Chapter CXXVI: The Flag of England 335 (8)

_Museum_, 1796. Attributed, in one shape or another, to a certain Captain Ogilvie. Sharpe, too, printed a broadside in which the third stanza (used more than once by Sir Walter) is found as here. But Scott Douglas (_Burns_, iii. 173) has 'no doubt that this broadside was printed after 1796,' and as it stands the thing is assuredly the work of Burns. The refrain and the metrical structure have been used by Scott (_Rokeby_, IV. 28), Carlyle, Charles Kingsley (_Dolcino to Margaret_), and Mr. Swinburne (_A Reiver's Neck Verse_) among others.

XLVII-LII

Of the first four numbers, the high-water mark of Wordsworth's achievement, all four were written in 1802; the second and third were published in 1803; the first and fourth in 1807. The _Ode to Duty_ was written in 1805, and published in 1807, to which year belongs that _Song for the Feast of Brougham Castle_, from which I have extracted the excellent verses here called _Two Victories_.

LIII-LXII

The first three numbers are from _Marmion_ (1808): I. Introduction; V. 12; and VI. 18-20, 25-27, and 33-34. The next is from _The Lady of the Lake_ (1810), I. 1-9: _The Outlaw_ is from _Rokeby_ (1813), III. 16; the _Pibroch_ was published in 1816; _The Omnipotent_ and _The Red Harlaw_ are from _The Antiquary_ (1816), and the _Farewell_ from _The Pirate_ (1821). As for _Bonny Dundee_, that incomparable ditty, it was written as late as 1825. 'The air of Bonny Dundee running in my head to-day,' he writes under date of 22d December (_Diary_, 1890, i. 61), 'I wrote a few verses to it before dinner, taking the key-note from the story of Clavers leaving the Scottish Convention of Estates in 1688-9. _I wonder if they are good._' See _The Doom of Devorgoil_ (1830), Note A, Act II. sc. 2.

LXIII

This unsurpassed piece of art, in which a music the most exquisite is used to body forth a set of suggestions that seem dictated by the very Spirit of Romance, was produced, under the influence of 'an anodyne,' as early as 1797. Coleridge, who calls it _Kubla Khan: A Vision within a Dream_, avers that, having fallen asleep in his chair over a sentence from Purchas's Pilgrimage--'Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built and a stately garden thereto; and thus ten miles of ground were enclosed with a wall,'--he remained unconscious for about three hours, 'during which time he had the most vivid confidence that he could not have composed less than three hundred lines'; 'if that,' he adds, 'can be called composition, in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort.' On awakening, he proceeded to write out his 'composition,' and had set down as much of it as is printed here, when 'he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock,' whose departure, an hour after, left him wellnigh oblivious of the rest. This confession, which is dated 1816, has been generally accepted as true; but Coleridge had a trick of dreaming dreams about himself which makes doubt permissible.

LXIV

From the _Hellenics_ (written in Latin, 1814-20, and translated into English at the instance of Lady Blessington), 1846. See Colvin, _Landor_ ('English Men of Letters'), pp. 189, 190.

LXV-LXVII

Of the first, 'Napoleon and the British Sailor' (_The Pilgrim of Glencoe_, 1842), Campbell writes that the 'anecdote has been published in several public journals, both French and English.' 'My belief,' he continues, 'in its authenticity was confirmed by an Englishman, long resident in Boulogne, lately telling me that he remembered the circumstance to have been generally talked of in the place.' Authentic or not, I have preferred the story to _Hohenlinden_, as less hackneyed, for one thing, and, for another, less pretentious and rhetorical. The second (_Gertrude of Wyoming_, 1809) is truly one of 'the glories of our birth and state.' The third (_idem_) I have ventured to shorten by three stanzas: a proceeding which, however culpable it seem, at least gets rid of the chief who gave a country's wounds relief by stopping a battle, eliminates the mermaid and her song (the song that 'condoles'), and ends the lyric on as sonorous and romantic a word as even Shakespeare ever used.

LXVIII

_Corn Law Rhymes_, 1831.

LXIX

From that famous and successful forgery, Cromek's _Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song_ (1810), written when Allan was a working mason in Dumfriesshire. I have omitted a stanza as inferior to the rest.

LXXI

_English Songs and other Small Poems_, 1834.

LXXII-LXXVIII

The first is from the _Hebrew Melodies_ (1815); the next is selected from _The Siege of Corinth_ (1816), 22-33; _Alhama_ (_idem_) is a spirited yet faithful rendering of the _Romance muy Doloroso del Sitio y Toma de Alhama_, which existed both in Spanish and in Arabic, and whose effect was such that 'it was forbidden to be sung by the Moors on the pain of death in Granada' (Byron); No. LXXV., surely one of the bravest songs in the language, was addressed (_idem_) to Thomas Moore; the tremendous _Race with Death_ is lifted out of the _Ode in Venice_ (1819); for the next number see _Don Juan_, III. (1821); the last of all, 'Stanzas inscribed _On this day I completed my Thirty-sixth year_' (1824), is the last verse that Byron wrote.

LXXIX

Napier has described the terrific effect of Napoleon's pursuit; but in the operations before Corunna he was distanced, if not out-generalled, by Sir John Moore, and ere the first days of 1809 he gave his command to Soult, who pressed us vainly through the hill-country between Leon and Gallicia, and got beaten at Corunna for his pains. Wolfe, who was an Irish parson and died of consumption, wrote some spirited verses on the flight of Busaco, but this admirable elegy--'I will show you,' said Byron to Shelley (Medwin, ii. 154) 'one you have never seen, that I consider little if at all inferior to the best, the present prolific age has brought forth'--remains his passport to immortality. It was printed, not by the author, in an Irish newspaper; was copied all over Britain; was claimed by liar after liar in succession; and has been reprinted more often, perhaps, than any poem of the century.

LXXX

From _Snarleyow, or the Dog Fiend_ (1837). Compare Nelson to Collingwood: '_Victory_, 25th June, 1805,--May God bless you and send you alongside the _Santissima Trinidad_.'

LXXXI, LXXXII

The story of Casabianca is, I believe, untrue; but the intention of the singer, alike in this number and in the next, is excellent. Each indeed is, in its way, a classic. The _Mayflower_ sailed from Southampton in 1626.

LXXXIII

This magnificent sonnet, _On First Reading Chapman's Homer_, was printed in 1817. The 'Cortez' of the eleventh verse is a mistake; the discoverer of the Pacific being NuÒez de Balboa.

LXXXIV-LXXXVII

The _Lays_ are dated 1824; they have passed through edition after edition; and if Matthew Arnold disliked and contemned them (see Sir F. H. Doyle, _Reminiscences and Opinions_, pp. 178-87), the general is wise enough to know them by heart. But a book that is 'a catechism to fight' (in Jonson's phrase) would have sinned against itself had it taken no account of them, and I have given _Horatius_ in its integrity: if only, as Landor puts it,

To show the British youth, who ne'er
Will lag behind, what Romans were,
When all the Tuscans and their Lars
Shouted, and shook the towers of Mars.

As for _The Armada_, I have preferred it to _The Battle of Naseby_, first, because it is neither vicious nor ugly, and the other is both; and, second, because it is so brilliant an outcome of that capacity for dealing with proper names which Macaulay, whether poet or not, possesses in common with none but certain among the greater poets. For _The Last Buccaneer_ (a curious anticipation of some effects of Mr. Rudyard Kipling), and that noble thing, the _Jacobite's Epitaph_, they are dated 1839 and 1845 respectively.

LXXXVIII

_The Poetical Works of Robert Stephen Hawker_ (Kegan Paul, 1879). By permission of Mrs. R. S. Hawker. 'With the exception of the choral lines--

And shall Trelawney die?
There's twenty thousand Cornishmen
Will know the reason why!--

and which have been, ever since the imprisonment by James II. of the Seven Bishops--one of them Sir Jonathan Trelawney--a popular proverb throughout Cornwall, the whole of this song was composed by me in the year 1825. I wrote it under a stag-horned oak in Sir Beville's Walk in Stowe Wood. It was sent by me anonymously to a Plymouth paper, and there it attracted the notice of Mr. Davies Gilbert, who reprinted it at his private press at Eastbourne under the avowed impression that it was the original ballad. It had the good fortune to win the eulogy of Sir Walter Scott, who also deemed it to be the ancient song. It was praised under the same persuasion by Lord Macaulay and Mr. Dickens.'--_Author's Note._

LXXXIX-XCII

From _The Sea Side and the Fire Side_, 1851; _Birds of Passage_, _Flight the First_, and _Flight the Second_; and _Flower de Luce_, 1866. Of these four examples of the picturesque and taking art of Longfellow, I need say no more than that all are printed in their integrity, with the exception of the first. This I leave the lighter by a moral and an application, both of which, superfluous or not, are remote from the general purpose of this book: a confession in which I may include the following number, Mr. Whittier's _Barbara Frietchie_ (_In War-Time_, 1863.)

XCIV

_Nineteenth Century_, March 1878; _Ballads and other Poems_, 1880. By permission of Messrs. Macmillan, to whom I am indebted for some of my choicest numbers. For the story of Sir Richard Grenville's heroic death, 'in the last of August,' 1591--after the Revenge had endured the onset of 'fifteen several armadas,' and received some 'eight hundred shot of great artillerie,'--see Hakluyt (1598-1600), ii. 169-176, where you will find it told with singular animation and directness by Sir Walter Raleigh, who held a brief against the Spaniards in Sir Richard's case as always. To Sir Richard's proposal to blow up the ship the master gunner 'readily condescended,' as did 'divers others'; but the captain was of 'another opinion,' and in the end Sir Richard was taken aboard the ship of the Spanish admiral, Don Alfonso de Bazan, who used him well and honourably until he died: leaving to his friends the 'comfort that being dead he hath not outlived his own honour,' and that he had nobly shown how false and vain, and therefore how contrary to God's will, the 'ambitious and bloudie practices of the Spaniards' were.

XCV

_Tiresias and Other Poems_, 1885. By permission of Messrs. Macmillan. Included at Lord Tennyson's own suggestion. For the noble feat of arms (25th October 1854) thus nobly commemorated, see Kinglake (v. i. 102-66). 'The three hundred of the Heavy Brigade who made this famous charge were the Scots Greys and the second squadron of Enniskillings, the remainder of the "Heavy Brigade" subsequently dashing up to their support. The "three" were Scarlett's aide-de-camp, Elliot, and the trumpeter, and Shegog the orderly, who had been close behind him.'--_Author's Note._

XCVI, XCVII

_The Return of the Guards, and other Poems_, 1866. By permission of Messrs. Macmillan. As to the first, which deals with an incident of the war with China, and is presumably referred to in 1860, 'Some Seiks and a private of the Buffs (or East Kent Regiment) having remained behind with the grog-carts, fell into the hands of the Chinese. On the next morning they were brought before the authorities and commanded to perform the _Ko tou_. The Seiks obeyed; but Moyse, the English soldier, declaring that he would not prostrate himself before any Chinaman alive, was immediately knocked upon the head and his body thrown upon a dunghill.'--Quoted by the author from _The Times_. The Elgin of line 6 is Henry Bruce, eighth Lord Elgin (1811-1863), then Ambassador to China, and afterwards Governor-General of India. Compare _Theology in Extremis_ (_post_, p. 309). Of the second, which Mr. Saintsbury describes 'as one of the most lofty, insolent, and passionate things concerning this matter that our time has produced,' Sir Francis notes that the incident--no doubt a part of the conquest of Sindh--was told him by Sir Charles Napier, and that 'Truckee' (line 12) = 'a stronghold in the Desert, supposed to be unassailable and impregnable.'

XCVIII, XCIX

By permission of Messrs. Smith, Elder, and Co. _Dramatic Lyrics_, 1845; _Cornhill Magazine_, June 1871, and _Pacchiarotto_, 1876, Works, iv. and xiv. I can find nothing about HervÈ Riel.

C-CIII

The two first are from the 'Song of Myself,' _Leaves of Grass_ (1855); the others from _Drum Taps_ (1865). See _Leaves of Grass_ (Philadelphia, 1884), pp. 60, 62-63, 222, and 246.

CIV, CV

By permission of Messrs. Macmillan. Dated severally 1857 and 1859.

CVI

_Edinburgh Courant_, 1852. Compare _The Loss of the 'Birkenhead'_ in _The Return of the Guards, and other Poems_ (Macmillan, 1883), pp. 256-58. Of the troopship _Birkenhead_ I note that she sailed from Queenstown on the 7th January 1852, with close on seven hundred souls on board; that the most of these were soldiers--of the Twelfth Lancers, the Sixtieth Rifles, the Second, Sixth, Forty-third, Forty-fifth, Seventy-third, Seventy-fourth, and Ninety-first Regiments; that she struck on a rock (26th February 1852) off Simon's Bay, South Africa; that the boats would hold no more than a hundred and thirty-eight, and that, the women and children being safe, the men that were left--four hundred and fifty-four, all told--were formed on deck by their officers, and went down with the ship, true to colours and discipline till the end.

CVII-CIX

By permission of Messrs. Macmillan. From _Empedocles on Etna_ (1853). As regards the second number, it may be noted that Sohrab, being in quest of his father Rustum, to whom he is unknown, offers battle as one of the host of the Tartar King Afrasiab, to any champion of the Persian Kai Khosroo. The challenge is accepted by Rustum, who fights as a nameless knight (like Wilfrid of Ivanhoe at the Gentle and Joyous Passage of Ashby), and so becomes the unwitting slayer of his son. For the story of the pair the poet refers his readers to Sir John Malcom's _History of Persia_. See _Poems_, by Matthew Arnold (Macmillan), i. 268, 269.

CX, CXI

_Ionica_ (Allen, 1891). By permission of the Author. _School Fencibles_ (1861) was 'printed, not published, in 1877.' _The Ballad for a Boy_, Mr. Cory writes, 'was never printed till this year.'

CXII

By permission of the Author. This ballad, which was suggested, Mr. Meredith tells me, by the story of Bendigeid Vran, the son of Llyr, in the _Mabinogion_ (iii. 121-9), is reprinted from _Modern Love_ (1862), but it originally appeared (_circ._ 1860) in _Once a Week_, a forgotten print the source of not a little unforgotten stuff--as _Evan Harrington_ and the first part of _The Cloister and the Hearth_.

CXIII

From the fourth and last book of _Sigurd the Volsung_, 1877. By permission of the Author. Hogni and Gunnar, being the guests of King Atli, husband to their sister Gudrun, refused to tell him the whereabouts of the treasure of Fafnir, whom Sigurd slew; and this is the manner of their taking and the beginning of King Atli's vengeance.

CXIV

_English Illustrated Magazine_, January 1890, and _Lyrical Poems_ (Macmillan, 1891). By permission of the Author: with whose sanction I have omitted four lines from the last stanza.

CXV

By permission of Sir Alfred Lyall. _Cornhill Magazine_, September 1868, and _Verses Written in India_ (Kegan Paul, 1889). The second title is: _A Soliloquy that may have been delivered in India, June 1857_; and this is further explained by the following 'extract from an Indian newspaper':--'They would have spared life to any of their English prisoners who should consent to profess Mahometanism by repeating the usual short formula; but only one half-caste cared to save himself that way.' Then comes the description, _Moriturus Loquitur_, and next the poem.

CXVI-CXVIII

From _Songs before Sunrise_ (Chatto and Windus, 1877), and the third series of _Poems and Ballads_ (Chatto and Windus, 1889). By permission of the Author.

CXIX, CXX

_The Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte_ (Chatto and Windus, 1886). By permission of Author and Publisher. _The ReveillÈ_ was spoken before a Union Meeting at San Francisco at the beginning of the Civil War and appeared in a volume of the Author's poems in 1867. _What the Bullet Sang_ is much later work: dating, thinks Mr. Harte, from '79 or '80.

CXXI

_St. James's Magazine_, October 1877, and _At the Sign of the Lyre_ (Kegan Paul, 1889). By permission of the Author.

CXXII

_St. James's Gazette_, 20th July 1888, and _Grass of Parnassus_ (Longmans, 1888). By permission of Author and Publisher. Written in memory of Gordon's betrayal and death, but while there were yet hopes and rumours of escape.

CXXIII

_Underwoods_ (Chatto and Windus, 1886). By permission of the Publishers.

CXXIV

_Love's Looking-Glass_ (Percival, 1891). By permission of the Author.

CXXV

_Macmillan's Magazine_, November 1889. By permission of the Author. Kamal Khan is a Pathan; and the scene of this exploit--which, I am told, is perfectly consonant with the history and tradition of Guides and Pathans both--is the North Frontier country in the Peshawar-Kohat region, say, between Abazai and Bonair, behind which is stationed the Punjab Irregular Frontier Force--'the steel head of the lance couched for the defence of India.' As for the Queen's Own Corps of Guides, to the general 'God's Own Guides' (from its exclusiveness and gallantry), it comprehends both horse and foot, is recruited from Sikhs, Pathans, Rajputs, Afghans, all the fighting races, is officered both by natives and by Englishmen, and in all respects is worthy of this admirable ballad.

Ressaldar = _the native leader of a _ressala_ or troop of
horse_
Tongue = _a barren and naked strath_--'what geologists
call a fan'
Gut of the Tongue = _the narrowest part of the strath_
dust-devils = _dust-clouds blown by a whirlwind_

CXXVI

_National Observer_, 4th April 1891. At the burning of the Court-House at Cork, 'Above the portico a flagstaff bearing the Union Jack remained fluttering in the air for some time, but ultimately when it fell the crowds rent the air with shouts, and seemed to see significance in the incident.'--Daily Papers. _Author's Note._

INDEX
PAGE

A good sword and a trusty hand 207
All is finished! and at length 217
Alone stood brave Horatius 196
Amid the loud ebriety of war 264
And Rustum gazed in Sohrab's face, and said 280
Arm, arm, arm, arm! the scouts are all come in 13
As I was walking all alane 79
Ask nothing more of me, sweet 316
As the spring-tides, with heavy plash 153
At anchor in Hampton Roads we lay 227
At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay 232
Attend, all ye who list to hear our noble England's praise 200
Attend you, and give ear awhile 73
Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones 28
A wet sheet and a flowing sea 148

Beat! beat! drums!--blow! bugles! blow! 257
Bid me to live, and I will live 18
Blow high, blow low, let tempests tear 89
Build me straight, O worthy Master 208
But by the yellow Tiber 183
But see! look up--on Flodden bent 116
By this, though deep the evening fell 119
Captain, or Colonel, or Knight in Arms 27
Come, all ye jolly sailors bold 92
Condemned to Hope's delusive mine 45
Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud 28

Darkly, sternly, and all alone 156
Day by day the vessel grew 214
Day, like our souls, is fiercely dark 146

Eleven men of England 244
England, queen of the waves, whose green inviolate girdle
enrings thee round 317
Erle Douglas on his milke-white steede 49

Fair stood the wind for France 6
Farewell! farewell! the voice you hear 133
Farewell, ye dungeons dark and strong 95

Get up! get up for shame! The blooming morn 15
God prosper long our noble king 47
God who created me 328
Go fetch to me a pint o' wine 97
Good Lord Scroope to the hills is gane 64

Hame, hame, hame, hame fain wad I be 147
Hark! I hear the tramp of thousands 322
He has called him forty Marchmen bold 69
Here, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom Bowling 90
He spoke, and as he ceased he wept aloud 272
He spoke, and Sohrab kindled at his taunts 267
He spoke; but Rustum gazed, and gazed, and stood 275
High-spirited friend 12
How happy is he born or taught 11

I am the mashed fireman with breast-bone broken 254
If doughty deeds my lady please 88
If sadly thinking 91
I love contemplating, apart 140
In the ship-yard stood the Master 210
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 136
Iphigeneia, when she heard her doom 138
I said, when evil men are strong 105
Is life worth living? Yes, so long 308
It is not growing like a tree 13
It is not to be thought of that the Flood 101
It is not yours, O mother, to complain 326
It was a' for our rightfu' King 99
I wish I were where Helen lies 77

Kamal is out with twenty men to raise the Border side 329
King Philip had vaunted his claims 324

Lars Porsena of Clusium 179
Last night, among his fellow-roughs 242

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour 102
Mortality, behold and fear 15
Much have I travelled in the realms of gold 179
My boat is on the shore 164
My dear and only love, I pray 31

Next morn the Baron climbed the tower 114
Nobly, nobly Cape St. Vincent to the north-west died away 248
Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note 172
Now all the youth of England are on fire 2
Now entertain conjecture of a time 4
Now fell the sword of Gunnar, and rose up red in the air 297
Now the noon was long passed over when again the rumour arose 304
Now we bear the king 10
Now while the Three were tightening 189
Now word is gane to the bold Keeper 67

O born in days when wits were fresh and clear 282
O Brignall banks are wild and fair 126
O England is a pleasant place for them that's rich and high 260
Of Nelson and the North 144
O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend 1
Oft in the pleasant summer years 311
O have ye na heard o' the fause Sakelde 66
O how comely it is, and how reviving 31
O joy of creation 323
O Mary, at thy window be 98
Once did She hold the gorgeous East in fee 100
On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred and ninety-two 248
Othere, the old sea-captain 223
Our English archers bent their bowes 51
O Venice! Venice! when thy marble walls 165
O, young Lochinvar is come out of the west 112

Pibroch of Donuil Dhu 129

Ruin seize thee, ruthless King 80

Should auld acquaintance be forgot 96
Simon Danz has come home again 228
Stern Daughter of the Voice of God 103
Still the song goeth up from Gunnar, though his harp to earth
be laid 301
Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright 19

Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind 32
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold 150
The boy stood on the burning deck 175
The breaking waves dashed high 177
The captain stood on the carronade: 'First Lieutenant,'
says he 174
The charge of the gallant three hundred, the Heavy Brigade 239
The fifteenth day of July 60
The forward youth that would appear 34
The glories of our birth and state 20
The herring loves the merry moonlight 131
The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece 167
The King sits in Dunfermline town 57
The last sunbeam 258
The Moorish King rides up and down 160
The newes was brought to Eddenborrow 56
The night is past, and shines the sun 151
The Sea! the Sea, the open Sea 149
The stag at eve had drunk his fill 121
The weary day rins down and dies 319
The winds were yelling, the waves were swelling 205
Then speedilie to wark we gaed 71
Then with a bitter smile, Rustum began 269
Then with a heavy groan, Rustum bewailed 277
This, this is he; softly a while 30
Through the black, rushing smoke bursts 265
Thus with imagined wing our swift scene flies 3
Tiger, tiger, burning bright 94
'Tis time this heart should be unmoved 171
Toll for the Brave 85
To mute and to material things 107
To my true king I offered free from stain 206
To the Lords of Convention 'twas Claver'se who spoke 134
'Twas at the royal feast for Persia won 40

Up from the meadows rich with corn 230

Vain is the dream! However Hope may rave 325

We come in arms, we stand ten score 284
Welcome, wild north-easter 262
When George the Third was reigning a hundred years ago 285
When I consider how my light is spent 29
When I have borne in memory what has tamed 101
When Love with unconfinËd wings 33
When the British warrior queen 86
When the head of Bran 290
Where the remote Bermudas ride 39
Why sitt'st thou by that ruined hall 130
Winds of the World, give answer! They are whimpering
to and fro 335
With stout Erle Percy, there was slaine 54
Would you hear of an old-time sea-fight 255

Ye Mariners of England 143
Ye shall know that in Atli's feast-hall on the side
that joined the house 293
Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more 21