And, as the skilled musician made the words...

And, as the skilled musician made the words

Of momentary meaning still simply

His own eternal hope and heart's desire,

Without belief, perchance, in Drake's own quest —

To Drake's own greater mind the eternal glory

Seemed to transfigure his immediate hope.

But Doughty only heard a sweet concourse

Of sounds. They ceased. And Drake resumed his tale

Of that strange flight in boyhood to the sea.

Next, the red-curtained inn and kindly hands

Of Protestant Plymouth held his memory long;

Often in strange and distant dreams he saw

That scene which now he tenderly portrayed

To Doughty's half-ironic smiling lips,

Half-sympathetic eyes; he saw again

That small inn parlour with the homely fare

Set forth upon the table, saw the gang

Of seamen dripping from the spray come in,

Like great new thoughts to some adventurous brain.

Feeding his wide grey eyes he saw them stand

Around the crimson fire and stamp their feet

And scatter the salt drops from their big sea-boots;

And all that night he lay awake and heard

Mysterious thunderings of eternal tides

Moaning out of a cold and houseless gloom

Beyond the world, that made it seem most sweet

To slumber in a little four-walled inn

Immune from all that vastness. But at dawn

He woke, he leapt from bed, he ran and lookt,

There, through the tiny high bright casement, there,—

O, fairy vision of that small boy's face

Peeping at daybreak through the diamond pane!—

There first he saw the wondrous new-born world,

And round its princely shoulders wildly flowing,

Gemmed with a myriad clusters of the sun,

The magic azure mantle of the sea.

And, afterwards, there came those marvellous days

When, on that battleship, a disused hulk

Rotting to death in Chatham Reach, they found

Sanctuary and a dwelling-place at last.

For, Hawkins, that great ship-man, being their friend,

A Protestant, with power on Plymouth town,

Nigh half whereof he owned, made Edmund Drake

Reader of prayer to all the ships of war

That lay therein. So there the dreaming boy,

Francis, grew up in that grim nursery

Among the ropes and masts and great dumb mouths

Of idle ordnance. In that hulk he heard

Many a time his father and his friends

Over some wild-eyed troop of refugees

Thunder against the powers of Spain and Rome,

“Idolaters who defiled the House of God

In England;” and all round them, as he heard,

The clang and clatter of shipwright hammers rang,

And hour by hour upon his vision rose,

In solid oak reality, new ships,

As Ilion rose to music, ships of war,

The visible shapes and symbols of his dream,

Unconscious yet, but growing as they grew,

A wondrous incarnation, hour by hour,

Till with their towering masts they stood complete,

Embodied thoughts, in God's own dockyards built,

For Drake ere long to lead against the world.

There, as to round the tale with ringing gold,

Across the waters from the full-plumed Swan

The music of a Mermaid roundelay —

Our Lady of the Sea, a Dorian theme

Tuned to the soul of England — charmed the moon.