BOOK IV

Dawn, everlasting and almighty Dawn,

Hailed by ten thousand names of death and birth,

Who, chiefly by thy name of Sorrow, seem'st

To half the world a sunset, God's great Dawn,

Fair light of all earth's partings till we meet

Where dawn and sunset, mingling East and West,

Shall make in some deep Orient of the soul

One radiant Rose of Love for evermore;

Teach me, oh teach to bear thy broadening light,

Thy deepening wonder, lest as old dreams fade

With love's unfaith, like wasted hours of youth,

And dim illusions vanish in thy beam,

Their rapture and their anguish break that heart

Which loved them, and must love for ever now.

Let thy great sphere of splendour, ring by ring

For ever widening, draw new seas, new skies,

Within my ken; yet, as I still must bear

This love, help me to grow in spirit with thee.

Dawn on my song which trembles like a cloud

Pierced with thy beauty. Rise, shine, as of old

Across the wondering ocean in the sight

Of those world-wandering mariners, when earth

Rolled flat up to the Gates of Paradise,

And each slow mist that curled its gold away

From each new sea they furrowed into pearl

Might bring before their blinded mortal eyes

God and the Glory. Lighten as on the soul

Of him that all night long in torment dire,

Anguish and thirst unceasing for thy ray

Upon that lonely Patagonian shore

Had lain as on the bitterest coasts of Hell.

For all night long, mocked by the dreadful peace

Of world-wide seas that darkly heaved and sank

With cold recurrence, like the slow sad breath

Of a fallen Titan dying all alone

In lands beyond all human loneliness,

While far and wide glimmers that broken targe

Hurled from tremendous battle with the gods,

And, as he breathes in pain, the chain-mail rings

Round his broad breast a muffled rattling make

For many a league, so seemed the sound of waves

Upon those beaches — there, be-mocked all night,

Beneath Magellan's gallows, Drake had watched

Beside his dead; and over him the stars

Paled as the silver chariot of the moon

Drove, and her white steeds ramped in a fury of foam

On splendid peaks of cloud. The Golden Hynde

Slept with those other shadows on the bay.

Between him and his home the Atlantic heaved;

And, on the darker side, across the strait

Of starry sheen that softly rippled and flowed

Betwixt the mainland and his isle, it seemed

Death's Gates indeed burst open. The night yawned

Like a foul wound. Black shapes of the outer dark

Poured out of forests older than the world;

And, just as reptiles that take form and hue,

Speckle and blotch, in strange assimilation

From thorn and scrub and stone and the waste earth

Through which they crawl, so that almost they seem

The incarnate spirits of their wilderness,

Were these most horrible kindred of the night.

Æonian glooms unfathomable, grim aisles,

Grotesque, distorted boughs and dancing shades

Out-belched their dusky brood on the dim shore;

Monsters with sooty limbs, red-raddled eyes,

And faces painted yellow, women and men;

Fierce naked giants howling to the moon,

And loathlier Gorgons with long snaky tresses

Pouring vile purple over pendulous breasts

Like wine-bags. On the mainland beach they lit

A brushwood fire that reddened creek and cove

And lapped their swarthy limbs with hideous tongues

Of flame; so near that by their light Drake saw

The blood upon the dead man's long black hair

Clotting corruption. The fierce funeral pyre

Of all things fair seemed rolling on that shore;

And in that dull red battle of smoke and flame,

While the sea crunched the pebbles, and dark drums

Rumbled out of the gloom as if this earth

Had some Titanic tigress for a soul

Purring in forests of Eternity

Over her own grim dreams, his lonely spirit

Passed through the circles of a world-wide waste

Darker than ever Dante roamed. No gulf

Was this of fierce harmonious reward,

Where Evil moans in anguish after death,

Where all men reap as they have sown, where gluttons

Gorge upon toads and usurers gulp hot streams

Of molten gold. This was that Malebolge

Which hath no harmony to mortal ears,

But seems the reeling and tremendous dream

Of some omnipotent madman. There he saw

The naked giants dragging to the flames

Young captives hideous with a new despair:

He saw great craggy blood-stained stones upheaved

To slaughter, saw through mists of blood and fire

The cannibal feast prepared, saw filthy hands

Rend limb from limb, and almost dreamed he saw

Foul mouths a-drip with quivering human flesh

And horrible laughter in the crimson storm

That clomb and leapt and stabbed at the high heaven

Till the whole night seemed saturate with red.

And all night long upon the Golden Hynde,

A cloud upon the waters, brave Tom Moone

Watched o'er the bulwarks for some dusky plunge

To warn him if that savage crew should mark

His captain and swim over to his isle.

Whistle in hand he watched, his boat well ready,

His men low-crouched around him, swarthy faces

Grim-chinned upon the taffrail, muttering oaths

That trampled down the fear i’ their bristly throats,

While at their sides a dreadful hint of steel

Sent stray gleams to the stars. But little heed

Had Drake of all that menaced him, though oft

Some wandering giant, belching from the feast,

All blood-besmeared, would come so near he heard

His heavy breathing o'er the narrow strait.

Yet little care had Drake, for though he sat

Bowed in the body above his quiet dead,

His burning spirit wandered through the wastes,

Wandered through hells behind the apparent hell,

Horrors immeasurable, clutching at dreams

Found fair of old, but now most foul. The world

Leered at him through its old remembered mask

Of beauty: the green grass that clothed the fields

Of England ( shallow, shallow fairy dream! )

What was it but the hair of dead men's graves.

Rooted in death, enriched with all decay?

And like a leprosy the hawthorn bloom

Crawled o'er the whitening bosom of the spring;

And bird and beast and insect, ay and man,

How fat they fed on one another's blood!

And Love, what faith in Love, when spirit and flesh

Are found of such a filthy composition?

And Knowledge, God, his mind went reeling back

To that dark voyage on the deadly coast

Of Panama, where one by one his men

Sickened and died of some unknown disease,

Till Joseph, his own brother, in his arms

Died; and Drake trampled down all tender thought,

All human grief, and sought to find the cause,

For his crew's sake, the ravenous unknown cause

Of that fell scourge. There, in his own dark cabin,

Lit by the wild light of the swinging lanthorn,

He laid the naked body on that board

Where they had supped together. He took the knife

From the ague-stricken surgeon's palsied hands,

And while the ship rocked in the eternal seas

And dark waves lapped against the rolling hulk

Making the silence terrible with voices,

He opened his own brother's cold white corse,

That pale deserted mansion of a soul,

Bidding the surgeon mark, with his own eyes,

While yet he had strength to use them, the foul spots,

The swollen liver, the strange sodden heart,

The yellow intestines. Yea, his dry lips hissed

There in the stark face of Eternity,

“Seëst thou? Seëst thou? Knowest thou what it means?”

Then, like a dream up-surged the belfried night

Of Saint Bartholomew, the scented palaces

Whence harlots leered out on the twisted streets

Of Paris, choked with slaughter! Europe flamed

With human torches, living altar candles,

Lighted before the Cross where men had hanged

The Christ of little children. Cirque by cirque

The world-wide hell reeled round him, East and West,

To where the tortured Indians worked the will

Of lordly Spain in golden-famed Peru.

“God, is thy world a madman's dream?” he groaned:

And suddenly, the clamour on the shore

Sank and that savage horde melted away

Into the midnight forest as it came,

Leaving no sign, save where the brushwood fire

Still smouldered like a ruby in the gloom;

And into the inmost caverns of his mind

That other clamour sank, and there was peace.

“A madman's dream,” he whispered, “Ay, to me

A madman's dream,” but better, better far

Than that which bears upon its awful gates,

Gates of a hell defined, unalterable,

Abandon hope all ye who enter here!

Here, here at least the dawn hath power to bring

New light, new hope, new battles. Men may fight

And sweep away that evil, if no more,

At least from the small circle of their swords;

Then die, content if they have struck one stroke

For freedom, knowledge, brotherhood; one stroke

To hasten that great kingdom God proclaims

Each morning through the trumpets of the Dawn.

And far away, in Italy, that night

Young Galileo, gazing upward, heard

The self-same whisper from the abyss of stars

Which lured the soul of Shakespeare as he lay

Dreaming in may-sweet England, even now,

And with its infinite music called once more

The soul of Drake out to the unknown West.

Now like a wild rose in the fields of heaven

Slipt forth the slender fingers of the Dawn,

And drew the great grey Eastern curtains back

From the ivory saffroned couch. Rosily slid

One shining foot and one warm rounded knee

From silken coverlets of the tossed-back clouds.

Then, like the meeting after desolate years,

Face to remembered face, Drake saw the Dawn

Step forth in naked splendour o'er the sea;

Dawn, bearing still her rich divine increase

Of beauty, love, and wisdom round the world;

The same, yet not the same. So strangely gleamed

Her pearl and rose across the sapphire waves

That scarce he knew the dead man at his feet.

His world was made anew. Strangely his voice

Rang through that solemn Eden of the morn

Calling his men, and stranger than a dream

Their boats black-blurred against the crimson East,

Or flashing misty sheen where'er the light

Smote on their smooth wet sides, like seraph ships

Moved in a dewy glory towards the land;

Their oars of glittering diamond broke the sea

As by enchantment into burning jewels

And scattered rainbows from their flaming blades.

The clear green water lapping round their prows,

The words of sharp command as now the keels

Crunched on his lonely shore, and the following wave

Leapt slapping o'er the sterns, in that new light

Were more than any miracle. At last

Drake, as they grouped a little way below

The crumbling sandy cliff whereon he stood,

Seeming to overshadow them as he loomed

A cloud of black against the crimson sky,

Spoke, as a man may hardly speak but once:

“My seamen, oh my friends, companions, kings;

For I am least among you, being your captain;

And ye are men, and all men born are kings,

By right divine, and I the least of these

Because I must usurp the throne of God

And sit in judgment, even till I have set

My seal upon the red wax of this blood,

This blood of my dead friend, ere it grow cold.

Not all the waters of that mighty sea

Could wash my hands of sin if I should now

Falter upon my path. But look to it, you,

Whose word was doom last night to this dead man;

Look to it, I say, look to it! Brave men might shrink

From this great voyage; but the heart of him

Who dares turn backward now must be so hardy

That God might make a thousand millstones of it

To hang about the necks of those that hurt

Some little child, and cast them in the sea.

Yet if ye will be found so more than bold,

Speak now, and I will hear you; God will judge.

But ye shall take four ships of these my five,

Tear out the lions from their painted shields,

And speed you homeward. Leave me but one ship,

My Golden Hynde, and five good friends, nay one,

To watch when I must sleep, and I will prove

This judgment just against all winds that blow.

Now ye that will return, speak, let me know you,

Or be for ever silent, for I swear

Over this butchered body, if any swerve

Hereafter from the straight and perilous way,

He shall not die alone. What? Will none speak?

My comrades and my friends! Yet ye must learn,

Mark me, my friends, I'd have you all to know

That ye are kings. I'll have no jealousies

Aboard my fleet. I'll have the gentleman

To pull and haul wi’ the seaman. I'll not have

That canker of the Spaniards in my fleet.

Ye that were captains, I cashier you all.

I'll have no captains; I'll have nought but seamen,

Obedient to my will, because I serve

England. What, will ye murmur? Have a care,

Lest I should bid you homeward all alone,

You whose white hands are found too delicate

For aught but dallying with your jewelled swords!

And thou, too, master Fletcher, my ship's chaplain,

Mark me, I'll have no priest-craft. I have heard

Overmuch talk of judgment from thy lips,

God's judgment here, God's judgment there, upon us!

Whene'er the winds are contrary, thou takest

Their powers upon thee for thy moment's end.

Thou art God's minister, not God's oracle:

Chain up thy tongue a little, or, by His wounds,

If thou canst read this wide world like a book,

Thou hast so little to fear, I'll set thee adrift

On God's great sea to find thine own way home.

Why,‘ tis these very tyrannies o’ the soul

We strike at when we strike at Spain for England;

And shall we here, in this great wilderness,

Ungrappled and unchallenged, out of sight,

Alone, without one struggle, sink that flag

Which, when the cannon thundered, could but stream

Triumphant over all the storms of death.

Nay, master Wynter and my gallant captains,

I see ye are tamed. Take up your ranks again

In humbleness, remembering ye are kings,

Kings for the sake and by the will of England,

Therefore her servants till your lives’ last end.

Comrades, mistake not this, our little fleet

Is freighted with the golden heart of England,

And, if we fail, that golden heart will break.

The world's wide eyes are on us, and our souls

Are woven together into one great flag

Of England. Shall we strike it? Shall it be rent

Asunder with small discord, party strife,

Ephemeral conflict of contemptible tongues,

Or shall it be blazoned, blazoned evermore

On the most heaven-wide page of history?

This is that hour, I know it in my soul,

When we must choose for England. Ye are kings,

And sons of Vikings, exiled from your throne.

Have ye forgotten? Nay, your blood remembers!

There is your kingdom, Vikings, that great ocean

Whose tang is in your nostrils. Ye must choose

Whether to re-assume it now for England,

To claim its thunders for her panoply,

To lay its lightnings in her sovereign hands,

Win her the great commandment of the sea

And let its glory roll with her dominion

Round the wide world for ever, sweeping back

All evil deeds and dreams, or whether to yield

For evermore that kinghood. Ye must learn

Here in this golden dawn our great emprise

Is greater than we knew. Eye hath not seen,

Ear hath not heard what came across the dark

Last night, as there anointed with that blood

I knelt and saw the wonder that should be.

I saw new heavens of freedom, a new earth

Released from all old tyrannies. I saw

The brotherhood of man, for which we rode,

Most ignorant of the splendour of our spears,

Against the crimson dynasties of Spain.

Mother of freedom, home and hope and love,

Our little island, far, how far away,

I saw thee shatter the whole world of hate,

I saw the sunrise on thy helmet flame

With new-born hope for all the world in thee!

Come now, to sea, to sea!”

And ere they knew

What power impelled them, with one mighty cry

They lifted up their hearts to the new dawn

And hastened down the shores and launched the boats,

And in the fierce white out-draught of the waves

Thrust with their brandished oars and the boats leapt

Out, and they settled at the groaning thwarts,

And the white water boiled before their blades,

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

His own boat led the way; and ere they knew

What power as of a wind bore them along,

Anchor was up, their hands were on the sheets,

The sails were broken out and that small squadron

Was flying like a sea-bird to the South.

Now to the strait Magellanus they came,

And entered in with ringing shouts of joy.

Nor did they think there, was a fairer strait

In all the world than this which lay so calm

Between great silent mountains crowned with snow,

Unutterably lonely. Marvellous

The pomp of dawn and sunset on those heights,

And like a strange new sacrilege the advance

Of prows that ploughed that time-forgotten tide.

But soon rude flaws, cross currents, tortuous channels

Bewildered them, and many a league they drove

As down some vaster Acheron, while the coasts

With wailing voices cursed them all night long,

And once again the hideous fires leapt red

By many a grim wrenched crag and gaunt ravine.

So for a hundred leagues of whirling spume

They groped, till suddenly, far away, they saw

Full of the sunset, like a cup of gold,

The purple Westward portals of the strait.

Onward o'er roughening waves they plunged and reached

Capo Desiderato, where they saw

What seemed stupendous in that lonely place,—

Gaunt, black, and sharp as death against the sky

The Cross, the great black Cross on Cape Desire,

Which dead Magellan raised upon the height

To guide, or so he thought, his wandering ships,

Not knowing they had left him to his doom,

Not knowing how with tears, with tears of joy,

Rapture, and terrible triumph, and deep awe,

Another should come voyaging and read

Unutterable glories in that sign;

While his rough seamen raised their mighty shout

And, once again, before his wondering eyes,

League upon league of awful burnished gold,

Rolled the unknown immeasurable sea.

Now, in those days, as even Magellan held,

Men thought that Southward of the strait there swept

Firm land up to the white Antarticke Pole,

Which now not far they deemed. But when Drake passed

From out the strait to take his Northward way

Up the Pacific coast, a great head-wind

Suddenly smote them; and the heaving seas

Bulged all around them into billowy hills,

Dark rolling mountains, whose majestic crests

Like wild white flames far-blown and savagely flickering

Swept through the clouds; and on their sullen slopes

Like wind-whipt withered leaves those little ships,

Now hurtled to the Zenith and now plunged

Down into bottomless gulfs, were suddenly scattered

And whirled away. Drake, on the Golden Hynde,

One moment saw them near him, soaring up

Above him on the huge o'erhanging billows

As if to crash down on his poop; the next,

A mile of howling sea had swept between

Each of those wind-whipt straws, and they were gone

Through roaring deserts of embattled death,

Where, like a hundred thousand chariots charged

With lightnings and with thunders, one great wave

Leading the unleashed ocean down the storm

Hurled them away to Southward.

One last glimpse

Drake caught o’ the Marygold, when some mighty vortex

Wide as the circle of the wide sea-line

Swept them together again. He saw her staggering

With mast snapt short and wreckage-tangled deck

Where men like insects clung. He saw the waves

Leap over her mangled hulk, like wild white wolves,

Volleying out of the clouds down dismal steeps

Of green-black water. Like a wounded steed

Quivering upon its haunches, up she heaved

Her head to throw them off. Then, in one mass

Of fury crashed the great deep over her,

Trampling her down, down into the nethermost pit,

As with a madman's wrath. She rose no more,

And in the stream of the ocean's hurricane laughter

The Golden Hynde went hurtling to the South,

With sails rent into ribbons and her mast

Snapt like a twig. Yea, where Magellan thought

Firm land had been, the little Golden Hynde

Whirled like an autumn leaf through league on league

Of bursting seas, chaos on crashing chaos,

A rolling wilderness of charging Alps

That shook the world with their tremendous war;

Grim beetling cliffs that grappled with clamorous gulfs,

Valleys that yawned to swallow the wide heaven;

Immense white-flowering fluctuant precipices,

And hills that swooped down at the throat of hell;

From Pole to Pole, one blanching bursting storm

Of world-wide oceans, where the huge Pacific

Roared greetings to the Atlantic and both swept

In broad white cataracts, league on struggling league,

Pursuing and pursued, immeasurable,

With Titan hands grasping the rent black sky

East, West, North, South. Then, then was battle indeed

Of midget men upon that wisp of grass

The Golden Hynde, who, as her masts crashed, hung

Clearing the tiny wreckage from small decks

With ant-like weapons. Not their captain's voice

Availed them now amidst the deafening thunder

Of seas that felt the heavy hand of God,

Only they saw across the blinding spume

In steely flashes, grand and grim, a face,

Like the last glimmer of faith among mankind,

Calm in this warring universe, where Drake

Stood, lashed to his post, beside the helm. Black seas

Buffeted him. Half-stunned he dashed away

The sharp brine from his eagle eyes and turned

To watch some mountain-range come rushing down

As if to o'erwhelm them utterly. Once, indeed,

Welkin and sea were one black wave, white-fanged,

White-crested, and up-heaped so mightily

That, though it coursed more swiftly than a herd

Of Titan steeds upon some terrible plain

Nigh the huge City of Ombos, yet it seemed

Most strangely slow, with all those crumbling crests

Each like a cataract on a mountain-side,

And moved with the steady majesty of doom

High over him. One moment's flash of fear,

And yet not fear, but rather life's regret,

Felt Drake, then laughed a low deep laugh of joy

Such as men taste in battle; yea,‘ twas good

To grapple thus with death; one low deep laugh,

One mutter as of a lion about to spring,

Then burst that thunder o'er him. Height o'er height

The heavens rolled down, and waves were all the world.

Meanwhile, in England, dreaming of her sailor,

Far off, his heart's bride waited, of a proud

And stubborn house the bright and gracious flower.

Whom oft her father urged with scanty grace

That Drake was dead and she had best forget

The fellow, he grunted. For her father's heart

Was fettered with small memories, mocked by all

The greater world's traditions and the trace

Of earth's low pedigree among the suns,

Ringed with the terrible twilight of the Gods,

Ringed with the blood-red dusk of dying nations,

His faith was in his grandam's mighty skirt,

And, in that awful consciousness of power,

Had it not been that even in this he feared

To sully her silken flounce or farthingale

Wi’ the white dust on his hands, he would have chalked

To his own shame, thinking it shame, the word

Nearest to God in its divine embrace

Of agonies and glories, the dread word

Demos across that door in Nazareth

Whence came the prentice carpenter whose voice

Hath shaken kingdoms down, whose menial gibbet

Rises triumphant o'er the wreck of Empires

And stretches out its arms amongst the Stars.

But she, his daughter, only let her heart

Loveably forge a charter for her love,

Cheat her false creed with faithful faery dreams

That wrapt her love in mystery; thought, perchance,

He came of some unhappy noble race

Ruined in battle for some lost high cause.

And, in the general mixture of men's blood,

Her dream was truer than his whose bloodless pride

Urged her to wed the chinless moon-struck fool

Sprung from five hundred years of idiocy

Who now besought her hand; would force her bear

Some heir to a calf's tongue and a coronet,

Whose cherished taints of blood will please his friends

With “Yea, Sir William's first-born hath the freak,

The family freak, being embryonic. Yea,

And with a fine half-wittedness, forsooth.

Praise God, our children's children yet shall see

The lord o’ the manor muttering to himself

At midnight by the gryphon-guarded gates,

Or gnawing his nails in desolate corridors,

Or pacing moonlit halls, dagger in hand,

Waiting to stab his father's pitiless ghost.”

So she — the girl — Sweet Bess of Sydenham,

Most innocently proud, was prouder yet

Than thus to let her heart stoop to the lure

Of lording lovers, though her unstained soul

Slumbered amidst those dreams as in old tales

The princess in the enchanted forest sleeps

Till the prince wakes her with a kiss and draws

The far-flung hues o’ the gleaming magic web

Into one heart of flame. And now, for Drake,

She slept like Brynhild in a ring of fire

Which he must pass to win her. For the wrath

Of Spain now flamed, awaiting his return,

All round the seas of home; and even the Queen

Elizabeth flinched, as that tremendous Power

Menaced the heart of England, flinched and vowed

Drake's head to Spain's ambassadors, though still

By subtlety she hoped to find some way

Later to save or warn him ere he came.

Perchance too, nay, most like, he will be slain

Or even now lies dead, out in the West,

She thought, and then the promise works no harm.

But, day by day, there came as on the wings

Of startled winds from o'er the Spanish Main,

Strange echoes as of sacked and clamouring ports

And battered gates of fabulous golden cities,

A murmur out of the sunset of Peru,

A sea-bird's wail from Lima. While no less

The wrathful menace gathered up its might

All round our little isle; till now the King

Philip of Spain half secretly decreed

The building of huge docks from which to launch

A Fleet Invincible that should sweep the seas

Of all the world, throttle with one broad grasp

All Protestant rebellion, having stablished

His red feet in the Netherlands, thence to hurl

His whole World-Empire at this little isle,

England, our mother, home and hope and love,

And bend her neck beneath his yoke. For now

No half surrender sought he. At his back,

Robed with the scarlet of a thousand martyrs,

Admonishing him, stood Rome, and, in her hand,

Grasping the Cross of Christ by its great hilt,

She pointed it, like a dagger, tow'rds the throat

Of England.

One long year, two years had passed

Since Drake set sail from grey old Plymouth Sound;

And in those woods of faery wonder still

Slumbered his love in steadfast faith. But now

With louder lungs her father urged — “He is dead:

Forget him. There is one that loves you, seeks

Your hand in marriage, and he is a goodly match

E'en for my daughter. You shall wed him, Bess!”

But when the new-found lover came to woo,

Glancing in summer silks and radiant hose,

Whipt doublet and enormous pointed shoon,

She played him like a fish and sent him home

Spluttering with dismay, a stickleback

Discoloured, a male minnow of dimpled streams

With all his rainbows paling in the prime,

To hide amongst his lilies, while once more

She took her casement seat that overlooked

The sea and read in Master Spenser's book,

Which Francis gave “To my dear lady and queen

Bess,” that most rare processional of love —

“Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song!”

Yet did her father urge her day by day,

And day by day her mother dinned her ears

With petty saws, as — “When I was a girl,”

And “I remember what my father said,”

And “Love, oh feather-fancies plucked from geese

You call your poets!” Yet she hardly meant

To slight true love, save in her daughter's heart;

For the old folk ever find it hard to see

The passion of their children. When it wakes,

The child becomes a stranger. So with Bess;

But since her soul still slumbered, and the moons

Rolled on and blurred her soul's particular love

With the vague unknown impulse of her youth,

Her brave resistance often melted now

In tears, and her will weakened day by day;

Till on a dreadful summer morn there came,

Borne by a wintry flaw, home to the Thames,

A bruised and battered ship, all that was left,

So said her crew, of Drake's ill-fated fleet.

John Wynter, her commander, told the tale

Of how the Golden Hynde and Marygold

Had by the wind Euroclydon been driven

Sheer o'er the howling edges of the world;

Of how himself by God's good providence

Was hurled into the strait Magellanus;

Of how on the horrible frontiers of the Void

He had watched in vain, lit red with beacon-fires

The desperate coasts o’ the black abyss, whence none

Ever returned, though many a week he watched

Beneath the Cross; and only saw God's wrath

Burn through the heavens and devastate the mountains,

And hurl unheard of oceans roaring down

After the lost ships in one cataract

Of thunder and splendour and fury and rolling doom.

Then, with a bitter triumph in his face,

As if this were the natural end of all

Such vile plebeians, as if he had foreseen it,

As if himself had breathed a tactful hint

Into the aristocratic ears of God,

Her father broke the last frail barriers down,

Broke the poor listless will o’ the lonely girl,

Who careless now of aught but misery

Promised to wed their lordling. Mighty speed

They made to press that loveless marriage on;

And ere the May had mellowed into June

Her marriage eve had come. Her cold hands held

Drake's gift. She scarce could see her name, writ broad

By that strong hand as it was, To my queen Bess.

She looked out through her casement o'er the sea,

Listening its old enchanted moan, which seemed

Striving to speak, she knew not what. Its breath

Fluttered the roses round the grey old walls,

And shook the ghostly jasmine. A great moon

Hung like a red lamp in the sycamore.

A corn-crake in the hay-fields far away

Chirped like a cricket, and the night-jar churred

His passionate love-song. Soft-winged moths besieged

Her lantern. Under many a star-stabbed elm

The nightingale began his golden song,

Whose warm thick notes are each a drop of blood

From that small throbbing breast against the thorn

Pressed close to turn the white rose into red;

Even as her lawn-clad may-white bosom pressed

Quivering against the bars, while her dark hair

Streamed round her shoulders and her small bare feet

Gleamed in the dusk. Then spake she to her maid —

“I cannot sleep, I cannot sleep to-night.

Bring thy lute hither and sing. Alison, think you

The dead can watch us from their distant world?

Can our dead friends be near us when we weep?

I wish‘ twere so! for then my love would come,

No matter then how far, my love would come,

And he'd forgive me.”

Then Bess bowed down her lovely head: her breast

Heaved with short sobs, sickening at the heart,

She grasped the casement moaning, “Love, Love, Love,

Come quickly, come, before it is too late,

Come quickly, oh come quickly.”

Then her maid

Slipped a soft arm around her and gently drew

The supple quivering body, shaken with sobs,

And all that firm young, sweetness to her breast,

And led her to her couch, and all night long

She watched beside her, till the marriage morn

Blushed in the heartless East. Then swiftly flew

The pitiless moments, till — as in a dream —

And borne along by dreams, or like a lily

Cut from its anchorage in the stream to glide

Down the smooth bosom of an unknown world

Through fields of unknown blossom, so moved Bess

Amongst her maids, as the procession passed

Forth to the little church upon the cliffs,

And, as in those days was the bridal mode,

Her lustrous hair in billowing beauty streamed

Dishevelled o'er her shoulders, while the sun

Caressed her bent and glossy head, and shone

Over the deep blue, white-flaked, wrinkled sea,

On full-blown rosy-petalled sails that flashed

Like flying blossoms fallen from her crown.