Chapter XXXIX

The song was ended, and the crew’s applause
Did please the lad, who sang it to his lute.--
The midshipman then essayed to relate
A story with a mystery and fate,
Of queen in English castle, and a brute
Whom she did love, her absent, heartless spouse.

But while he spake, the captain did appear,
(Unfinished hung the story on the lips),
A Spaniard would not let such story pass,
Since holy was his monarch, though an ass;
Castilian, yea, to the finger-tips,
Who for his God and king had equal fear.

But all his crew was English and did pity,
Though not from love, their queen of grief and rage,
The most unfortunate on any throne,
Who languished in her palace sad and lone,
A zealot for her faith, who dared to wage
A final fight for the Eternal City.

Her love for Philip was a tragedy,
Of whom the people spake and lent it hue
Of fateful romance and a mystery;
Yea, in the night strange phantoms men did see
Of things the superstitious counted true,
But round it all clung native sympathy.

The captain becked Sordino to his side,
And spoke in accents, foreign to his men,
On whom a silence fell deep as the sea’s,
When, lo! there rose a curling little breeze,
And then another stronger than its friend,
Who called on Neptune’s horses for a ride.

The captain bid the men to tend the sails,
And quickly did each sailor now respond;
The sheets were spread before the rising wind,
And swiftly did they leave the coast behind,
To reach the vast and sunlit mere beyond,
Where ocean billows surge with piercing wails.