University of Virginia Library

Back to the common things of ev'ry day—
The dull prosaic Present with its cares!—
The curtain falls on this imperfect play,
The actors reassume what dress was theirs
Ere yet they donned the doublet and trunk hose
Of good Queen Bess's reign! We live once more
In days that seem too far removed from those
Bright days of chivalry, when patriots swore
Rash oaths for what they deemed their country's good,
Fired by a faith our placid souls ignore.
Where are the eager pulsings of the blood,
Those noble aspirations, which of yore
Banded together to some futile end,
The flower of English youth, who dared disgrace
And cruel death, and perish'd friend with friend,
In their fresh years of manhood? Nay!—(efface
From out your minds the thought, or else extol
Our growing wealth and commerce in its stead)—
Gone are those high ambitions of the soul!
The golden days of chivalry are dead!

Thus have I heard some Englishmen lament,
Who deemed themselves elected to declaim
Against the Present, with the discontent
Of souls appointed to despise and blame.
Yet 'tis but just these favoured few should say
(Betwixt their carping): 'Neath a peaceful reign
We dwell and draw our breath, nor dread to-day
Fall'n France, staunch Scotland, or disjointed Spain;
For us no ghastly scaffold draped in black,
Uprises like a spectre to affright;
Whilst halter, hurdle, quart'ring-knife, and rack
Have languish'd under liberty and light,
Till thought of them is as of clouds that lower
After the night is past when storms have been,
That cede to sun. And I have seen the Tow'r,
(Guest of a guardsman of sweet seventeen,
Who asked me there to tea,) yet smiled beneath
That gloomy pile, as heedless of their fate
Who once, predestin'd to a horrid death,
Defiled despairing, through the Traitors' Gate.
Nor did my pulses falter as I turn'd
From time to time to view with bated breath
Some record of bold spirits that had burn'd
Their moth-wings at the altar of their faith.
He, smoking carelessly the while, forgot
The brave Sir Walter, with his outspread cloak
Before the Virgin Queen, whose name should not
Go unremember'd of the ones who smoke
The fragrant weed that comforts their curl'd heads
(The which he brought us ere he left his own
Some few short paces hence). And yet he treads—
That beardless warrior, who hath never known,
As yet, the taste of blood, the clash of arms—
As though these names said nothing to his soul.
Yes, gone their vain ambitions, their alarms
Still'd with those legions that, as ages roll,
Are garner'd 'neath the sweeping scythe of Time,
Leaving us transient sojourners to mark
Some graven coat-of-arms, or pious rhyme
Such as I mark'd that day! Yet tho' so dark
The blot that fell their coat-of-arms upon
Who swore to kill the queen in days of yore
(When Titchborne, Tilney, Ballard, Babington,
Like kites transfix'd against a granary door,
Suffer'd to scare their fellows), who may say
What these had wrought beneath a brighter star?
Or what deserving impulse turn'd astray
Divides the thing we were from what we are?
Then let us honour what they counted good,
Nor blame the zeal we may not understand;
Nor, loathing, shrink from names that might have stood
As high as any in our English land,
For worth and courage hitherto unstain'd,
These hang their heads, and suppliant, meet our view,
Before the bar of history arraigned,
And asking pity, win our pardon too.
Yet bless these days if men have learnt at last,
The good of nations makes the good of kings;
Whilst Ignorance and Bigotry “are cast,
As weeds, upon the dunghill of dead things.”