BOOK VI

Now like the soul of Ophir on the sea

Glittered the Golden Hynde, and all her heart

Turned home to England. As a child that finds

A ruby ring upon the highway, straight

Homeward desires to run with it, so she

Yearned for her home and country. Yet the world

Was all in arms behind her. Fleet on fleet

Awaited her return. Along the coast

The very churches melted down their chimes

And cast them into cannon. To the South

A thousand cannon watched Magellan's straits,

And fleets were scouring all the sea like hounds,

With orders that where'er they came on Drake,

Although he were the Dragon of their dreams,

They should out-blast his thunders and convey,

Dead or alive, his body back to Spain.

And Drake laughed out and said, “My trusty lads

Of Devon, you have made the wide world ring

With England's name; you have swept one half the seas

From sky to sky; and in our oaken hold

You have packed the gorgeous Indies. We shall sail

But slowly with such wealth. If we return,

We are one against ten thousand! We will seek

The fabled Northern passage, take our gold

Safe home; then out to sea again and try

Our guns against their guns.”

And as they sailed

Northward, they swooped on warm blue Guatulco

For food and water. Nigh the dreaming port

The grand alcaldes in high conclave sat,

Blazing with gold and scarlet, as they tried

A batch of negro slaves upon the charge

Of idleness in Spanish mines; dumb slaves,

With bare scarred backs and labour-broken knees,

And sorrowful eyes like those of wearied kine

Spent from the ploughing. Even as the judge

Rose to condemn them to the knotted lash

The British boat's crew, quiet and compact,

Entered the court. The grim judicial glare

Grew wider with amazement, and the judge

Staggered against his gilded throne.

“I thank

Almighty God,” cried Drake, “who hath given me this

— That I who once, in ignorance, procured

Slaves for the golden bawdy-house of Spain,

May now, in England's name, help to requite

That wrong. For now I say in England's name,

Where'er her standard flies, the slave shall stand

Upright, the shackles fall from off his limbs.

Unyoke the prisoners: tell them they are men

Once more, not beasts of burden. Set them free;

But take these gold and scarlet popinjays

Aboard my Golden Hynde; and let them write

An order that their town shall now provide

My boats with food and water.”

This being done,

The slaves being placed in safety on the prize,

The Golden Hynde revictualled and the casks

Replenished with fresh water, Drake set free

The judges and swept Northward once again;

And, off the coast of Nicaragua, found

A sudden treasure better than all gold;

For on the track of the China trade they caught

A ship whereon two China pilots sailed,

And in their cabin lay the secret charts,

Red hieroglyphs of Empire, unknown charts

Of silken sea-roads down the golden West

Where all roads meet and East and West are one.

And, with that mystery stirring in their hearts

Like a strange cry from home, Northward they swept

And Northward, till the soft luxurious coasts

Hardened, the winds grew bleak, the great green waves

Loomed high like mountains round them, and the spray

Froze on their spars and yards. Fresh from the warmth

Of tropic seas the men could hardly brook

That cold; and when the floating hills of ice

Like huge green shadows crowned with ghostly snow

Went past them with strange whispers in the gloom,

Or took mysterious colours in the dawn,

Their hearts misgave them, and they found no way;

But all was iron shore and icy sea.

And one by one the crew fell sick to death

In that fierce winter, and the land still ran

Westward and showed no passage. Tossed with storms,

Onward they plunged, or furrowed gentler tides

Of ice-lit emerald that made the prow

A faery beak of some enchanted ship

Flinging wild rainbows round her as she drove

Thro’ seas unsailed by mortal mariners,

Past isles unhailed of any human voice,

Where sound and silence mingled in one song

Of utter solitude. Ever as they went

The flag of England blazoned the broad breeze,

Northward, where never ship had sailed before,

Northward, till lost in helpless wonderment,

Dazed as a soul awakening from the dream

Of death to some wild dawn in Paradise

( Yet burnt with cold as they whose very tears

Freeze on their faces where Cocytus wails )

All world-worn, bruised, wing-broken, wracked, and wrenched,

Blackened with lightning, scarred as with evil deeds,

But all embalmed in beauty by that sun

Which never sets, bosomed in peace at last

The Golden Hynde rocked on a glittering calm.

Seas that no ship had ever sailed, from sky

To glistening sky, swept round them. Glory and gleam,

Glamour and lucid rapture and diamond air

Embraced her broken spars, begrimed with gold

Her gloomy hull, rocking upon a sphere

New made, it seemed, mysterious with the first

Mystery of the world, where holy sky

And sacred sea shone like the primal Light

Of God, a-stir with whispering sea-bird's wings

And glorious with clouds. Only, all day,

All night, the rhythmic utterance of His will

In the deep sigh of seas that washed His throne,

Rose and relapsed across Eternity,

Timed to the pulse of æons. All their world

Seemed strange as unto us the great new heavens

And glittering shores, if on some aery bark

To Saturn's coasts we came and traced no more

The tiny gleam of our familiar earth

Far off, but heard tremendous oceans roll

Round unimagined continents, and saw

Terrible mountains unto which our Alps

Were less than mole-hills, and such gaunt ravines

Cleaving them and such cataracts roaring down

As burst the gates of our earth-moulded senses,

Pour the eternal glory on our souls,

And, while ten thousand chariots bring the dawn,

Hurl us poor midgets trembling to our knees.

Glory and glamour and rapture of lucid air,

Ice cold, with subtle colours of the sky

Embraced her broken spars, belted her hulk

With brilliance, while she dipped her jacinth beak

In waves of mounded splendour, and sometimes

A great ice-mountain flashed and floated by

Throned on the waters, pinnacled and crowned

With all the smouldering jewels in the world;

Or in the darkness, glimmering berg on berg,

All emerald to the moon, went by like ghosts

Whispering to the South.

There, as they lay,

Waiting a wind to fill the stiffened sails,

Their hearts remembered that in England now

The Spring was nigh, and in that lonely sea

The skilled musicians filled their eyes with home.