At last a faint-flushed April Dawn arose...

At last a faint-flushed April Dawn arose

With milk-white arms up-binding golden clouds

Of fragrant hair behind her lovely head;

And lo, before the bright black plunging prows

The whole sea suddenly shattered into shoals

Of rolling porpoises. Everywhere they tore

The glittering water. Like a moving crowd

Of black bright rocks washed smooth by foaming tides,

They thrilled the unconscious fancy of the crews

With subtle, wild, and living hints of land.

And soon Columbus’ happy signals came,

The signs that saved him when his mutineers

Despaired at last and clamoured to return,—

And there, with awe triumphant in their eyes,

They saw, lazily tossing on the tide,

A drift of seaweed, and a berried branch,

Which silenced them as if they had seen a Hand

Writing with fiery letters on the deep,

Then a black cormorant, vulture of the sea,

With neck outstretched and one long ominous honk,

Went hurtling past them to its unknown bourne.

A mighty white-winged albatross came next;

Then flight on flight of clamorous clanging gulls;

And last, a wild and sudden shout of “Land!”

Echoed from crew to crew across the waves.

Then, dumb upon the rigging as they hung

Staring at it, a menace chilled their blood.

For like Il Gran Nemico of Dante, dark,

Ay, coloured like a thunder-cloud, from North

To South, in front, there slowly rose to sight

A country like a dragon fast asleep

Along the West, with wrinkled, purple wings

Ending in ragged forests o'er its spine;

And with great craggy claws out-thrust, that turned

( As the dire distances dissolved their veils )

To promontories bounding a huge bay.

There o'er the hushed and ever shallower tide

The staring ships drew nigh and thought, “Is this

The Dragon of our Golden Apple Tree,

The guardian of the fruit of our desire

Which grows in gardens of the Hesperides

Where those three sisters weave a white-armed dance

Around it everlastingly, and sing

Strange songs in a strange tongue that still convey

Warning to heedful souls?” Nearer they drew,

And now, indeed, from out a soft blue-grey

Mingling of colours on that coast's deep flank

There crept a garden of enchantment, height

O'er height, a garden sloping from the hills,

Wooded as with Aladdin's trees that bore

All-coloured clustering gems instead of fruit;

Now vaster as it grew upon their eyes,

And like some Roman amphitheatre

Cirque above mighty cirque all round the bay,

With jewels and flowers ablaze on women's breasts

Innumerably confounded and confused;

While lovely faces flushed with lust of blood,

Rank above rank upon their tawny thrones

In soft barbaric splendour lapped, and lulled

By the low thunderings of a thousand lions,

Luxuriously smiled as they bent down

Over the scarlet-splashed and steaming sands

To watch the white-limbed gladiators die.

Such fears and dreams for Francis Drake, at least,

Rose and dissolved in his nigh fevered brain

As they drew near that equatorial shore;

For rumours had been borne to him; and now

He knew not whether to impute the wrong

To his untrustful mind or to believe

Doughty a traitorous liar; yet there seemed

Proof and to spare. A thousand shadows rose

To mock him with their veiled indicative hands.

And each alone he laid and exorcised

But for each doubt he banished, one returned

From darker depths to mock him o'er again.

So, in that bay, the little fleet sank sail

And anchored; and the wild reality

Behind those dreams towered round them on the hills,

Or so it seemed. And Drake bade lower a boat,

And went ashore with sixteen men to seek

Water; and, as they neared the embowered beach,

Over the green translucent tide there came,

A hundred yards from land, a drowsy sound

Immeasurably repeated and prolonged,

As of innumerable elfin drums

Dreamily mustering in the tropic bloom.

This from without they heard, across the waves;

But when they glided into a flowery creek

Under the sharp black shadows of the trees —

Jaca and Mango and Palm and red festoons

Of garlanded Liana wreaths — it ebbed

Into the murmur of the mighty fronds,

Prodigious leaves whose veinings bore the fresh

Impression of the finger-prints of God.

There humming-birds, like flakes of purple fire

Upon some passing seraph's plumage, beat

And quivered in blinding blots of golden light

Between the embattled cactus and cardoon;

While one huge whisper of primeval awe

Seemed to await the cool green eventide

When God should walk His Garden as of old.

Now as the boats were plying to and fro

Between the ships and that enchanted shore,

Drake bade his comrades tarry a little and went

Apart, alone, into the trackless woods.

Tormented with his thoughts, he saw all round

Once more the battling image of his mind,

Where there was nought of man, only the vast

Unending silent struggle of Titan trees,

Large internecine twistings of the world,

The hushed death-grapple and the still intense

Locked anguish of Laocoons that gripped

Death by the throat for thrice three hundred years,

Once, like a subtle mockery overhead,

Some black-armed chattering ape swung swiftly by,

But he strode onward, thinking — “Was it false,

False all that kind outreaching of the hands?

False? Was there nothing certain, nothing sure

In those divinest aisles and towers of Time

Wherein we took sweet counsel? Is there nought

Sure but the solid dust beneath our feet?

Must all those lovelier fabrics of the soul,

Being so divinely bright and delicate,

Waver and shine no longer than some poor

Prismatic aery bubble? Ay, they burst,

And all their glory shrinks into one tear

No bitterer than some idle love-lorn maid

Sheds for her dead canary. God, it hurts,

This, this hurts most, to think how we must miss

What might have been, for nothing but a breath,

A babbling of the tongue, an argument,

Or such a poor contention as involves

The thrones and dominations of this earth,—

How many of us, like seed on barren ground,

Must miss the flower and harvest of their prayers,

The living light of friendship and the grasp

Which for its very meaning once implied

Eternities of utterance and the life

Immortal of two souls beyond the grave?”

Now, wandering upward ever, he reached and clomb

The slope side of a fern-fringed precipice,

And, at the summit, found an opening glade,

Whence, looking o'er the forest, he beheld

The sea; and, in the land-locked bay below,

Far, far below, his elfin-tiny ships,

All six at anchor on the crawling tide!

Then onward, upward, through the woods once more

He plunged with bursting heart and burning brow;

And, once again, like madness, the black shapes

Of doubt swung through his brain and chattered and laughed,

Till he upstretched his arms in agony

And cursed the name of Doughty, cursed the day

They met, cursed his false face and courtier smiles,

“For oh,” he cried, “how easy a thing it were

For truth to wear the garb of truth! This proves

His treachery!” And there, at once, his thoughts

Tore him another way, as thus, “And yet

If he were false, is he not subtle enough

To hide it? Why, this proves his innocence —

This very courtly carelessness which I,

Black-hearted evil-thinker as I am,

In my own clumsier spirit so misjudge!

These children of the court are butterflies

Fluttering hither and thither, and I — poor fool —

Would fix them to a stem and call them flowers,

Nay, bid them grasp the ground like towering oaks

And shadow all the zenith;” and yet again

The madness of distrustful friendship gleamed

From his fierce eyes, “Oh villain, damnèd villain,

God's murrain on his heart! I know full well

He hides what he can hide! He wears no fault

Upon the gloss and frippery of his breast!

It is not that! It is the hidden things,

Unseizable, the things I do not know,

Ay, it is these, these, these and these alone

That I mistrust.”

And, as he walked, the skies

Grew full of threats, and now enormous clouds

Rose mammoth-like above the ensanguined deep,

Trampling the daylight out; and, with its death

Dyed purple, rushed along as if they meant

To obliterate the world. He took no heed.

Though that strange blackness brimmed the branching aisles

With horror, he strode on till in the gloom,

Just as his winding way came out once more

Over a precipice that o'erlooked the bay,

There, as he went, not gazing down, but up,

He saw what seemed a ponderous granite cliff,

A huge ribbed shell upon a lonely shore

Left by forgotten mountains when they sank

Back to earth's breast like billows on a sea.

A tall and whispering crowd of tree-ferns waved

Mysterious fringes round it. In their midst

He flung himself at its broad base, with one

Sharp shivering cry of pain, “Show me Thy ways,

O God, teach me Thy paths! I am in the dark!

Lighten my darkness!”

Almost as he spoke

There swept across the forest, far and wide,

Gathering power and volume as it came,

A sound as of a rushing mighty wind;

And, overhead, like great black gouts of blood

Wrung from the awful forehead of the Night

The first drops fell and ceased. Then, suddenly,

Out of the darkness, earth with all her seas,

Her little ships at anchor in the bay

( Five ebony ships upon a sheet of silver,

Drake saw not that, indeed, Drake saw not that! ),

Her woods, her boughs, her leaves, her tiniest twigs.

Leapt like a hunted stag through one immense

Lightning of revelation into the murk

Of Erebus: then heaven o'er rending heaven

Shattered and crashed down ruin over the world.

But, in that deeper darkness, Francis Drake

Stood upright now, and with blind outstretched arms

Groped at that strange forgotten cliff and shell

Of mystery; for in that flash of light

Æons had passed; and now the Thing in front

Made his blood freeze with memories that lay

Behind his Memory. In the gloom he groped,

And with dark hands that knew not what they knew,

As one that shelters in the night, unknowing,

Beneath a stranded shipwreck, with a cry

He touched the enormous rain-washed belted ribs

And bones like battlements of some Mastodon

Embedded there until the trump of doom.

After long years, long centuries, perchance,

Triumphantly some other pioneer

Would stand where Drake now stood and read the tale

Of ages where he only felt the cold

Touch in the dark of some huge mystery;

Yet Drake might still be nearer to the light

Who now was whispering from his great deep heart,

“Show me Thy ways, O God, teach me Thy paths!”

And there by some strange instinct, oh, he felt

God's answer there, as if he grasped a hand

Across a gulf of twice ten thousand years;

And he regained his lost magnificence

Of faith in that great Harmony which resolves

Our discords, faith through all the ruthless laws

Of nature in their lovely pitilessness,

Faith in that Love which outwardly must wear,

Through all the sorrows of eternal change,

The splendour of the indifference of God.

All round him through the heavy purple gloom

Sloped the soft rush of silver-arrowed rain,

Loosening the skies’ hard anguish, as with tears.

Once more he felt his unity with all

The vast composure of the universe,

And drank deep at the fountains of that peace

Which comprehends the tumult of our days.

But with that peace the power to act returned;

And, with his back against the Mastodon,

He stared through the great darkness tow'rds the sea.

The rain ceased for a moment: only the slow

Drip of the dim droop-feathered palms all round

Deepened the hush.

Then, out of the gloom once more

The whole earth leapt to sight with all her woods,

Her boughs, her leaves, her tiniest twigs distinct

For one wild moment; but Drake only saw

The white flash of her seas and there, oh there

That land-locked bay with those five elfin ships,

Five elfin ebony ships upon a sheet

Of wrinkled silver! Then, as the thunder followed,

One thought burst through his brain —

One ship was gone!

Over the grim precipitous edge he hung,

An eagle waiting for the lightning now

To swoop upon his prey. One iron hand

Gripped a rough tree-root like a bunch of snakes;

And, as the rain rushed round him, far away

He saw to northward yet another flash,

A scribble of God's finger in the sky

Over a waste of white stampeding waves.

His eye flashed like a falchion as he saw it,

And from his lips there burst the sea-king's laugh;

For there, with a fierce joy he knew, he knew

Doughty, at last — an open mutineer!

An open foe to fight! Ay, there she went,—

His Golden Hynde, his little Golden Hynde

A wild deserter scudding to the North.

And, almost ere the lightning, Drake had gone

Crashing down the face of the precipice,

By a narrow water-gully, and through the huge

Forest he tore the straight and perilous way

Down to the shore; while, three miles to the North,

Upon the wet poop of the Golden Hynde

Doughty stood smiling. Scarce would he have smiled

Knowing that Drake had seen him from that tower

Amidst the thunders; but, indeed, he thought

He had escaped unseen amidst the storm.

Many a day he had worked upon the crew,

Fanning their fears and doubts until he won

The more part to his side. And when they reached

That coast, he showed them how Drake meant to sail

Southward, into that unknown Void; but he

Would have them suddenly slip by stealth away

Northward to Darien, showing them what a life

Of roystering glory waited for them there,

If, laying aside this empty quest, they joined

The merry feasters round those island fires

Which over many a dark-blue creek illumed

Buccaneer camps in scarlet logwood groves,

Fringing the Gulf of Mexico, till dawn

Summoned the Black Flags out to sweep the sea.

But when Drake reached the flower-embowered boat

And found the men awaiting his return

There, in a sheltering grove of bread-fruit trees

Beneath great eaves of leafage that obscured

Their sight, but kept the storm out, as they tossed

Pieces of eight or rattled the bone dice,

His voice went through them like a thunderbolt,

For none of them had seen the Golden Hynde

Steal from the bay; and now the billows burst

Like cannon down the coast; and they had thought

Their boat could not be launched until the storm

Abated. Under Drake's compelling eyes,

Nevertheless, they poled her down the creek

Without one word, waiting their chance. Then all

Together with their brandished oars they thrust,

And on the fierce white out-draught of a wave

They shot up, up and over the toppling crest

Of the next, and plunged crashing into the trough

Behind it: then they settled at their thwarts,

And the fierce water boiled before their blades

As, with Drake's iron hand upon the helm,

They soared and crashed across the rolling seas.

Not for the Spanish prize did Drake now steer,

But for that little ship the Marygold,

Swiftest of sail, next to the Golden Hynde,

And, in the hands of Francis Drake, indeed

Swiftest of all; and ere the seamen knew

What power, as of a wind, bore them along,

Anchor was up, their hands were on the sheets,

The sails were broken out, the Marygold

Was flying like a storm-cloud to the North,

And on her poop an iron statue still

As death stood Francis Drake.

One hour they rushed

Northward, with green seas washing o'er the deck

And buffeted with splendour; then they saw

The Golden Hynde like some wing-broken gull

With torn mismanaged plumes beating the air

In peril of utter shipwreck; saw her fly

Half-mast, a feeble signal of distress

Despite all Doughty's curses; for her crew

Wild with divisions torn amongst themselves

Most gladly now surrendered in their hearts,

As close alongside grandly onward swept

The Marygold, with canvas trim and taut

Magnificently drawing the full wind,

Her gunners waiting at their loaded guns

Bare-armed and silent; and that iron soul

Alone, upon her silent quarter-deck.

There they hauled up into the wind and lay

Rocking, while Drake, alone, without a guard,

Boarding the runaway, dismissed his boat

Back to the Marygold. Then his voice out-rang

Trumpet-like o'er the trembling mutineers,

And clearly, as if they were but busied still

About the day's routine. They hid their shame,

As men that would propitiate a god,

By flying to fulfil his lightest word;

And ere they knew what power, as of a wind,

Impelled them — that half wreck was trim and taut,

Her sails all drawing and her bows afoam;

And, creeping past the Marygold once more,

She led their Southward way! And not till then

Did Drake vouchsafe one word to the white face

Of Doughty, as he furtively slunk nigh

With some new lie upon his fear-parched lips

Thirsting for utterance in his crackling laugh

Of deprecation; and with one ruffling puff

Of pigeon courage in his blinded soul —

“I am no sea-dog — even Francis Drake

Would scarce misuse a gentleman.”

Then Drake turned

And summoned four swart seamen out by name.

His words went like a cold wind through their flesh

As with a passionless voice he slowly said,

“Take ye this fellow: bind him to the mast

Until what time I shall decide his fate.”

And Doughty gasped as at the world's blank end,—

“Nay, Francis,” cried he, “wilt thou thus misuse

A gentleman?” But as the seamen gripped

His arms he struggled vainly and furiously

To throw them off; and in his impotence

Let slip the whole of his treacherous cause and hope

In empty wrath,— “Fore God,” he foamed and snarled,

“Ye shall all smart for this when we return!

Unhand me, dogs! I have Lord Burleigh's power

Behind me. There is nothing I have done

Without his warrant! Ye shall smart for this!

Unhand me, I say, unhand me!”

And in one flash

Drake saw the truth, and Doughty saw his eyes

Lighten upon him; and his false heart quailed

Once more; and he suddenly suffered himself

Quietly, strangely, to be led away

And bound without a murmur to the mast.

And strangely Drake remembered, as those words,

“Ye shall all smart for this when we return,”

Yelped at his faith, how while the Dover cliffs

Faded from sight he leaned to his new friend

Doughty and said: “I blame them not who stay!

I blame them not at all who cling to home,

For many of us, indeed, shall not return,

Nor ever know that sweetness any more.”

And when they had reached their anchorage anew,

Drake, having now resolved to bring his fleet

Beneath a more compact control, at once

Took all the men and the chief guns and stores

From out the Spanish prize; and sent Tom Moone

To set the hulk afire. Also he bade

Unbind the traitor and ordered him aboard

The pinnace Christopher. John Doughty, too,

He ordered thither, into the grim charge

Of old Tom Moone, thinking it best to keep

The poisonous leaven carefully apart

Until they had won well Southward, to a place

Where, finally committed to their quest,

They might arraign the traitor without fear

Or favour, and acquit him or condemn.

But those two brothers, doubting as the false

Are damned to doubt, saw murder in his eyes,

And thought “He means to sink the smack one night.”

And they refused to go, till Drake abruptly

Ordered them straightway to be slung on board

With ropes.

The daylight waned; but ere the sun

Sank, the five ships were plunging to the South;

For Drake would halt no longer, least the crows

Also should halt betwixt two purposes.

He took the tide of fortune at the flood;

And onward through the now subsiding storm,

Ere they could think what power as of a wind

Impelled them, he had swept them on their way.

Far, far into the night they saw the blaze

That leapt in crimson o'er the abandoned hulk

Behind them, like a mighty hecatomb

Marking the path of some Titanic will.

Many a night and day they Southward drove.

Sometimes at midnight round them all the sea

Quivered with witches’ oils and water snakes,

Green, blue, and red, with lambent tongues of fire.

Mile upon mile about the blurred black hulls

A cauldron of tempestuous colour coiled.

On every mast mysterious meteors burned,

And from the shores a bellowing rose and fell

As of great bestial gods that walked all night

Through some wild hell unknown, too vast for men;

But when the silver and crimson of the dawn

Broke out, they saw the tropic shores anew,

The fair white foam, and, round about the rocks,

Weird troops of tusked sea-lions; and the world

Mixed with their dreams and made them stranger still.

And, once, so fierce a tempest scattered the fleet

That even the hardiest souls began to think

There was a Jonah with them; for the seas

Rose round them like green mountains, peaked and rigged

With heights of Alpine snow amongst the clouds;

And many a league to Southward, when the ships

Gathered again amidst the sinking waves

Four only met. The ship of Thomas Drake

Was missing; and some thought it had gone down

With all hands in the storm. But Francis Drake

Held on his way, learning from hour to hour

To merge himself in immortality;

Learning the secrets of those pitiless laws

Which dwarf all mortal grief, all human pain,

To something less than nothing by the side

Of that eternal travail dimly guessed,

Since first he felt in the miraculous dark

The great bones of the Mastodon, that hulk

Of immemorial death. He learned to judge

The passing pageant of this outward world

As by the touch-stone of that memory;

Even as in that country which some said

Lay now not far, the great Tezcucan king,

Resting his jewelled hand upon a skull,

And on a smouldering glory of jewels throned

There in his temple of the Unknown God

Over the host of Aztec princes, clad

In golden hauberks gleaming under soft

Surcoats of green or scarlet feather-work,

Could in the presence of a mightier power

Than life or death, give up his guilty sons,

His only sons, to the sacrificial sword.

And hour by hour the soul of Francis Drake,

Unconscious as an oak-tree of its growth,

Increased in strength and stature as he drew

Earth, heaven, and hell within him, more and more.

For as the dream we call our world, with all

Its hues is but a picture in the brain,

So did his soul enfold the universe

With gradual sense of superhuman power,

While every visible shape within the vast

Horizon seemed the symbol of some, thought

Waiting for utterance. He had found indeed

God's own Nirvana, not of empty dream,

But of intensest life. Nor did he think

Aught of all this; but, as the rustic deems

The colours that he carries in his brain

Are somehow all outside him while he peers

Unaltered through two windows in his face,

Drake only knew that as the four ships plunged

Southward, the world mysteriously grew

More like a prophet's vision, hour by hour,

Fraught with dark omens and significances,

A world of hieroglyphs and sacred signs

Wherein he seemed to read the truth that lay

Hid from the Roman augurs when of old

They told the future from the flight of birds.

How vivid with disaster seemed the flight

Of those blood-red flamingoes o'er the dim

Blue steaming forest, like two terrible thoughts

Flashing, unapprehended, through his brain!

And now, as they drove Southward, day and night,

Through storm and calm, the shores that fleeted by

Grew wilder, grander, with his growing soul,

And pregnant with the approaching mystery.

And now along the Patagonian coast

They cruised, and in the solemn midnight saw

Wildernesses of shaggy barren marl,

Petrified seas of lava, league on league,

Craters and bouldered slopes and granite cliffs

With ragged rents, grim gorges, deep ravines,

And precipice on precipice up-piled

Innumerable to those dim distances

Where, over valleys hanging in the clouds,

Gigantic mountains and volcanic peaks

Catching the wefts of cirrus fleece appeared

To smoke against the sky, though all was now

Dead as that frozen chaos of the moon,

Or some huge passion of a slaughtered soul

Prostrate under the marching of the stars.

At last, and in a silver dawn, they came

Suddenly on a broad-winged estuary,

And, in the midst of it, an island lay,

There they found shelter, on its leeward side,

And Drake convened upon the Golden Hynde

His dread court-martial. Two long hours he heard

Defence and accusation, then broke up

The conclave, and, with burning heart and brain,

Feverishly seeking everywhere some sign

To guide him, went ashore upon that isle,

And lo, turning a rugged point of rock,

He rubbed his eyes to find out if he dreamed,

For there — a Crusoe's wonder, a miracle,

A sign — before him stood on that lone strand

Stark, with a stern arm pointing out his way

And jangling still one withered skeleton,

The grim black gallows where Magellan hanged

His mutineers. Its base was white with bones

Picked by the gulls, and crumbling o'er the sand

A dread sea-salt, dry from the tides of time.

There, on that lonely shore, Death's finger-post

Stood like some old forgotten truth made strange

By the long lapse of many memories,

All starting up in resurrection now

As at the trump of doom, heroic ghosts

Out of the cells and graves of his deep brain

Reproaching him. “Were this man not thy friend,

Ere now he should have died the traitor's death.

What wilt thou say to others if they, too,

Prove false? Or wilt thou slay the lesser and save

The greater sinner? Nay, if thy right hand

Offend thee, cut it off!” And, in one flash,

Drake saw his path and chose it.

With a voice

Low as the passionless anguished voice of Fate

That comprehends all pain, but girds it round

With iron, lest some random cry break out

For man's misguidance, he drew all his men

Around him, saying, “Ye all know how I loved

Doughty, who hath betrayed me twice and thrice,

For I still trusted him: he was no felon

That I should turn my heart away from him.

He is the type and image of man's laws;

While I — am lawless as the soul that still

Must sail and seek a world beyond the worlds,

A law behind earth's laws. I dare not judge!

But ye — who know the mighty goal we seek,

Who have seen him sap our courage, hour by hour,

Till God Himself almost appeared a dream

Behind his technicalities and doubts

Of aught he could not touch or handle: ye

Who have seen him stir up jealousy and strife

Between our seamen and our gentlemen,

Even as the world stirs up continual strife,

Bidding the man forget he is a man

With God's own patent of nobility;

Ye who have seen him strike this last sharp blow —

Sharper than any enemy hath struck,—

He whom I trusted, he alone could strike —

So sharply, for indeed I loved this man.

Judge ye — for see, I cannot. Do not doubt

I loved this man!

But now, if ye will let him have his life,

Oh, speak! But, if ye think it must be death,

Hold up your hands in silence!” His voice dropped,

And eagerly he whispered forth one word

Beyond the scope of Fate —

“I would not have him die!” There was no sound

Save the long thunder of eternal seas,—

Drake bowed his head and waited.

Suddenly,

One man upheld his hand; then, all at once,

A brawny forest of brown arms arose

In silence, and the great sea whispered Death.

There, with one big swift impulse, Francis Drake

Held out his right sun-blackened hand and gripped

The hand that Doughty proffered him; and lo,

Doughty laughed out and said, “Since I must die,

Let us have one more hour of comradeship,

One hour as old companions. Let us make

A feast here, on this island, ere I go

Where there is no more feasting.” So they made

A great and solemn banquet as the day

Decreased; and Doughty bade them all unlock

Their sea-chests and bring out their rich array.

There, by that wondering ocean of the West,

In crimson doublets, lined and slashed with gold,

In broidered lace and double golden chains

Embossed with rubies and great cloudy pearls

They feasted, gentlemen adventurers,

Drinking old malmsey, as the sun sank down.

Now Doughty, fronting the rich death of day,

And flourishing a silver pouncet-box

With many a courtly jest and rare conceit,

There as he sat in rich attire, out-braved

The rest. Though darker-hued, yet richer far,

His murrey-coloured doublet double-piled

Of Genoa velvet, puffed with ciprus, shone;

For over its grave hues the gems that bossed

His golden collar, wondrously relieved,

Blazed lustrous to the West like stars. But Drake

Was clad in black, with midnight silver slashed,

And, at his side, a great two-handed sword.

At last they rose, just as the sun's last rays

Rested upon the heaving molten gold

Immeasurable. The long slow sigh of the waves

That creamed across the lonely time-worn reef

All round the island seemed the very voice

Of the Everlasting: black against the sea

The gallows of Magellan stretched its arm

With the gaunt skeleton and its rusty chain

Creaking and swinging in the solemn breath

Of eventide like some strange pendulum

Measuring out the moments that remained.

There did they take the holy sacrament

Of Jesus’ body and blood. Then Doughty and Drake

Kissed each other, as brothers, on the cheek;

And Doughty knelt. And Drake, without one word,

Leaning upon the two-edged naked sword

Stood at his side, with iron lips, and eyes

Full of the sunset; while the doomed man bowed

His head upon a rock. The great sun dropped

Suddenly, and the land and sea were dark;

And as it were a sign, Drake lifted up

The gleaming sword. It seemed to sweep the heavens

Down in its arc as he smote, once, and no more.

Then, for a moment, silence froze their veins,

Till one fierce seamen stooped with a hoarse cry;

And, like an eagle clutching up its prey,

His arm swooped down and bore the head aloft,

Gorily streaming, by the long dark hair;

And a great shout went up, “So perish all

Traitors to God and England.” Then Drake turned

And bade them to their ships; and, wondering,

They left him. As the boats thrust out from shore

Brave old Tom Moone looked back with faithful eyes

Like a great mastiff to his master's face.

He, looming larger from his loftier ground

Clad with the slowly gathering night of stars

And gazing seaward o'er his quiet dead,

Seemed like some Titan bronze in grandeur based

Unshakeable until the crash of doom

Shatter the black foundations of the world.