THE LAST DAYS OF ELIZABETH.

Rise from thy bloody grave,

Thou soft Medusa of the Fated Line

Whose evil beauty look'd to death the brave;—

Discrowned Queen, around whose passionate shame

Terror and Grief the palest flowers entwine,

That ever veil'd the ruins of a Name

With the sweet parasites of song divine!—

Arise, sad Ghost, arise,

And if Revenge outlive the Tomb,

Behold the Doomer brought to doom!

Lo, where thy mighty Murderess lies,

The sleepless couch — the sunless room,—

Through the darkness darkly seen

Rests the shadow of a Queen;

Ever on the lawns below

Flit the shadows to and fro,

Quick at dawn, and slow at noon,

Halving midnight with the moon:

In the palace, still and dun,

Rests that shadow on the floor;

All the changes of the sun

Move that shadow nevermore.

Yet oft she turns from face to face,

A keen and wistful gaze,

As if the memory seeks to trace

The sign of some lost dwelling-place

Beloved in happier days;—

Ah, what the clue supplies

In the cold vigil of a hireling's eyes?

Ah, sad in childless age to weep alone,

Look round and find no grief reflect our own!—

O Soul, thou speedest to thy rest away,

But not upon the pinions of the dove;

When death draws nigh, how miserable they

Who have outlived all love!

As on the solemn verge of Night

Lingers a weary Moon,

Thou wanest last of every glorious light

That bathed with splendour thy majestic noon:—

The stately stars that clustering o'er the isle

Lull'd into glittering rest the subject sea;—

Gone the great Masters of Italian wile,

False to the world beside, but true to thee!—

Burleigh, the subtlest builder of thy fame,—

The serpent craft of winding Walsingham;—

They who exalted yet before thee bow'd:

And that more dazzling chivalry — the Band

That made thy Court a Faery Land,

In which thou wert enshrined to reign alone —

The Gloriana of the Diamond Throne;—

All gone,— and left thee sad amidst the cloud.

To their great sires, to whom thy youth was known,

Who from thy smile, as laurels from the sun

Drank the immortal greenness of renown,

Succeeds the cold lip-homage scantly won

From the new race whose hearts already bear

The Wise-man's offerings to th’ unworthy Heir.

Watching the glass in which the sands run low,—

Hovers keen Cecil with his falcon eyes,

And musing Bacon bends his marble brow.—

But deem not fondly there

To weep the fate or pour th’ averting prayer

Attend those solemn spies!

Lo, at the Regal Gate

The impatient couriers wait;

To speed from hour to hour the nice account

That registers the grudged unpitied sighs

Vexing the friendless void, before

The Stuart's step shall reeling mount

Tudor's steep throne, red with his Mother's gore!

O piteous mockery of all pomp thou art,

Poor Child of Clay, worn out with toil and years!

As, layer by layer, the granite of the heart

Dissolving, melteth to the weakest tears

That ever Village Maiden shed above

The grave that robb'd her quiet world of love.

Ten days and nights upon that floor

Those weary limbs have lain;

And every hour has added more

Of heaviness to pain.

As gazing into dismal air

She sees the headless phantom there,

The victim round whose image twined

The last wild love of womankind;

That lightning flash'd from stormy hearts,

Which now reveals the deeps of Heaven,

And now remorseless, earthward darts,

Rives, and expires on what its stroke hath riven!

‘ Twere sad to see from those stern eyes

Th’ unheeded anguish feebly flow;

And hear the broken word that dies

In moanings faint and low;—

But sadder still to mark the while,

The vacant stare — the marble smile,

And think, that goal of glory won.

How slight a shade between

The idiot moping in the sun

And England's giant Queen!

Call back the joyous Past!

Lo, England white-robed for a holyday!

While, choral to the clarion's kingly blast,

Shout peals on shout along the Virgin's way,

As through the swarming streets rolls on the long array.

Mary is dead!— Look from your fire-won homes,

Exulting Martyrs!— on the mount shall rest

Truth's ark at last! th’ avenging Lutheran comes

And clasps THE BOOK ye died for to her breast!

With her, the flower of all the Land,

The high-born gallants ride,

And ever nearest of the band,

With watchful eye and ready hand,

Young Dudley's form of pride!

Ah, ev'n in that exulting hour,

Love half allures the soul from Power,—

To that dread brow in bending down

Throbs up, beneath the manlike crown,

The woman's heart wild beating,

While steals the whisper'd worship, paid

Not to the Monarch, but the Maid,

Through tromps and stormy greeting.

Call back the gorgeous Past!

The lists are set, the trumpets sound,

Still as the stars, when to the breeze

Sway the proud crests of stately trees,

Bright eyes, from tier on tier around,

Look down, where on its famous ground

Murmurs and moves the bristling life

Of antique Chivalry!

“Forward! " — the signal word is given —

Like cloud on cloud by tempest driven;

Steel lightens, and arm'd thunders close!

How plumes descend in flakes of snows;

How the ground reels, as reels a sea,

Beneath the inebriate rapture-strife

Of jocund Chivalry!

Who is the Victor of the Day?

Thou of the delicate form and golden hair

And Manhood glorious in its midst of May;—

Thou who, upon thy shield of argent, bearest

The bold device, “The Loftiest is the Fairest!”

As bending low thy stainless crest,

“The Vestal throned by the West”

Accords the old Provencal crown

Which blends her own with thy renown;—

Arcadian Sidney — Nursling of the Muse,

Flower of divine Romance, whose bloom was fed

By daintiest Helicon's most silver dews,

Alas! how soon thy lovely leaves were shed —

Thee lost, no more were Grace and Force united,

Grace but some flaunting Buckingham unmann'd,

And Force but crush'd what Freedom vainly righted —

Behind, lo Cromwell looms, and dusks the land

With the swart shadow of his giant hand.

Call back the Kingly Past!

Where, bright and broadening to the main,

Rolls on the scornful River,—

Stout hearts beat high on Tilbury's plain,—

Our Marathon for ever!

No breeze above, but on the mast

The pennon shook as with the blast.

Forth from the cloud the day-god strode;

Flash'd back from steel, the splendour glow'd,—

Leapt the loud joy from Earth to Heaven,

As through the ranks asunder riven,

The Warrior-Woman rode!

Hark, thrilling through the armed Line

The martial accents ring,

“Though mine the Woman's form — yet mine,

“The Heart of England's King! "

Woe to the Island and the Maid!

The Pope has preach'd the New Crusade,

His sons have caught the fiery zeal;

The Monks are merry in Castile;

Bold Parma on the Main;

And through the deep exulting sweep

The Thunder-Steeds of Spain.—

What meteor rides the sulphurous gale?

The Flames have caught the giant sail!

Fierce Drake is grappling prow to prow;

God and St. George for Victory now!

Death in the Battle and the Wind —

Carnage before and Storm behind —

Wild shrieks are heard above the hurtling roar

By Orkney's rugged strands, and Erin's ruthless shore.

Joy to the Island and the Maid!

Pope Sextus wept the Last Crusade!

His sons consumed before his zeal,—

The Monks are woeful in Castile;

Your Monument the Main,

The glaive and gale record your tale,

Ye Thunder-Steeds of Spain!

Turn from the idle Past;

Its lonely ghost thou art!

Yea, like a ghost, whom charms to earth detain

( When, with the dawn, its kindred phantom train

Glide into peaceful graves ) — to dust depart

Thy shadowy pageants; and the day unblest,

Seems some dire curse that keeps thee from thy rest.

Yet comfort, comfort to thy longing woe,

Thou wistful watcher by the dreary portal;

Now when most human, since most feeble, know,

That in the Human struggles the Immortal.

Flash'd from the steel of the descending shears,

Oft sacred light illumes the parting soul;

And our last glimpse along the woof of years,

First reads the scheme that disinvolves the whole.

Yet, then, recall the Past!

Is reverence not the child of sympathy?

To feel for Greatness we must hear it sigh:

On mortal brows those halos longest last

Which blend for one the rays that verge from all.

Few reign, few triumph; millions love and grieve:

Of grief and love let some high memory leave

One mute appeal to life, upon the stone —

That tomb from Time shall votive rites receive

When History doubts what ghost once fill'd a throne.

So,— indistinct while back'd by sunlit skies —

But large and clear against the midnight pall,

Thy human outline awes our human eyes.

Place, place, ye meaner royalties below,

For Nature's holiest — Womanhood and Woe!

Let not vain youth deride the age that still

Loves as the young,— loves on unto the last;

Grandest the heart when grander than the will —

Bow we before the soul, which through the Past,

Turns no vain glance towards fading heights of Pride,

But strains its humbled tearful gaze to see,

Love and Remorse — near Immortality,

And by the yawning Grave, stand side by side.