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

was invited from Corinth by the Syracusans (b.c. 344) to be their leader in throwing off the tyranny of the second Dionysius. Having effected this, defeated the Carthaginian invaders, and reduced all the minor despotisms within Sicily, he voluntarily resigned his paramount power and died in honoured retirement.

who in Syracuse laid down
That gleaming bait of all men's eyes,
And for his cottage changed the invidious crown;
Moving serenely through his grayhair'd day
'Mid vines and olives gray.

He also,

In 1556 the Emperor Charles V gave up all his dominions, withdrawing in 1557 to Yuste;—a monastery situated in a region of singular natural beauty, between Xarandilla and Plasencia in Estremadura. He died there, Sep. 21, 1558.

whom
The load of double empire, half the world
His own, within a living tomb
Press'd down at Yuste,—Spain's great banner furl'd
His winding-sheet around him,—while he strove
The impalpable Above

Though mortal yet,
To breathe, is blazon'd on the sages' roll:—

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High soaring hearts, who could forget
The sceptre, to the hermitage of the soul
Retired, sweet solitudes of the musing eye,
And let the world go by!

There, if the cup
Of Time, that brims ere we can reach repose,
Fill'd slow, the soul might summon up
The strenuous heat of youth, the silenced foes;
The deeds of fame, star-bright above the throne;
The better deeds unknown.

There, when the cloud
Eased its dark breast in thunder, and the light
Ran forth, their hearts recall the loud
Hoarse onset roar, the flashing of the fight;
Those other clouds piled-up in white array
Whence deadlier lightnings play.

There, when the seas
Murmur at midnight, and the dome is clear,
And from their seats in heaven the breeze
Loosens the stars,

So Vergil, Georg. I, 365:

Saepe etiam stellas vento inpendente videbis
Praecipites caelo labi . . .

to blaze and disappear,
And such is Glory! . . . with a sigh suppress'd
They smile, and turn to rest.

—But he, who here
Unglorious hides, untrain'd, unwilling Lord,
The phantom king

Richard Cromwell was Protector from Sep. 3, 1658 to May 25, 1659. After 1660 his life was that of a simple country gentleman, till his death in 1712, when he was buried at Hursley near Winchester.

of half a year,
From England's throne thrust by the bloodless sword,
Unheirlike heir

Richard Cromwell has received double measure of that censure which the world's judgment too readily gives to unsuccess, finding favour neither from Royalists nor Cromwellians. Macaulay, with more justice, remarks, ‘That he was a good man he evinced by proofs more satisfactory than deep groans or long sermons, by humility and suavity when he was at the height of human greatness, and by cheerful resignation under cruel wrongs and misfortunes.’ . . . ‘He did nothing amiss during his short administration.’

His fall may be traced to several causes: to the fact that the puritan party proper, who supported him, the ‘sober men’ mentioned by Baxter ‘that called his father no better than a traitorous hypocrite,’ had not power to resist the fanatic cabal of army chiefs: to the necessity he was under of protecting some justly-odious confederates of Oliver: his own want of ability or energy to govern,—a point fully recognized during Oliver's supremacy; and to his own honourable decision not to ‘have a drop of blood shed on his poor account.’ Yet there is ample evidence to show that Richard, had he chosen, might have made a struggle to retain the throne,—sufficient, at least, to have thus deluged the kingdom.

Richard's life was passed in great quiet after 1660: Charles II, according to Clarendon, with a wise and humorous lenity, not thinking it ‘necessary to inquire after a man so long forgotten.’ His letters reveal a man of affectionate and honest disposition; he uses the Puritan phraseology of the day without leaving a sense of nausea in the reader's mind.

to that colossal fame;—
How should men name his name,

How rate his worth
With those heroic ones who, life's labour done,
Mark'd out their six-foot couch of earth,
The laurell'd rest of manhood's battle won?

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—Not so with him! . . . Yet, ere we turn away,
A still small voice will say,

By other rule
Than man's coarse glory-test does God bestow
His crowns: exalting oft the fool,
So deem'd, and the world-hero levelling low.
—And he, who from the palace pass'd obscure,
And honourably poor,

Spurning a throne
Held by blood-tenure, 'gainst a nation's will;
Lived on his narrow fields alone,
Content life's common service to fulfil;
Not careful of a carnage-bought renown,
Or that precarious crown:—

Him count we wise,
Him also! though the chorus of the throng
Be silent: though no pillar rise
In slavish adulation of the strong:—
But here, from blame of tongues and fame alcof,
'Neath a low chancel roof,

—The peace of God,—
He sleeps: unconscious hero! Lowly grave
By village-footsteps rudely trod
Forgotten: or while silence holds the nave,
And the bold robin comes, when day is dim,
And pipes his heedless hymn.