Chapter XIV: Appendix: I (p. 2)

ENGLISH PRIZE POEM

(Written by Bute at Harrow School, _aet._ 15-1/2.)

_Subject_: EDWARD THE BLACK PRINCE.

(The footnotes are the young author's own)

When the long requiem's assuaging strain
Sounds high and solemn through the holy fane,
And loud and frequent in the darkened pile
The organ's heavy swell is heard the while,
Askest thou, pilgrim stranger, wherefore low,
In prayer unceasing, mournful hundreds bow;
Why choral hymns unceasingly arise,
And thuribles with incense cloud the skies,
While dying tapers glimmer pale and low
Upon the bloodless alabaster brow
That only represents the hero now?
Read sculptured on a grave that royal name,
So often blown abroad by noisy fame:
Yes; low as other men, the caitiff tomb
Has dared to shroud his splendour in its gloom!
Edward, who once the Knight of England shone,
Lies cold and stiff beneath this sculptured stone.
The brilliant Phosphor of a brighter day
Too soon in night is passed for aye away!
The lordly thistle blooms in purple pride;
The shamrock clusters by her sheltering side;[1]
And, though from each full many a spray is riven,
Unshaken yet they rise to friendly heaven.
The golden lily, even in her tears,
Full many a flower of vernal promise bears;
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The pomegranate hangs fruitful on the tree;
The olive waves o'er many an eastern sea;
And strong beneath her eagle's sable wings
The pine upon her fir-clad mountains clings;
The rose alone, the fairest of them all,[2]
Is doomed to see her bud of promise fall!
The green genista's golden bloom is shed,
Her brightest offspring numbered with the dead.
O! plundered flower, O! doubly plundered bloom
Whose fairest fragrance only feeds the tomb!
'Tis said that when upon a rocky shore
The salt sea billows break with muffled roar,
And, launched in mad career, the thundering wave
Leaps booming through the weedy ocean cave;
Each tenth is grander than the nine before,
And breaks with tenfold thunder on the shore.
Alas! it is so on the sounding sea;
But so, O England, it is not with thee!
Thy decuman is broken on the shore:
A peer to him shall lave thee never more!

Ring forth, O mournful harp--no nobler strain
Than this to-day shall e'er be thine again.
See where amid her ruined towns and towers
France broods upon her country's shattered powers.
Ask her his glories--at the fatal name
Her olive cheek grows red with burning shame,
The tear starts flashing to her careworn eye,
She points where stiff and cold her children lie,
Beneath the bloody sod of many a plain,
By victor Edward's dreaded arrows slain;
From where on Cressy's dark and trodden ground
Two kings were slain and princes died around,
To where Limoges' streets ran red with blood,
And lives of thousands fed the crimson flood;
Or where, again, in Poitiers' fatal lane
The flower of all her gay noblesse were slain,
And trodden down amid the gory clay,
In useless valour threw their lives away;
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While many a lordly tower and holy spire
Fell blackened ruins to the invader's fire.

But not upon thy fields, O France, alone
Like meteor shot from sphere of light he shone.
Rise, Spain, and witness how thy fair Castile
Has bled upon Najarra's fatal hill,
When sullen Najarilla's voiceless flow
Rang to the buckler's clang and falchion's blow,
And legions melted as a morning's snow.
But own that, when before his victor brand
He stretched defenceless all the humbled land,
It then was Edward's voice that stemmed the tide,
And Guzman only for his treason died.
Ungrateful Pedro! gilt and sceptred slave!
Ill hast thou merited the crown he gave!

"The crown he gave," and now, alas! has he
Who was the heir to England's sovereignty
No diadem except the cerecloth band,
No sceptre but the taper in his hand!
The glory that embalms his brilliant name
Alone is deathless through the voice of fame;
Or where, adorned in many a loyal heart,
It burns unmoved till life itself shall part--
It lives undying there. What other throne
So meet for him who called those hearts his own?

But O! when history with frigid eye
Shall write the lengthened list of deeds gone by,
And deal with justice, passionless but true,
The meed deserved the living never knew,
Forbid it, Heaven! her voice divine should stay
The tide of praise that swells his name to-day.
Tell how, when victory had wreathed his arms,
And peace at length replaced war's dread alarms,
(Such peace is theirs who can resist no more)
When captive led from France's vanquished shore
A conquered monarch graced the victor's car,
The splendid trophy of the finished war.
Say how, eclipsed in an inferior's guise,
He scorned to feed with show the people's eyes;
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And spurning Roman conqueror's gaudy pride,
Rode, humble, by the French usurper's side.
Such deed as this shall live to mock decay
When time has borne war's fading wreaths away.

The golden corn shall wave on Cressy's plain,
The thrush shall sing in Poitier's woods again;
The rosemaries upon Najarra's hill
Shall perfume Najarilla's noiseless rill;
The fields of France shall bloom in verdant pride,
Unstained by ruthless conquest's crimson tide;
The summer roses bloom in far Castile--
While, levelled by the dart we all must feel,
The mortal victor lies--a wreck of clay,
Once brilliant and as perishing as they.
There mark the armour that in life he wore
Hangs o'er his dreamless head! O never more
Shall coat so princely fence so meet a heart!
And still, as if demanding ne'er to part,
There yet the leopards in their sanguine shield
Alternate with the lilies' heavenly field.

One step aside, and blazing through the gloom,
The pinnacles that deck the martyr's[3] tomb
Rise high and glittering o'er the golden urn;
And there for aye the dying tapers burn,
As if they cried to men in protest high
That soon their earthly honours all must die;
But that upon the Christian's sainted shade
Alone is bound a wreath that cannot fade.
O! ye who lie together, levelled here,
In life so sundered and in death so near--
He who has shed men's blood to win a throne,
And he who for Religion shed his own;
What thoughts unnumbered on the rapid mind
Arise, with mingled grief and awe combined!

O! for a worthier art with skill to paint
The light eternal that surrounds the saint:
And justly mete the song of swelling praise
The hero's virtues force our hearts to raise!
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Shades of the great, the holy, and the brave,
Whose earthly vestment slumbers in the grave,
Teach us by bright example each to tread
The heavenward pathway hallowed by the dead.
What though the trembling element of earth
May swell again the clay that gave it birth;
What though again the wanton breeze reclaim
The vital breath it lent to warm your frame;
Not less ye live because our feebler race
Your lordly presence now no more shall grace.
Where'er the wild and careless winds can blow,
Where'er the ocean's cold, dark waters flow,
Where'er the heart heroic dares to die,
There--there your fadeless memory lives for aye,
Till Ruin claims her universal sway,
And worn-out Time himself shall pass away.

BUTE.

[1] Edward Bruce was once King of Northern Ireland.

[2] The symbols of the chief powers of Europe are taken from a royal masque in the reign of Henry VIII. The pomegranate represents Spain, the olive Italy, and the pine-cone Germany.

[3] St. Thomas of Canterbury.

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