown strength in Wellington.
On the peep of rosy May,
There, when moody France was brewing
Horrors for no distant day,
Wellington, sent forth by God
To give freedom to the nations
Bleeding 'neath a despot's rod.
Making every gaper stare,
But through sober scheme of schooling,
Wisely planned and used with care.
Noiseless on their measured way,
So he set his foot firm-planted
On life's highroad day by day.
Not with far-off dream of glory,
But 'neath stern control of duty
Working out his human story.
Steady head, and faithful heart,
This was Arthur's noble art.
Merchant-kings, with proud display,
Taught a false, fierce-blooded people
To respect a righteous sway;
Who came near them found a school
Where a wakeful soul like Arthur's
Learned to conquer and to rule.
Europe bled at every pore,
Arthur tames a tiger tyrant
In the Sultan of Mysore.
Then he marched with measured might,
Wise to foil with nice contrivance,
Strong with weighty arm to smite.
When the moment came he darted,
And was there to crush the foe
Before they knew that he had started.
Who shall plunder most, and where,
With a close-compacted cincture
Of wise warriors he is there.
O'er the trampled foe to ride,
But in train of armèd Justice,
With mild Mercy at her side.
But, where seeds of strife were sown,
Firm as flint, and calm as Jove
High seated on his thunder-throne.
Slow to strike a doubtful blow?
Shrinking from a stronger foe?
To his one were counted ten,
Rock and river might not stay
His weighty push of bayonets then.
Force and fraud, shall rage no more;
Peace shall reign with law firm-handed
From Nerbudda to Mysore.
In the East his work is done;
To a sterner task in Europe
England calls her noblest son.
Shall the Frank with iron foot
From the Ebro to the Tagus
Tramp on law nor fear dispute?
Knows to stand the sorest strain:
While she holds the keys of ocean,
France shall never rule in Spain.
O'er the broad Biscayan flood,
To stay Gaul's rude robber-legions
From their godless work of blood.
To avenge the Spaniard's wrong,
But with steeled determination,
Weak in show, in purpose strong.
Not on couch of ease lay he;
Sleepless oft, or rudely sleeping
Where a turfy sod might be.
With quick hand of help he ran;
There he stood the foremost man;
With the boldest risking all,
Standing with his star of honour
To maintain his ground or fall.
Doubt departs when he is nigh;
Jarring forces chime sweet music
'Neath his calm-disposing eye.
When the sun shone to make hay,
Spanish traitors, London praters,
Vexed his soul with sore delay.
Strong to promise and betray;
Hollow, windy-hearted, useless
To command or to obey.
They might force him to retreat
From the field where lay the vanquished
Bleeding at the victor's feet.
This, shall reap not where he sowed;
Marked by tread of all the heroes,
Patience is the great highroad.
Thunder-clouds pile mass on mass;
But clouds and showers are not for ever;
Who can wait will see them pass.
With broad breast of bristling barriers,
'Twixt the Tagus and the ocean,
There he waits their rush of warriors.
When the western blast is frantic,
The thunder-rush of the Atlantic;
The Gallic Cæsar's banded power;
Massena, Soult, Ney, Suchet, all
Shall fail when time makes ripe the hour.
Rush unkennelled to the chase,
So the fleeing Frenchmen Arthur
Follows with a thunder-pace.
Lion-hearted, all and each
Leapt with Campbell and with Napier,
Deft as goats, into the breach.
Like an eagle on a crag,
See, in three-crowned union glorious,
Flaunting high the British flag.
Hard-faced walls red flames are spouting,
Kempt and Walker, and the Picton,
Light and buoyant, nothing doubting,
As a rider mounts his steed,
Looking down in pride of conquest,
Where the river floods the mead.
Where they largely learned to bleed,
Eastward, eastward fled the Frenchmen,
Like scared birds with drifting speed!
Of applausive patriot glee,
Showers of flowers, and smiles of beauty,
Marched the man whose march made free
Cadiz on the billowy main,
Breathes free Spanish breath again.
Sudden-swelling rapid water,
Not the Ebro, which the Roman
Oft had stained with Celtic slaughter,
Where he came, their bristling chain
Snapt; and, in hot drift of terror
From Vittoria's blood-drenched plain,
Swift before the swelling breeze,
Fled the fear-struck myriads Francewards,
O'er the cloud-capt Pyrenees.
Stamped his triumph on the rock,
St Sebastian's sea-swept stronghold
From their bases felt the shock.
With well-ordered rank on rank,
Lo! the conquering banner waveth
O'er the proud soil of the Frank!
With the paladins of France,
Turned his rear-guard on the foe,
And checked the fiery Moor's advance.
Swelling strong and stronger on,
Haughty Gaul now finds her master
In the strength of Wellington.
Pales; the heart of the Garonne
Beats with loyal pulse; the white flag
Flaunts to welcome Wellington.
With the blood of the Garonne;
Must vail her top to Wellington.
God, who reigns in starry hall,
Hath hung forth this flaming scripture,—
“He who rose by pride shall fall.”
Down that son of thunder fell;
Fire and Frost conspired to blast him
With the double scourge of hell.
From Fate's fearful-sounding knell,
From the crumbling of the Kremlin,
As a falling star he fell.
Wastes, and Danube's swampy swell,
As the proud man falls he fell.
Cossacks hover where he fled;
Beresina's purpled channel
Groans beneath her up-heaped dead.
With sharp vengeance in his rear,
Through the storm and through the darkness,
Lonely, with no helper near.
As they knew him not before;
Then the master, now the outlaw,
Pale with rage and red with gore.
Rise to hound him where he falls;
Elbe to Rhine and Rhine to Weser
For a swift redemption calls.
Stiff old Austria, and the Swede,
Rose, as vengeful Furies rise,
To teach the bloody man to bleed.
Where the brave Gustavus bled,
Ages now shall tell to ages,
“Here the French usurper fled.”
They have bound him, as a man
Binds a bear or chains a tiger,
Hateful to the human clan.
In the mid-sea's briny swell,
Iron-hearted rocky Elba,
With his own proud heart to dwell.
Like a lion from his den,
Lo! he stands in France again!
To his call with eyes of wonder,
With the reborn lust of battle,
Dreams of glory and of plunder.
Like a Jove he thunders down;
Prussia's Eagle cowers at Ligny,
From the terror of his frown.
Flinched till the great work was done;
Crowned with conquest, braced with purpose,
Forth she sends her Wellington,
Not his eye with terror saw,
Clouds of deathful thunder drifted
From the woods at Quatre Bras.
Bear him o'er the foamy tide;
Light as Hermes, from the festive
Hall at Brussels he did ride
Blasts around him fiercely blew,
Till he stood with calm assurance
On high-fated Waterloo.
Hoofs of fire, and iron hail,
Firm as granite rock the billows
Spurred by the Atlantic gale.
O'er the field and up the steep,
Ever ready, ever steady,
English Arthur knows to keep
The fateful hour, when, hand in hand
He on conquered ground shall stand.
Hither, thither, in deray,
With the lawless lust of empire
Nevermore to vex the day.
Pride's fell minion, where is he?
To a lone rock they have bound him
In the far Atlantic sea,
Sorrows; for the gods are just;
And 'tis written: “Whoso madly
Tempts the sky shall bite the dust.”
A Song of Heroes | ||