BOOK XII

Meanwhile, as in the gloom he slipped aside

Along the Spanish ranks, waiting the crash

Of battle, suddenly Drake became aware

Of strange sails bearing up into the wind

Around his right, and thought, “the Armada strives

To weather us in the dark.” Down went his helm,

And all alone the little Revenge gave chase,

Till as the moon crept slowly forth, she stood

Beside the ghostly ships, only to see

Bewildered Flemish merchantmen, amazed

With fears of Armageddon — such vast shrouds

Had lately passed them on the rolling seas.

Down went his helm again, with one grim curse

Upon the chance that led him thus astray;

And down the wind the little Revenge once more

Swept on the trail. Fainter and fainter now

Glared the red beacons on the British coasts,

And the wind slackened and the glimmering East

Greyed and reddened, yet Drake had not regained

Sight of the ships. When the full glory of dawn

Dazzled the sea, he found himself alone,

With one huge galleon helplessly drifting

A cable's-length away. Around her prow,

Nuestra Señora del Rosario,

Richly emblazoned, gold on red, proclaimed

The flagship of great Valdes, of the fleet

Of Andalusia, captain-general. She,

Last night, in dark collision with the hulks

Of Spain, had lost her foremast. Through the night

Her guns, long rank on deadly rank, had kept

All enemies at bay. Drake summoned her

Instantly to surrender. She returned

A scornful answer from the glittering poop

Where two-score officers crowned the golden sea

And stained the dawn with blots of richer colour

Loftily clustered in the glowing sky,

Doubleted with cramoisy velvet, wreathed

With golden chains, blazing with jewelled swords

And crusted poignards. “What proud haste was this?”

They asked, glancing at their huge tiers of cannon

And crowded decks of swarthy soldiery;

“What madman in yon cockle-shell defied Spain?”

“Tell them it is El Draque,” he said, “who lacks

The time to parley; therefore it will be well

They strike at once, for I am in great haste.”

There, at the sound of that renownèd name,

Without a word down came their blazoned flag.

Like a great fragment of the dawn it lay

Crumpled upon their decks....

Into the soft bloom and Italian blue

Of sparkling, ever-beautiful Torbay,

Belted as with warm Mediterranean crags,

The little Revenge foamed with her mighty prize,

A prize indeed — not for the casks of gold

Drake split in the rich sunlight and poured out

Like dross amongst his men, but in her hold

Lay many tons of powder, worth their weight

In rubies now to Britain. Into the hands

Of swarthy Brixham fishermen he gave

Prisoners and prize, then — loaded stem to stern

With powder and shot — their swiftest trawlers flew

Like falcons following a thunder-cloud

Behind him, as with crowded sail he rushed

On England's trail once more. Like a caged lion

Drake paced his deck, praying he yet might reach

The fight in time; and ever the warm light wind

Slackened. Not till the sun was half-way fallen

Once more crept out in front those dusky thrones

Of thunder, heaving on the smooth bright sea

From North to South with Howard's clustered fleet

Like tiny clouds, becalmed, not half a mile

Behind the Spaniards. For the breeze had failed

Their blind midnight pursuit; and now attack

Seemed hopeless. Even as Drake drew nigh, the last

Breath of the wind sank. One more day had flown,

Nought was accomplished; and the Armada lay

Some leagues of golden sea-way nearer now

To its great goal. The sun went down: the moon

Rose glittering. Hardly a cannon-shot apart

The two fleets lay becalmed upon the silver

Swell of the smooth night-tide. The hour had come

For Spain to strike. The ships of England drifted

Helplessly, at the mercy of those great hulks

Oared by their thousand slaves.

Onward they came,

Swinging suddenly in tremendous gloom

Over the silver seas. But even as Drake,

With eyes on fire at last for his last fight,

Measured the distance ere he gave the word

To greet it with his cannon, suddenly

The shining face of the deep began to shiver

With dusky patches: the doomed English sails

Quivered and, filling smart from the North-east,

The little Revenge rushed down their broken line

Signalling them to follow, and ere they knew

What miracle had saved them, they all sprang

Their luff and ran large out to sea. For now

The Armada lay to windward, and to fight

Meant to be grappled and overwhelmed; but dark

Within the mind of Drake, a fiercer plan

Already had shaped itself.

“They fly! They fly!”

Rending the heavens from twice ten thousand throats

A mighty shout rose from the Spanish Fleet.

Over the moonlit waves their galleons came

Towering, crowding, plunging down the wind

In full chase, while the tempter, Drake, laughed low

To watch their solid battle-order break

And straggle. When once more the golden dawn

Dazzled the deep, the labouring galleons lay

Scattered by their unequal speed. The wind

Veered as the sun rose. Once again the ships

Of England lay to windward. Down swooped Drake

Where like a mountain the San Marcos heaved

Her giant flanks alone, having out-sailed

Her huge companions. Then the sea-winds blazed

With broadsides. Two long hours the sea flamed red

All round her. One by one the Titan ships

Came surging to her rescue, and met the buffet

Of battle-thunders, belching iron and flame;

Nor could they pluck her forth from that red chaos

Till great Oquendo hurled his mighty prows

Crashing athwart those thunders, and once more

Gathered into unshakeable battle-order

The whole Armada raked the reeking seas.

Then up the wind the ships of England sheered

Once more, and one more day drew to its close,

With little accomplished, half their powder spent,

And all the Armada moving as of old,

From sky to sky one heaven-wide zone of storm,

( Though some three galleons out of all their host

Laboured woundily ) down the darkening Channel.

And all night long on England's guardian heights

The beacons reddened, and all the next long day

The impregnable Armada never swerved

From its tremendous path. In vain did Drake,

Frobisher, Hawkins, Howard, greatest names

In all our great sea-history, hover and dart

Like falcons round the mountainous array.

Till now, as night fell and they lay abreast

Of the Isle of Wight, once more the council flag

Flew from the little Revenge. With iron face

Thrust close to Howard's, and outstretched iron arm,

Under the stars Drake pointed down the coast

Where the red beacons flared. “The shoals,” he hissed,

“The shoals from Owers to Spithead and the net

Of channels yonder in Portsmouth Roads. At dawn

They'll lie to leeward of the Invincible Fleet!”

Swiftly, in mighty sweeping lines Drake set

Before the council his fierce battle-plan

To drive the Armada down upon the banks

And utterly shatter it — stroke by well-schemed stroke

As he unfolded there his vital plot

And touched their dead cold warfare into life

Where plan before was none, he seemed to tower

Above them, clad with the deep night of stars;

And those that late would rival knew him now,

In all his great simplicity, their king,

One of the gods of battle, England's Drake,

A soul that summoned Cæsar from his grave,

And swept with Alexander o'er the deep.

So when the dawn thro’ rolling wreaths of cloud

Struggled, and all the waves were molten gold,

The heart of Spain exulted, for she saw

The little fleet of England cloven in twain

As if by some strange discord. A light breeze

Blew from the ripening East; and, up against it,

Urged by the very madness of defeat,

Or so it seemed, one half the British fleet

Drew nigh, towed by their boats, to challenge the vast

Tempest-winged heaving citadels of Spain,

At last to the murderous grapple; while far away

Their other half, led by the flag of Drake,

Stood out to sea, as if to escape the doom

Of that sheer madness, for the light wind now

Could lend them no such wings to hover and swoop

As heretofore. Nearer the mad ships came

Towed by their boats, till now upon their right

To windward loomed the Fleet Invincible

With all its thunder-clouds, and on their left

To leeward, gleamed the perilous white shoals

With their long level lightnings under the cliffs

Of England, from the green glad garden of Wight

To the Owers and Selsea Bill. Right on they came,

And suddenly the wrench of thundering cannon

Shook the vast hulks that towered above them. Red

Flamed the blue sea between. Thunder to thunder

Answered, and still the ships of Drake sped out

To the open sea. Sidonia saw them go,

Furrowing the deep that like a pale-blue shield

Lay diamond-dazzled now in the full light.

Rich was the omen of that day for Spain,

The feast-day of Sidonia's patron-saint!

And the priests chanted and the trumpets blew

Triumphantly! A universal shout

Went skyward from the locust-swarming decks,

A shout that rent the golden morning clouds

From heaven to menacing heaven, as castle to castle

Flew the great battle-signal, and like one range

Of moving mountains, those almighty ranks

Swept down upon the small forsaken ships!

The lion's brood was in the imperial nets

Of Spain at last. Onward the mountains came

With all their golden clouds of sail and flags

Like streaming cataracts; all their glorious chasms

And glittering steeps, echoing, re-echoing,

Calling, answering, as with the herald winds

That blow the golden trumpets of the morning

From Skiddaw to Helvellyn. In the midst

The great San Martin surged with heaven-wide press

Of proudly billowing sail; and yet once more

Slowly, solemnly, like another dawn

Up to her mast-head soared in thunderous gold

The sacred standard of their last crusade;

While round a hundred prows that heaved thro’ heaven

Like granite cliffs, their black wet shining flanks,

And swept like moving promontories, rolled

The splendid long-drawn thunders of the foam,

And flashed the untamed white lightnings of the sea

Back to a morn unhalyarded of man,

Back to the unleashed sun and blazoned clouds

And azure sky — the unfettered flag of God.

Like one huge moving coast-line on they came

Crashing, and closed the ships of England round

With one fierce crescent of thunder and sweeping flame,

One crimson scythe of Death, whose long sweep drowned

The eternal ocean with its mighty sound,

From heaven to heaven, one roar, one glitter of doom,

While out to the sea-line's blue remotest bound

The ships of Drake still fled, and the red fume

Of battle thickened and shrouded shoal and sea with gloom.

The distant sea, the close white menacing shoals

Are shrouded! And the lion's brood fight on!

And now death's very midnight round them rolls;

Rent is the flag that late so proudly shone!

The red decks reel and their last hope seems gone!

Round them they still keep clear one ring of sea:

It narrows; but the lion's brood fight on,

Ungrappled still, still fearless and still free,

While the white menacing shoals creep slowly out to lee.

Now through the red rents of each fire-cleft cloud,

High o'er the British blood-greased decks flash out

Thousands of swarthy faces, crowd on crowd

Surging, with one tremendous hurricane shout

On, to the grapple! and still the grim redoubt

Of the oaken bulwarks rolls them back again,

As buffeted waves that shatter in the furious bout

When cannonading cliffs meet the full main

And hurl it back in smoke — so Britain hurls back Spain;

Hurls her back, only to see her return,

Darkening the heavens with billow on billow of sail:

Round that huge storm the waves like lava burn,

The daylight withers, and the sea-winds fail!

Seamen of England, what shall now avail

Your naked arms? Before those blasts of doom

The sun is quenched, the very sea-waves quail:

High overhead their triumphing thousands loom,

When hark! what low deep guns to windward suddenly boom?

What low deep strange new thunders far away

Respond to the triumphant shout of Spain?

Is it the wind that shakes their giant array?

Is it the deep wrath of the rising main?

Is it — El Draque? El Draque! Ay, shout again,

His thunders burst upon your windward flanks;

The shoals creep out to leeward! Is it plain

At last, what earthquake heaves your herded ranks

Huddled in huge dismay tow'rds those white foam-swept banks?

Plain, it was plain at last, what cunning lured,

What courage held them over the jaws o’ the pit,

Till Drake could hurl them down. The little ships

Of Howard and Frobisher, towed by their boats,

Slipped away in the smoke, while out at sea

Drake, with a gale of wind behind him, crashed

Volley on volley into the helpless rear

Of Spain and drove it down, huddling the whole

Invincible Fleet together upon the verge

Of doom. One awful surge of stormy wrath

Heaved thro’ the struggling citadels of Spain.

From East to West their desperate signal flew,

And like a drove of bullocks, with the foam

Flecking their giant sides, they staggered and swerved,

Careening tow'rds the shallows as they turned,

Then in one wild stampede of sheer dismay

Rushed, tacking seaward, while the grey sea-plain

Smoked round them, and the cannonades of Drake

Raked their wild flight; and the crusading flag,

Tangled in one black maze of crashing spars,

Whirled downward like the pride of Lucifer

From heaven to hell.

Out tow'rds the coasts of France

They plunged, narrowly weathering the Ower banks;

Then, once again, they formed in ranks compact,

Roundels impregnable, wrathfully bent at last

Never to swerve again from their huge path

And solid end — to join with Parma's host,

And hurl the whole of Europe on our isle.

Another day was gone, much powder spent;

And, while Lord Howard exulted and conferred

Knighthoods on his brave seamen, Drake alone

Knew that his mighty plan, in spite of all,

Had failed, knew that wellnigh his last great chance

Was lost of wrecking the Spaniards ere they joined

Parma. The night went by, and the next day,

With scarce a visible scar the Invincible Fleet

Drew onwards tow'rds its goal, unshakeable now

In that grim battle-order. Beacons flared

Along the British coast, and pikes flashed out

All night, and a strange dread began to grip

The heart of England, as it seemed the might

Of seamen most renowned in all the world

Checked not that huge advance. Yet at the heart

Of Spain no less there clung a vampire fear

And strange foreboding, as the next day passed

Quietly, and behind her all day long

The shadowy ships of Drake stood on her trail

Quietly, patiently, as death or doom,

Unswerving and implacable.

While the sun

Sank thro’ long crimson fringes on that eve.

The fleets were passing Calais and the wind

Blew fair behind them. A strange impulse seized

Spain to shake off those bloodhounds from her trail,

And suddenly the whole Invincible Fleet

Anchored, in hope the following wind would bear

The ships of England past and carry them down

To leeward. But their grim insistent watch

Was ready; and though their van had wellnigh crashed

Into the rear of Spain, in the golden dusk,

They, too, a cannon-shot away, at once

Anchored, to windward still.

Quietly heaved

The golden sea in that tremendous hour

Fraught with the fate of Europe and mankind,

As yet once more the flag of council flew,

And Hawkins, Howard, Frobisher, and Drake

Gathered together upon the little Revenge

While like a triumphing fire the news was borne

To Spain, already, that the Invincible Fleet

Had reached its end, ay, and “that great black dog

Sir Francis Drake” was writhing now in chains

Beneath the torturer's hands.

High on his poop

He stood, a granite rock, above the throng

Of captains, there amid the breaking waves

Of clashing thought and swift opinion,

Silent, gazing where now the cool fresh wind

Blew steadily up the terrible North Sea

Which rolled under the clouds into a gloom

Unfathomable. Once only his lips moved

Half-consciously, breathing those mighty words,

The clouds His chariot! Then, suddenly, he turned

And looked upon the little flock of ships

That followed on the fleet of England, sloops

Helpless in fight. These, manned by the brave zeal

Of many a noble house, from hour to hour

Had plunged out from the coast to join his flag.

“Better if they had brought us powder and food

Than sought to join us thus,” he had growled; but now

“Lord God,” he cried aloud, “they'll light our road

To victory yet!” And in great sweeping strokes

Once more he drew his mighty battle-plan

Before the captains. In the thickening gloom

They stared at his grim face as at a man

Risen from hell, with all the powers of hell

At his command, a face tempered like steel

In the everlasting furnaces, a rock

Of adamant, while with a voice that blent

With the ebb and flow of the everlasting sea

He spake, and at the low deep menacing words

Monotonous with the unconquerable

Passion and level strength of his great soul

They shuddered; for the man seemed more than man,

And from his iron lips resounded doom

As from the lips of cannon, doom to Spain,

Inevitable, unconquerable doom.

And through that mighty host of Spain there crept

Cold winds of fear, as to the darkening sky

Once more from lips of kneeling thousands swept

The vespers of an Empire — one vast cry,

SALVE REGINA! God, what wild reply

Hissed from the clouds in that dark hour of dreams?

AVE MARIA, those about to die

Salute thee! See, what ghostly pageant streams

Above them? What thin hands point down like pale moonbeams?

Thick as the ghosts that Dante saw in hell

Whirled on the blast thro’ boundless leagues of pain,

Thick, thick as wind-blown leaves innumerable,

In the Inquisition's yellow robes her slain

And tortured thousands, dense as the red rain

That wellnigh quenched her fires, went hissing by

With twisted shapes, raw from the racks of Spain,

Salve Regina!— rushing thro’ the sky,

And pale hands pointing down and lips that mocked her cry,

Ten thousand times ten thousand!— what are these

That are arrayed in yellow robes and sweep

Between your prayers and God like phantom seas

Prophesying over your masts? Could Rome not keep

The keys? Who loosed these dead to break your sleep?

SALVE REGINA, cry, yea, cry aloud.

AVE MARIA! Ye have sown: shall ye not reap?

SALVE REGINA! Christ, what fiery cloud

Suddenly rolls to windward, high o'er mast and shroud?

Are hell-gates burst at last? For the black deep

To windward burns with streaming crimson fires!

Over the wild strange waves, they shudder and creep

Nearer — strange smoke-wreathed masts and spars, red spires

And blazing hulks, vast roaring blood-red pyres,

Fierce as the flames ye fed with flesh of men

Amid the imperial pomp and chanting choirs

Of Alva — from El Draque's red hand again

Sweep the wild fire-ships down upon the Fleet of Spain.

Onward before the freshening wind they come

Full fraught with all the terrors, all the bale

That flamed so long for the delight of Rome,

The shrieking fires that struck the sunlight pale,

The avenging fires at last! Now what avail

Your thousand ranks of cannon? Swift, cut free,

Cut your scorched cables! Cry, reel backward, quail,

Crash your huge huddled ranks together, flee!

Behind you roars the fire, before — the dark North Sea!

Dawn, everlasting and omnipotent

Dawn rolled in crimson o'er the spar-strewn waves,

As the last trumpet shall in thunder roll

O'er heaven and earth and ocean. Far away,

The ships of Spain, great ragged piles of gloom

And shaggy splendour, leaning to the North

Like sun-shot clouds confused, or rent apart

In scattered squadrons, furiously plunged,

Burying their mighty prows i’ the broad grey rush

Of smoking billowy hills, or heaving high

Their giant bowsprits to the wandering heavens,

Labouring in vain to return, struggling to lock

Their far-flung ranks anew, but drifting still

To leeward, driven by the ever-increasing storm

Straight for the dark North Sea. Hard by there lurched

One gorgeous galleon on the ravening shoals,

Feeding the white maw of the famished waves

With gold and purple webs from kingly looms

And spilth of world-wide empires. Howard, still

Planning to pluck the Armada plume by plume,

Swooped down upon that prey and swiftly engaged

Her desperate guns; while Drake, our ocean-king,

Knowing the full worth of that doom-fraught hour,

Glanced neither to the left nor right, but stood

High on his poop, with calm implacable face

Gazing as into eternity, and steered

The crowded glory of his dawn-flushed sails

In superb onset, straight for the great fleet

Invincible; and after him the main

Of England's fleet, knowing its captain now,

Followed, and with them rushed — from sky to sky

One glittering charge of wrath — the storm's white waves,

The twenty thousand foaming chariots

Of God.

None but the everlasting voice

Of him who fought at Salamis might sing

The fight of that dread Sabbath. Not mankind

Waged it alone. War raged in heaven that day,

Where Michael and his angels drave once more

The hosts of darkness ruining down the abyss

Of chaos. Light against darkness, Liberty

Against all dark old despotism, unsheathed

The sword in that great hour. Behind the strife

Of men embattled deeps beyond all thought

Moved in their awful panoply, as move

Silent, invisible, swift, under the clash

Of waves and flash of foam, huge ocean-glooms

And vast reserves of inappellable power.

The bowsprits ranked on either fore-front seemed

But spear-heads of those dread antagonists

Invisible: the shuddering sails of Spain

Dusk with the shadow of death, the sunward sails

Of England full-fraught with the breath of God.

Onward the ships of England and God's waves

Triumphantly charged, glittering companions,

And poured their thunders on the extreme right

Of Spain, whose giant galleons as they lurched

Heavily to the roughening sea and wind

With all their grinding, wrenching cannon, worked

On rolling platforms by the helpless hands

Of twenty thousand soldiers, without skill

In stormy seas, rent the indifferent sky

Or tore the black troughs of the swirling deep

In vain, while volley on volley of flame and iron

Burst thro’ their four-foot beams, fierce raking blasts

From ships that came and went on wings of the wind

All round their mangled bulk, scarce a pike's thrust

Away, sweeping their decks from stem to stern

( Between the rush and roar of the great green waves )

With crimson death, rending their timbered towns

And populous floating streets into wild squares

Of slaughter and devastation; driving them down,

Huddled on their own centre, cities of shame

And havoc, in fiery forests of tangled wrath,

With hurricanes of huge masts and swarming spars

And multitudinous decks that heaved and sank

Like earthquake-smitten palaces, when doom

Comes, with one stride, across the pomp of kings.

All round them shouted the everlasting sea,

Burst in white thunders on the streaming poops

And blinded fifty thousand eyes with spray.

Once, as a gorgeous galleon, drenched with blood

Began to founder and settle, a British captain

Called from his bulwarks, bidding her fierce crew

Surrender and come aboard. Straight through the heart

A hundred muskets answered that appeal.

Sink or destroy! The deadly signal flew

From mast to mast of England. Once, twice, thrice,

A huge sea-castle heaved her haggled bulk

Heavenward, and with a cry that rent the heavens

From all her crowded decks, and one deep roar

As of a cloven world or the dark surge

Of chaos yawning, sank: the swirling slopes

Of the sweeping billowy hills for a moment swarmed

With struggling insect-men, sprinkling the foam

With tossing arms; then the indifferent sea

Rolled its grey smoking waves across the place

Where they had been. Here a great galleasse poured

Red rivers through her scuppers and torn flanks,

And there a galleon, wrapped in creeping fire,

Suddenly like a vast volcano split

Asunder, and o'er the vomiting sulphurous clouds

And spouting spread of crimson, flying spars

And heads torn from their trunks and scattered limbs

Leapt, hideous gouts of death, against the glare.

Hardly the thrust of a pike away, the ships

Of England flashed and swerved, till in one mass

Of thunder-blasted splendour and shuddering gloom

Those gorgeous floating citadels huddled and shrank

Their towers, and all the glory of dawn that rolled

And burned along the tempest of their banners

Withered, as on a murderer's face the light

Withers before the accuser. All their proud

Castles and towers and heaven-wide clouds of sail

Shrank to a darkening horror, like the heart

Of Evil, plucked from midnight's fiercest gloom,

With all its curses quivering and alive;

A horror of wild masts and tangled spars,

Like some great kraken with a thousand arms

Torn from the filthiest cavern of the deep,

Writhing, and spewing forth its venomous fumes

On every side. Sink or destroy!— all day

The deadly signal flew; and ever the sea

Swelled higher, and the flashes of the foam

Broadened and leapt and spread as a wild white fire

That flourishes with the wind; and ever the storm

Drave the grim battle onward to the wild

Menace of the dark North Sea. At set of sun,

Even as below the sea-line the broad disc

Sank like a red-hot cannon-ball through scurf

Of seething molten lead, the Santa Maria

Uttering one cry that split the heart of heaven

Went down with all hands, roaring into the dark.

Hardly five rounds of shot were left to Drake!

Gun after gun fell silent, as the night

Deepened — “Yet we must follow them to the North,”

He cried, “or they'll return yet to shake hands

With Parma! Come, we'll put a brag upon it,

And hunt them onward as we lacked for nought!”

So, when across the swinging smoking seas,

Grey and splendid and terrible broke the day

Once more, the flying Invincible fleet beheld

Upon their weather-beam, and dogging them

Like their own shadow, the dark ships of Drake,

Unswerving and implacable. Ever the wind

And sea increased; till now the heaving deep

Swelled all around them into sulky hills

And rolling mountains, whose majestic crests,

Like wild white flames far blown and savagely flickering

Swept thro’ the clouds; and, on their vanishing slopes,

Past the pursuing fleet began to swirl

Scores of horses and mules, drowning or drowned,

Cast overboard to lighten the wild flight

Of Spain, and save her water-casks, a trail

Telling of utmost fear. And ever the storm

Soared louder across the leagues of rioting sea,

Driving her onward like a mighty stag

Chased by the wolves. Off the dark Firth of Forth

At last, Drake signalled and lay head to wind,

Watching. “The chariots of God are twenty thousand,”

He muttered, as, for a moment close at hand,

Caught in some league-wide whirlpool of the sea,

The mighty galleons crowded and towered and plunged

Above him on the huge o'erhanging billows,

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

A mile of ravening sea had swept between

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

With all their tiny shrivelling scrolls of sail,

Through roaring deserts of embattled death,

Where like a hundred thousand chariots charged

With lightnings and with thunders, the great deep

Hurled them away to the North. From sky to sky

One blanching bursting storm of infinite seas

Followed them, broad white cataracts, hills that grasped

With struggling Titan hands at reeling heavens,

And roared their doom-fraught greetings from Cape Wrath

Round to the Bloody Foreland.

There should the yeast

Of foam receive the purple of many kings,

And the grim gulfs devour the blood-bought gold

Of Aztecs and of Incas, and the reefs,

League after league, bristle with mangled spars,

And all along their coasts the murderous kerns

Of Catholic Ireland strip the gorgeous silks

And chains and jewel-encrusted crucifixes

From thousands dead, and slaughter thousands more

With gallow-glass axes as they blindly crept

Forth from the surf and jagged rocks to seek

Pity of their own creed.

To meet that doom

Drake watched their sails go shrivelling, till the last

Flicker of spars vanished as a skeleton leaf

Upon the blasts of winter, and there was nought

But one wide wilderness of splendour and gloom

Under the northern clouds.

“Not unto us,”

Cried Drake, “not unto us — but unto Him

Who made the sea, belongs our England now!

Pray God that heart and mind and soul we prove

Worthy among the nations of this hour

And this great victory, whose ocean fame

Shall wash the world with thunder till that day

When there is no more sea, and the strong cliffs

Pass like a smoke, and the last peal of it

Sounds thro’ the trumpet.”

So, with close-hauled sails,

Over the rolling triumph of the deep,

Lifting their hearts to heaven, they turned back home.