Chapter III: Part 3

And clomb the decks, and found the gallant crew,
As forms congeal'd to stone, where frozen fate
Took each man in his turn, and gently slew:--
Nor knew the heroic chieftain, as he sate,
English through every fibre, in his place,
The smile of duty done upon the steadfast face.

Sir Hugh Willoughby, in the _Bona Esperanza_, with two other vessels, sailed May 10, 1553, saluting the palace of Greenwich is they passed. By September 18 he, with one consort, reached the harbour of Arzina, where all perished early in 1554. His will, dated in January of that year, was found when the ships were discovered by the Russians soon after.

Willoughby has been taken here as the representative of the great age of British naval adventure and exploration.

_Arzina_ is placed near the western headland of the White Sea, east of the Waranger Fiord, and west of Nova Zembla and the mouth of the Petchora.

CROSSING SOLWAY

May 16: 1568

Blow from the North, thou bitter North wind, Blow over the western bay, Where Nith and Eden and Esk run in And fight with the salt sea spray, And the sun shines high through the sailing sky In the freshness of blue Mid-may.

Blow North-North-West, and hollow the sails Of a Queen who slips over the sea As a hare from the hounds; and her covert afar; And now she can only flee; And death before and the sisterly shore That smiles perfidiously.

O Mid-may freshness about her cheek And piercing her poor attire, The sting of defeat thou canst not allay, The fever of heart and the fire, The death-despair for the days that were, And famine of vain desire!

--On Holyrood stairs an iron-heel'd clank Came up in the gloaming hour: And iron fingers have bursten the bar Of the palace innermost bower: And fiend-like on her the Douglas and Ker And spectral Ruthven glower.

She hears the shriek as the Morton horde Hurry the victim beneath; And she feels their dead man's grasp on her skirt In the frenzy-terror of death; And the dastard King at her bosom cling With a serpent's poison-breath.

O fair girl Queen, well weep for the friend To his faith too faithful and thee; For a brother's hypocrite tears; for the flight To the Castle set by the sea;-- Where thy father's tomb lay and gaped in the gloom 'Twere better for thee to be!

O better at rest where the crooning dove May sing requiem o'er thy bed, Sweet Robin aflame with love's sign on his breast With quick light footstep tread; While over the sod the Birds of God Their guardian feathers outspread!

Too womanly sweet, too womanly frail, Alone in thy faith and thy need; In the homeless home, in the poisonous air Of spite and libel and greed; Mid perfidy's net thy pathway is set, And thy feet in the pitfalls bleed.

--O lightnings, not lightnings of Heaven, that flare Through the desolate House in the Field! Craft that the Fiend had envied in vain; Till the terrible Day unreveal'd,-- Till the Angels rejoice at the Verdict-voice, And Mary's pardon is seal'd!

As a bird from the mesh of the fowler freed With wild wing shatters the air, From shelter to shelter, betray'd, she flees, Or lured to some treacherous lair, And the vulture-cry of the enemy nigh, And the heavens dark with despair!

Bright lily of France, by the storm stricken low, A sunbeam thou seest through the shade Where Order and Peace are throned 'neath the smile Of a royal sisterly Maid:-- For hope in the breast of the girl has her nest, Ever trusting, and ever betray'd.

Brave womanly heart that, beholding the shore, Beholds her own grave unaware,-- Though the days to come their shame should unveil Yet onward she still would dare! Though the meadows smile with statesmanly guile, And the cuckoo's call is a snare!

Turn aside, O Queen, from the cruel land, From the greedy shore turn away; From shame upon shame:--But most shame for those On their passionate captive who play With a subtle net, hope enwoven with threat, Hung out to tempt her astray!

Poor scape-goat of crimes, where,--her part what it may,-- So tortured, so hunted to die, Foul age of deceit and of hate,--on her head Least stains of gore-guiltiness lie; To the hearts of the just her blood from the dust Not in vain for mercy will cry.

Poor scape-goat of nations and faiths in their strife So cruel,--and thou so fair! Poor girl!--so, best, in her misery named,-- Discrown'd of two kingdoms, and bare; Not first nor last on this one was cast The burden that others should share.

--When the race is convened at the great assize And the last long trumpet-call, If Woman 'gainst Man, in her just appeal, At the feet of the Judge should fall, O the cause were secure;--the sentence sure! --But she will forgive him all!--

O keen heart-hunger for days that were; Last look at a vanishing shore! In two short words all bitterness summ'd, That _Has been_ and _Nevermore_! Nor with one caress will Mary bless, Nor look on the babe she bore!

Blow, bitter wind, with a cry of death, Blow over the western bay: The sunshine is gone from the desolate girl, And before is the doomster-day, And the saw-dust red with the heart's-blood shed In the shambles of Fotheringay.

Mary of Scotland is one of the five or six figures in our history who rouse an undying personal interest. Volumes have been and will be written on her:--yet if we put aside the distorting mists of national and political and theological partisanship, the common laws of human nature will give an easy clue to her conduct and that of her enemies.

Her flight from Scotland, as the turning-point in Mary's unhappy and pathetic career, has been here chosen for the moment whence to survey it.

_On Holyrood stairs_; Riccio was murdered on March 9, 1566. Mary's exclamation when she heard of his death next day, _No more tears_; _I will think upon a revenge_, is the sufficient explanation,--in a great degree should be the sufficient justification, with those who still hold her an accomplice in the death of Darnley and the marriage with Bothwell,--(considering the then lawless state of Scotland, the complicity of the leading nobles, the hopelessness of justice)--of her later conduct whilst Queen.

_The friend_; In Riccio's murder the main determinant was his efficiency in aiding Mary towards a Roman Catholic reaction, which might have deprived a large body of powerful nobles of the church lands. The death of Riccio (Mary's most faithful friend) prevented this: the death of Darnley became necessary to secure the position gained.

_A brother's hypocrite tears_; Murray, in whose interest Riccio was murdered, and whose privity to the murder (as afterwards to that of Darnley) is reasonably, though indirectly, proved, affected to shed tears on seeing his sister. Next day she learned the details of the plot, and her half-brother's share in it.

_The flight_; Mary then fled by a secret passage from Holyrood Palace through the Abbey Church, the royal tombs which had been broken open by the revolutionary mob of 1559.

_The Castle_; Dunbar.

_Till the terrible Day unreveal'd_; See _Appendix_ A.

SIDNEY AT ZUTPHEN

October 2: 1586

1

Where Guelderland outspreads
Her green wide water-meads
Laced by the silver of the parted Rhine;
Where round the horizon low
The waving millsails go,
And poplar avenues stretch their pillar'd line;
That morn a clinging mist uncurl'd
Its folds o'er South-Fen town, and blotted out the world.

2

There, as the gray dawn broke,
Cloked by that ghost-white cloke,
The fifty knights of England sat in steel;
Each man all ear, for eye
Could not his nearest spy;
And in the mirk's dim hiding heart they feel,
--Feel more than hear,--the signal sound
Of tramp and hoof and wheel, and guns that bruise the ground.

3

--Sudden, the mist gathers up like a curtain, the theatre clear; Stage of unequal conflict, and triumph purchased too dear! Half our boot treasures of gallanthood there, with axe and with glaive, One against ten,--what of that?--We are ready for glory or grave! There, Spain and her thousands nearing, with lightning-tongued weapons of war;-- Ebro's swarthy sons, and the bands from Epirus afar; Crescia, Gonzaga, del Vasto,--world-famous names of affright, Veterans of iron and blood, insatiate engines of fight:-- But ours were Norris and Essex and Stanley and Willoughby grim, And the waning Dudley star, and the star that will never be dim, Star of Philip the peerless,--and now at height of his noon, Astrophel!--not for thyself but for England extinguish'd too soon!

4

Red walls of Zutphen behind; before them, Spain in her might:-- O! 'tis not war, but a game of heroic boyish delight! For on, like a bolt-head of steel, go the fifty, dividing their way, Through and over the brown mail-shirts,--Farnese's choicest array; Over and through, and the curtel-axe flashes, the plumes in their pride Sink like the larch to the hewer, a death-mown avenue wide: While the foe in his stubbornness flanks them and bars them, with merciless aim Shooting from musket and saker a scornful death-tongue of flame. As in an autumn afar, the Six Hundred in Chersonese hew'd Their road through a host, for their England and honour's sake wasting their blood, Foolishness wiser than wisdom!--So these, since Azincourt morn, First showing the world the calm open-eyed rashness of Englishmen born!

5

Foes ere the cloud went up, black Norris and Stanley in one Pledge iron hands and kiss swords, each his mate's, in the face of the sun, Warm with the generous wine of the battle; and Willoughby's might To the turf bore Crescia, and lifted again,--knight honouring knight; All in the hurry and turmoil:--where North, half-booted and rough, Launch'd on the struggle, and Sidney struck onward, his cuisses thrown off, Rash over-courage of poet and youth!--while the memories, how At the joust long syne She look'd on, as he triumph'd, were hot on his brow, 'Stella! mine own, my own star!'--and he sigh'd:--and towards him a flame Shot its red signal; a shriek!--and the viewless messenger came; Found the unguarded gap, the approach left bare to the prey, Where through the limb to the life the death-stroke shatter'd a way.

6

--Astrophel! England's pride!
O stroke that, when he died,
Smote through the realm,--our best, our fairest ta'en!
For now the wound accurst
Lights up death's fury-thirst;--
Yet the allaying cup, in all that pain,
Untouch'd, untasted he gives o'er
To one who lay, and watch'd with eyes that craved it more:--

7

'Take it,' he said, ''tis thine;
Thy need is more than mine';--
And smiled as one who looks through death to life:
--Then pass'd, true heart and brave,
Leal from birth to grave:--
For that curse-laden roar of mortal strife,
With God's own peace ineffable fill'd,--
In that eternal Love all earthly passion still'd.

In 1585 Elizabeth, who was then aiding the United Provinces in their resistance to Spain, sent Sir Philip Sidney (born 1554) as governor of the fortress of Flushing in Zealand. The Earl of Leicester, chosen by the Queen's unhappy partiality to command the English force, named Sidney (his nephew) General of the horse. He marched thence to Zutphen in Guelderland, a town besieged by the Spaniards, in hopes of destroying a strong reinforcement which they were bringing in aid of the besiegers. The details of the rash and heroic charge which followed may be read in Motley's _History of the United Netherlands_, ch. ix.

St. 1 _Guelderland_; in this province the Rhine divides before entering the sea: 'gliding through a vast plain.'--_South-Fen_; Zutphen, on the Yssel (Rhine).

St. 3 _The bands from Epirus_; Crescia, the Epirote chief, commanded a body of Albanian cavalry.--_The waning Dudley star_; Leicester, who was near the end of his miserable career.--_Astrophel_; Sidney celebrated his love for Penelope Devereux, Lady Rich, in the series of Sonnets and Lyrics named _Astrophel and Stella_:--posthumously published in 1591.--After, or with Shakespeare's Sonnets, this series seems to me to offer the most powerful picture of the passion of love in the whole range of our poetry.

St. 4 _Saker_; early name for field-piece.--_The Six Hundred_; The Crimea in ancient days was named _Chersonesus Taurica_.

St. 5 _Black Norris_; had been at variance with Sir W. Stanley before the engagement. Morris was one of twelve gallant brothers, whose complexion followed that of their mother, named by Elizabeth 'her own crow.'--_North_; was lying bedrid from a wound in the leg, but could not resist volunteering at Zutphen, and rode up 'with one boot on and one boot off.'--_Cuisses_;

I saw young Harry, with his beaver on,
His cuisses on his thighs: (_Henry IV_, Part I: A. iv: S. i):--

Sidney flung off his 'in a fit of chivalrous extravagance.'--_At the joust_; In Sonnets 41 and 53 of _Astrophel and Stella_ Sidney describes how the sudden sight of his lady-love dazzled him as he rode in certain tournaments. In Son. 69 he cries:

I, I, O, I, may say that she is mine.

ELIZABETH AT TILBURY

September: 1588

Let them come, come never so proudly,
O'er the green waves as giants ride;
Silver clarions menacing loudly,
'All the Spains' on their banners wide;
High on deck of the gilded galleys
Our light sailers they scorn below:--
We will scatter them, plague, and shatter them,
Till their flag hauls down to their foe!
For our oath we swear
By the name we bear,
By England's Queen, and England free and fair,--
Her's ever and her's still, come life, come death:--
God save Elizabeth!

Sidonia, Recalde, and Leyva
Watch from their Castles in swarthy scorn,
Lords and Princes by Philip's favour;--
We by birthright are noble born!
Freemen born of the blood of freemen,
Sons of Crecy and Flodden are we!
We shall sunder them, fire, and plunder them,--
English boats on an English sea!
And our oath we swear,
By the name we bear,
By England's Queen, and England free and fair,--
Her's ever and her's still, come life, come death!
God save Elizabeth!

Drake and Frobisher, Hawkins, and Howard,
Raleigh, Cavendish, Cecil, and Brooke,
Hang like wasps by the flagships tower'd,
Sting their way through the thrice-piled oak:--
Let them range their seven-mile crescent,
Giant galleons, canvas wide!
Ours will harry them, board, and carry them,
Plucking the plumes of the Spanish pride.
For our oath we swear
By the name we bear,
By England's Queen, and England free and fair,--
Her's ever and her's still, come life, come death!
God save Elizabeth!

--Hath God risen in wrath and scatter'd?
Have His tempests smote them in scorn?
Past the Orcades, dumb and tatter'd,
'Mong sea-beasts do they drift forlorn?
We were as lions hungry for battle;
God has made our battle His own!
God has scatter'd them, sunk, and shatter'd them:
Give the glory to Him alone!
While our oath we swear,
By the name we bear,
By England's Queen, and England free and fair,--
Her's ever and her's still, come life, come death!
God save Elizabeth!

AT BEMERTON

1630-1633

Sick with the strife of tongues, the blustering hate Of frantic Party raving o'er the realm, Sonorous insincerities of debate, And jealous factions snatching at the helm, And Out o'er-bidding In with graceless strife, Selling the State for votes:--O happy fields, I cried, where Herbert, by the world misprized, Found in his day the life That no unrest or disappointment yields, Vergilian vision here best realized!

His memory is Peace: and peace is here;-- The eternal lullaby of the level brook, With bird-like chirpings mingled, glassy-clear; The narrow pathway to the yew-clipp'd nook; Trim lawn, familiar to the pensive feet; The long gray walls he raised:--A household nest Where Hope and firm-eyed Faith and heavenly Love Made human love more sweet; While,--earth's rare visitant from the choirs above,-- Urania's holy steps the cottage blest.

Peace there:--and peace upon the house of God, The little road-side church that room-like stands Crouching entrench'd in slopes of daisy sod, And duly deck'd by Herbert-honouring hands:-- Cell of detachment! Shrine to which the heart Withdraws, and all the roar of life is still; Then sinks into herself, and finds a shrine Within the shrine apart: Alone with God, as on the Arabian hill Man knelt in vision to the All-divine!

--Thrice happy they,--and know their happiness,-- Who read the soul's star-orbit Heaven-ward clear; Not roving comet-like through doubt and guess, But 'neath their feet tread nescient pride and fear; Scan the unseen with sober certainty, God's hill above Himalah;--Love green earth With deeper, truer love, because the blue Of Heaven around they see;-- Who in the death-gasp hail man's second birth, And yield their loved ones with a brief adieu!

--Thee, too, esteem I happy in thy death, Poet! while yet peace was, and thou might'st live Unvex'd in thy sweet reasonable faith, The gracious creed that knows how to forgive:-- Not narrowing God to self,--the common bane Of sects, each man his own small oracle; Not losing innerness in external rite; A worship pure and plain, Yet liberal to man's heaven-imbreathed delight In all that sound can hint, or beauty tell.

A golden moderation!--which the wise Then highest rate, when fury-factions roar, And folly's choicest fools the most despise:-- --O happy Poet! laid in peace before Rival intolerants each 'gainst other flamed, And flames were slaked in blood, and all the grace Of life before that sad illiterate gloom Puritan, fled ashamed: While, as the red moon lifts her turbid face, Titanic features on the horizon loom!

George Herbert's brief career as a parish priest was passed at Bemerton, a pretty village near Salisbury in the vale of the Avon. His parsonage, with its garden running down to the stream, and the little church across the road in which he lies buried, remain comparatively unchanged (March 26, 1880) since he lived and mused and wrote his Poems within these precincts. The justly-famous _Temple_ was published shortly after his death by his friend Nicholas Ferrar.

_Arabian hill_; Mount Sinai.

_Titanic features_; See _A Churchyard in Oxfordshire_, st. iii.

PRINCESS ANNE

November 5: 1640

Harsh words have been utter'd and written on her, Henrietta the Queen: She was young in a difficult part, on a cruel and difficult scene:-- Was it strange she should fail? that the King overmuch should bow down to her will? --So of old with the women, God bless them!--it was, so will ever be still! Rash in counsel and rash in courage, she aided and marr'd The shifting tides of the fight, the star of the Stuarts ill-starr'd. In her the false Florentine blood,--in him the bad strain of the Guise; Suspicion against her and hate, all that malice can forge and devise;-- As a bird by the fowlers o'ernetted, she shuffles and changes her ground; No wile unlawful in war, and the foe unscrupulous round! Woman-like overbelieving Herself and the Cause and the Man, Fights with two-edged intrigue, suicidal, plan upon plan; Till the law of this world had its way, and she fled,--like a frigate unsail'd, Unmasted, unflagg'd,--to her land; and the strength of the stronger prevail'd.

But it was not thus, not thus, in the years of thy springtide, O Queen, When thy children came in their beauty, and all their future unseen: When the kingdom had wealth and peace, one smile o'er the face of the land: England, too happy, if thou could'st thy happiness understand! As those over Etna who slumber, and under them rankles the fire. At her side was the gallant King, her first-love, her girlhood's desire, And around her, best jewels and dearest to brighten the steps of the throne, Three golden heads, three fair little maids, in their nursery shone. 'As the mother, so be the daughters,' they say:--nor could mother wish more For her own, than men saw in the Queen's, ere the rosebud-dawning was o'er, Heart-wise and head-wise, a joy to behold, as they knelt for her kiss,-- Best crown of a woman's life, her true vocation and bliss!-- But the flowers were pale and frail, and the mother watch'd them with dread, As the sunbeams play'd round the room on each gay, glistening head.

Anne in that garden of childhood grew nearest Elizabeth: she Tenderly tended and loved her, a babe with a babe on her knee: Slight and white from the cradle was Anne; a floweret born Rathe, out of season, a rose that peep'd out when the hedge was in thorn. 'Why should it be so with us?' thought Elizabeth oft; for in her The soul 'gainst the body protesting, was but more keenly astir: 'As saplings stunted by forest around o'ershading, we two: What work for our life, my mother,' she said, 'is left us to do? Or is't from the evil to come, the days without pleasure, that God In mercy would spare us, over our childhood outstretching the rod?' --So she, from her innocent heart; in all things seeing the best With the wholesome spirit of childhood; to God submitting the rest: Not seeing the desolate years, the dungeon of Carisbrook drear; Eyes dry-glazed with fever, and none to lend even a tear! Now, all her heart to the little one goes; for, day upon day, As a rosebud in canker, she pales and pines, and the cough has its way. And the gardens of Richmond on Thames, the fine blythe air of the vale Stay not the waning pulse, and the masters of science fail. Then the little footsteps are faint, and a child may take her with ease; As the flowers a babe flings down she is spread on Elizabeth's knees, Slipping back to the cradle-life, in her wasting weakness and pain: And the sister prays and smiles and watches the sister in vain.

So she watch'd by the bed all night, and the lights were yellow and low, And a cold blue blink shimmer'd up from the park that was sheeted in snow: And the frost of the passing hour, when souls from the body divide, The Sarsar-wind of the dawn, crept into the palace, and sigh'd. And the child just turn'd her head towards Elizabeth there as she lay, And her little hands came together in haste, as though she would pray; And the words wrestled in her for speech that the fever-dry mouth cannot frame, And the strife of the soul on the delicate brow was written in flame: And Elizabeth call'd 'O Father, why does she look at me so? Will it soon be better for Anne? her face is all in a glow':-- But with womanly speed and heed is the mother beside her, and slips Her arm 'neath the failing head, and moistens the rose of the lips, Pale and sweet as the wild rose of June, and whispers to pray To the Father in heaven, 'the one she likes best, my baby, to say': And the soul hover'd yet o'er the lips, as a dove when her pinions are spread, And the light of the after-life came again in her eyes, and she said; 'For my long prayer it is not time; for my short one I think I have breath; _Lighten mine eyes, O Lord, that I sleep not the sleep of death_.' --O! into life, fair child, as she pray'd, her innocence slept! 'It is better for her,' they said:--and knelt, and kiss'd her, and wept.

_In her_; Henrietta's mother was by birth Mary de' Medici; the great-grandmother of Charles was Mary of Guise.

'With Charles I,' says Ranke, 'nothing was more seductive than secrecy. The contradictions in his conduct entangled him in embarrassments, in which his declarations, if always true in the sense he privately gave them, were only a hair's-breadth removed from actual, and even from intentional, untruth.'--Whether traceable to descent, or to the evil influence of Buckingham and the intriguing atmosphere of the Spanish marriage-negotiations, this defect in political honesty is, unquestionably, the one serious blot on the character of Charles I.--Yet, whilst noting it, candid students will regretfully confess that the career of Elizabeth and her counsellors is defaced by shades of bad faith, darker and more numerous.

_When the kingdom_; See Clarendon's description of England during this period, 'enjoying the greatest calm and the fullest measure of felicity that any people in any age for so long time together have been blessed with.'

_Three golden heads_; Mary, the second child of Charles and Henrietta, was born Nov. 4, 1631: Elizabeth, Dec. 28, 1635: Anne, Mar. 17, 1637. The last two were feeble from infancy. Consumption soon showed itself in Anne, and her short life, passed at Richmond, closed in November, 1640. For her last words, we are indebted to Fuller, who adds: 'This done, the little lamb gave up the ghost.'

The affection and care of the royal parents is well attested. 'Their arrival,' when visiting the nursery, 'was the signal of a general rejoicing.'

In the latter portion of this piece I have ventured, it will be seen, on an ideal treatment. The main facts, and the words of the dear child, are historical:--for the details I appeal to any mother who has suffered similar loss whether they could have been much otherwise.

_Not seeing_; See the _Captive Child_.

_The frost_; It is noticed that death, the _Sarsar-wind_ of Southey's _Thalaba_, often occurs at the turn between night and day, when the atmosphere is wont to be at the coldest.

AFTER CHALGROVE FIGHT

June 18: 1643

Flags crape-smother'd and arms reversed,
With one sad volley lay him to rest:
Lay him to rest where he may not see
This England he loved like a lover accursed
By lawlessness masking as liberty,
By the despot in Freedom's panoply drest:--
Bury him, ere he be made duplicity's tool and slave,
Where he cannot see the land that he could not save!
Bury him, bury him, bury him
With his face downward!

Chalgrove! Name of patriot pain!
O'er thy fresh fields that summer pass'd
The brand of war's red furnace blast,
Till heaven's soft tears wash'd out the blackening stain;--
Wash'd out and wept;--But could not so restore
England's gallant son:
Ere the fray was done
The stately head bow'd down; shatter'd; his warfare o'er.

Bending to the saddle-bow
With leaden arm that idle hangs,
Faint with the lancing torture-pangs,
He drops the rein; he lets the battle go:--
There, where the wife of his first love he woo'd
Turning for retreat;--
Memories bitter-sweet
Through death's fast-rising mist in youth's own light renew'd.

Then, as those who drown, perchance,
And all their years, a waking dream,
Flash pictured by in lightning gleam,
His childhood home appears, the mother's glance,
The hearth-side smile; the fragrance of the fields:
--Now, war's iron knell
Wakes the hounds of hell,
Whilst o'er the realm her scourge the rushing Fury wields!

Doth he now the day lament
When those who stemm'd despotic might
O'erstrode the bounds of law and right,
And through the land the torch of ruin sent?
Or that great rival statesman as he stood
Lion-faced and grim,
Hath he sight of him,
Strafford--the meteor-axe--the fateful Hill of Blood?

--Heroes both! by passion led,
In days perplex'd 'tween new and old,
Each at his will the realm to mould;
This, basing sovereignty on the single head,
This, on the many voices of the Hall:--
Each for his own creed
Prompt to die at need:
His side of England's shield each saw, and took for all.

Heroes both! For Order one
And one for Freedom dying!--We
May judge more justly both, than ye
Could, each, his brother, ere the strife was done!
--O Goddess of that even scale and weight,
In whose awful eyes
Truest mercy lies,
This hero-dirge to thee I vow and dedicate!

--Slanting now,--the foe is by,--
Through Hazeley mead the warrior goes,
And hardly fords the brook that flows
Bearing to Thame its cool, sweet, summer-cry.
Here take thy rest; here bind the broken heart!
By death's mercy-doom
Hid from ills to come,
Great soul, and greatly vex'd, Hampden!--in peace depart!

In the heart of the fields he loved and the hills,
Look your last, and lay him to rest,
With the faded flower, the wither'd grass;
Where the blood-face of war and the myriad ills
Of England dear like phantoms pass
And touch not the soul that is with the Blest.
Bury him in the night and peace of the holy grave,
Where he cannot see the land that he could not save!
Bury him, bury him, bury him
With his face downward!

John Hampden met his death at Chalgrove in an attempt to check the raids which Prince Rupert was making from Oxford. Struck at the onset in the shoulder by two carabine balls, he rode off before the action was ended by Hazeley towards Thame, finding it impossible to reach Pyrton, the home of his father-in-law. The body was carried to his own house amid the woods and hills of the Chiltern country, and buried in the church close by.

_With his face downward_; This was the dying request of some high-minded Spaniard of old, unwilling, even in the grave, as it were, to look on the misfortunes of his country.

_O'erstrode the bounds_; 'After every allowance has been made,' says Hallam, speaking of the Long Parliament from a date so early as August, 1641, 'he must bring very heated passions to the records of those times, who does not perceive in the conduct of that body a series of glaring violations, not only of positive and constitutional, but of those higher principles which are paramount to all immediate policy': (_Const. Hist_. ch. ix).

_The axe_; A clear and impartial sketch of Stafford's trial will be found in Ranke (B. viii): who deals dispassionately and historically with an event much obscured by declamation in popular narratives. Even in Hallam's hand the balance seems here to waver a little.

_Heroes both_;--_Each his side_; See _Appendix_ B.

A CHURCHYARD IN OXFORDSHIRE

September: 1643

Sweet air and fresh; glades yet unsear'd by hand Of Midas-finger'd Autumn, massy-green; Bird-haunted nooks between, Where feathery ferns, a fairy palmglove, stand, An English-Eastern band:-- While e'en the stealthy squirrel o'er the grass Beside me to the beech-clump dares to pass:-- In this still precinct of the happy dead, The sanctuary of silence,--Blessed they! I cried, who 'neath the gray Peace of God's house, each in his mounded bed Sleep safe, nor reck how the great world runs on; Peasant with noble here alike unknown.

Unknown, unnamed beneath one turf they sleep, Beneath one sky, one heaven-uplifted sign Of love assured, divine: While o'er each mound the quiet mosses creep, The silent dew-pearls weep: --Fit haven-home for thee, O gentlest heart Of Falkland! all unmeet to find thy part In those tempestuous times of canker'd hate When Wisdom's finest touch, and, by her side, Forbearance generous-eyed To fix the delicate balance of the State Were needed;--King or Nation, which should hold Supreme supremacy o'er the kingdoms old.

--God's heroes, who? . . . Not most, or likeliest, he Whom iron will cramps to one narrow road, Driving him like a goad Till all his heart decrees seem God's decree; That worst hypocrisy When self cheats self, and conscience at the wheel Herself is steer'd by passion's blindfold zeal; A nether-world archangel! Through whose eyes Flame the red mandates of remorseless might; A gloom of lurid light That holds no commerce with the crystal skies; Like those rank fires that o'er the fen-land flee, Or on the mast-head sign the wrath to be.

As o'er that ancient weird Arlesian plain Where Zeus hail'd boulder-stones on the giant crew, And changed to stone, or slew, No bud may burgeon in Spring's gracious rain, No blade of grass or grain: --So bare, so scourged, a prey to chaos cast The wisest despot leaves his realm at last! Though for the land he toil'd with iron will, Earnest to reach persuasion's goal through power, The fruit without the flower! And pray'd and wrestled to charm good from ill; Waking perchance, or not, in death,--to find Man fights a losing fight who fights mankind!

And as who in the Theban avenue, Sphinx ranged by Sphinx, goes awestruck, nor may read That ancient awful creed Closed in their granite calm:--so dim the clue, So tangled, tracking through That labyrinthine soul which, day by day Changing, yet kept one long imperious way: Strong in his weakness; confident, yet forlorn; Waning and waxing; diamond-keen, or dull, As that star Wonderful, Mira, for ever, dying and reborn:-- Blissful or baleful, yet a Power throughout, Throned in dim altitude o'er the common rout.

Alas, great Chief! The pity of it!--For he Lay on his unlamented bier; his life Wreck'd on that futile strife To wed things alien by heaven's decree, Sword-sway with liberty:-- Coercing, not protecting;--for the Cause Smiting with iron heel on England's laws: --Intolerant tolerance! Soul that could not trust Its finer instincts; self-compell'd to run The blood-path once begun, And murder mercy with a sad 'I must!' Great lion-heart by guile and coarseness marr'd; By his own heat a hero warp'd and scarr'd.

Despot despite himself!--And when the cry Moan'd up from England, dungeon'd in that drear Sectarian atmosphere, With glory he gilt her chains; in Spanish sky Flaunting the Red Cross high;-- Wars, just or unjust, ill or well design'd, Urged with the will that masters weak mankind. --God's hammer Thou!--not hero!--Forged to break The land,--salve wounds with wounds, heal force by force; Sword-surgeon keen and coarse:-- To all who worship power for power's own sake,-- Strength for itself,--Success, the vulgar test,-- Fit idol of bent knee, and servile breast!

--O in the party plaudits of the crowd Glorious, if this be glory!--o'er that shout A small still voice breathes out With subtle sweetness silencing the loud Hoarse vaunting of the proud,-- A song of exaltation for the vale, And how the mountain from his height shall fail! How God's true heroes, since this earth began, Go sackcloth-clad through scourge and sword and scorn, Crown'd with the bleeding thorn, Down-trampled by man's heel as foes to man, And whispering _Eli_, _Eli_! as they die,-- Martyrs of truth and Saint Humility.

These conquer in their fall: Persuasion flies Wing'd, from their grave: The hearts of men are turn'd To worship what they burn'd: Owning the sway of Love's long-suffering eyes, Love's sweet self-sacrifice; The might of gentleness; the subduing force Of wisdom on her mid-way measured course Gliding;--not torrent-like with fury spilt, Impetuous, o'er Himalah's rifted side, To ravage blind and wide, And leave a lifeless wreck of parching silt;-- Gliding by thorpe and tower and grange and lea In tranquil transit to the eternal sea.

--Children of Light!--If, in the slow-paced course Of vital change, your work seem incomplete, Your conquest-hour defeat, Won by mild compromise, by the invisible force That owns no earthly source; Yet to all time your gifts to man endure, God being with you, and the victory sure! For though o'er Gods the Giants in the course May lord it, Strength o'er Beauty; yet the Soul Immortal, clasps the goal; Fair Wisdom triumphs by her inborn force: --Thus far on earth! . . . But, ah!--from mortal sight The crowning glory veils itself in light!

_Envoy_

--Seal'd of that holy band, Rest here, beneath the foot-fall hushing sod, Wrapt in the peace of God, While summer burns above thee; while the land Disrobes; till pitying snow Cover her bareness; till fresh Spring-winds blow, And the sun-circle rounds itself again:-- Whilst England cries in vain For thy wise temperance, Lucius!--But thine ear The violent-impotent fever-restless cry, The faction-yells of triumph, will not hear: --Only the thrush on high And wood-dove's moaning sweetness make reply.

Lucius Cary, second Viscount Falkland, may perhaps be defined as at once the most poetically chivalrous and the most philosophically moderate amongst all who took part in the pre-restoration struggles. He was killed in the royal army at the first battle of Newbury, Sep. 20, 1643, aged but 33 years, and buried, without mark or memorial, in the church of Great Tew (North Oxfordshire), the manor of which he owned.

_English Eastern_; The common brake-fern and its allies seem to betray tropical sympathies by their late appearance and sensitiveness to autumnal frost.

_That Arlesian plain_; Now named the _Crau_. It lies between Aries and the sea--a bare and malarious tract of great size covered with shingle and boulders. Aeschylus describes it as a 'snow-shower of round stones,' which Zeus rained down in aid of Heracles, who was contending with the Ligurians.

_Mira_; A star in the _Whale_, conspicuous for its singular and rapid changes of apparent size.

_The Cause_; After passing through several phases this word, in Cromwell's mouth, with the common logic of tyranny, became simply a synonym for personal rule.

_Smiting with iron heel_; The terrorism of the Protector's government, and the almost universal hatred which it inspired, are powerfully painted by Hallam. 'To govern according to law may sometimes be an usurper's wish, but can seldom be in his power. The protector abandoned all thought of it. . . . All illusion was now (1655) gone, as to the pretended benefits of the civil war. It had ended in a despotism, compared to which all the illegal practices of former kings, all that had cost Charles his life and crown, appeared as dust in the balance.'

_The blood-path_; The trials under which Gerard and Vowel were executed in 1654, Slingsby and Hewit in 1658, are the most flagrant instances of Cromwell's perversion of justice, and contempt for the old liberties of England. But they do not stand alone.

_Guile and coarseness_; 'A certain coarse good nature and affability that covered the want of conscience, honour, and humanity: quick in passion, but not vindictive, and averse to unnecessary crimes,' is the deliberate summing-up of Hallam,--in the love of liberty inferior to none of our historians, and eminent above all for courageous impartiality,--_iustissimus unus_.

_With glory he gilt_; See _Appendix_ C.

_Success, the vulgar test_; See Matthew Arnold's finely discriminative _Essay_ on Falkland.

MARSTON MOOR

July 2: 1644

O, summer-high that day the sun His chariot drove o'er Marston wold: A rippling sea of amber wheat That floods the moorland vale with gold.

With harvest light the valley laughs, The sheaves in mellow sunshine sleep; --Too rathe the crop, too red the swathes Ere night the scythe of Death shall reap!

Then thick and fast o'er all the moor The crimson'd sabre-lightnings fly; And thick and fast the death-bolts dash, And thunder-peals to peals reply.

Where Evening arched her fiery dome Went up the roar of mortal foes:-- Then o'er a deathly peace the moon In silver silence sailing rose.

Sweet hour, when heaven is nearest home, And children's kisses close the day! O disaccord with nature's calm, Unholy requiem of the fray!

White maiden Queen that sail'st above, Thy dew-tears on the fallen fling,-- The blighted wreaths of civil strife, The war that can no triumph bring!

--O pale with that deep pain of those Who cannot save, yet must foresee,-- Surveying all the ills to flow From that too-victor victory;

When 'gainst the unwisely guided King The dark self-centred Captain stood, And law and right and peace went down In that red sea of brothers' blood;--

O long, long, long the years, fair Maid, Before thy patient eye shall view The shrine of England's law restored, Her homes their native peace renew!

_That day_; The actual fight lay between 7 and 9 p.m.

_Too-victor victory_; At Naseby, says Hallam,--and the remark, (though Charles was not personally present), is equally true of Marston Moor--'Fairfax and Cromwell triumphed, not only over the king and the monarchy, but over the parliament and the nation.'

_Unwisely guided_; 'Never would it have been wiser, in Rupert,' remarks Ranke, 'to avoid a decisive battle than at that moment. But he held that the king's letter not only empowered, but instructed him to fight.'

_Red sea_; 'The slaughter was deadly, for Cromwell had forbidden quarter being given': (Ranke, ix: 3).

THE FUGITIVE KING

August 7: 1645

Cold blue cloud on the hill-tops, Cold buffets of hill-side rain:-- As a bird that they hunt on the mountains, The king, he turns from Rhos lane: A writing of doom on his forehead, His eyes wan-wistful and dim; For his comrades seeking a shelter: But earth has no shelter for him!

Gray silvery gleam of armour, White ghost of a wandering king! No sound but the iron-shod footfall And the bridle-chains as they ring: Save where the tears of heaven, Shed thick o'er the loyal hills, Rush down in the hoarse-tongued torrent, A roar of approaching ills.

But now with a sweeping curtain, In solid wall comes the rain, And the troop draw bridle and hide them In the bush by the stream-side plain. King Charles smiled sadly and gently; ''Tis the Beggar's Bush,' said he; 'For I of England am beggar'd, And her poorest may pity me.'

--O safe in the fadeless fir-tree The squirrel may nestle and hide; And in God's own dwelling the sparrow Safe with her nestlings abide:-- But he goes homeless and friendless, And manlike abides his doom; For he knows a king has no refuge Betwixt the throne and the tomb.

And the purple-robed braes of Alban, The glory of stream and of plain, The Holyrood halls of his birthright Charles ne'er will look on again:-- And the land he loved well, not wisely, Will almost grudge him a grave: Then weep, too late, in her folly, The dark Dictator's slave!

This incident occurred during the attempt made by Charles, in the dark final days of his struggle, to march from South Wales with the hope of joining Montrose in Scotland. He appears to have halted for the night of Aug. 6, 1645, at Old Radnor and 'the name of _Rails Yat_, (Royal gate) still points out the spot where, on the following morning, he left the Rhos Lane for the road which brought him to shelter at Beggar's Bush': a name which is reported to be still preserved.

THE CAPTIVE CHILD

September 8: 1650

Child in girlhood's early grace, Pale white rose of royal race, Flower of France, and England's flower, What dost here at twilight hour Captive bird in castle-hold, Picture-fair and calm and cold, Cold and still as marble stone In gray Carisbrook alone? --Fold thy limbs and take thy rest, Nestling of the silent nest!

Ah fair girl! So still and meek, One wan hand beneath her cheek, One on the holy texts that tell Of God's love ineffable;-- Last dear gift her father gave When, before to-morrow's grave, By no unmanly grief unmann'd, To his little orphan band In that stress of anguish sore He bade farewell evermore.

Doom'd, unhappy King! Had he Known the pangs in store for thee, Known the coarse fanatic rage That,--despite her flower-soft age, Maidenhood's first blooming fair,-- Fever-struck in the imprison'd air As rosebud on the dust-hill thrown Cast a child to die alone,-- He had shed, with his last breath, Bitterer tears than tears of death!

As in her infant hour she took In her hand the pictured book Where Christ beneath the scourger bow'd, Crying 'O poor man!' aloud, And in baby tender pain Kiss'd the page, and kiss'd again, While the happy father smiled On his sweet warm-hearted child; --So now to him, in Carisbrook lone, All her tenderness has flown.

Oft with a child's faithful heart She has seen him act his part; Nothing in his life so well Gracing him as when he fell; Seen him greet his bitter doom As the mercy-message Home; Seen the scaffold and the shame, The red shower that fell like flame; Till the whole heart within her died, Dying in fancy by his side.

--Statue-still and statue-fair Now the low wind may lift her hair, Motionless in lip and limb; E'en the fearful mouse may skim O'er the window-sill, nor stir From the crumb at sight of her; Through the lattice unheard float Summer blackbird's evening note;-- E'en the sullen foe would bless That pale utter gentleness.

--Eyes of heaven, that pass and peep, Do not question, if she sleep! She has no abiding here, She is past the starry sphere; Kneeling with the children sweet At the palm-wreathed altar's feet; --Innocents who died like thee, Heaven-ward through man's cruelty, To the love-smiles of their Lord Borne through pain and fire and sword.

Elizabeth, second daughter of Charles I. and Henrietta Maria, was born on Innocents' Day, 1635. The incident accounted in Stanza iv occurred in 1637. She had been taken on a visit to Hampton Court to her mother, who wished her to be present at her own vesper-service, when Elizabeth, not yet two years old, became very restless. To quiet her a book of devotion was shown to her.' The King, when the Queen drew his attention, said, 'She begins young!'

This tale is told by Mrs. Green, in her excellent _Princesses of England_, (London, 1853),--a book deserving to be better known,--on the authority of the Envoy Con.

The first grief of a very happy and promising childhood may have been the loss of her sister Anne in 1640. But by 1642, the evils of the time began to press upon Princess Elizabeth; her mother's departure from England, followed by her own capture by order of the Parliament; her confinement under conditions of varying severity; and the final farewell to her father, Jan. 29, 1649.

From that time her life was overshadowed by the sadness of her father's death, her own isolation, and her increasing feebleness of health. She seems to have been a singularly winning and intelligent girl, and she hence found or inspired affection in several of the guardians successively appointed to take charge of her. But if she had not been thus marked by beauty of nature, our indignant disgust would hardly be less at the brutal treatment inflicted by the Puritan-Independent authorities upon this child:--at the refusal of her prayer to be sent to her elder sister Mary, in Holland; at the captivity in Carisbrook; at the isolation in which she was left to die.--Yet it is not she who most merits pity!

In this poem, written before the plan of the book had been formed, I find that some slight deviation from the best authorities has been made. Elizabeth's young brother Henry, Duke of Gloster, shared her prison: and although her own physician, Mayerne, had been dismissed, yet some medical attendance was supplied.--Henry Vaughan has described the patience of the young sufferer in two lovely lines:

Thou didst not murmur, nor revile,
And drank'st thy wormwood with a smile.

--_Olor Iscanus_; 1651.

THE WRECK OF THE ADMIRAL

_A TALE OF PRINCE RUPERT_

September 30: 1651

Seventy league from Terceira they lay
In the mid Atlantic straining;
And inch upon inch as she settles they know
The leak on the Admiral gaining.

Below them 'tis death rushes greedily in;
But their signal unheeded is waving,
For the shouts by their billow-toss'd consort unheard
Are lost in the tempest's wild raving.

For Maurice in vain o'er the bulwark leant forth,
While Rupert to rescue was crying;
And the voice of farewell on his face is flung back
With the scud on the billow-top flying!

But no time was for tears, save for duty no thought,
When brother is parting from brother;
For Rupert the brave and his high-hearted crew,
They must die, as they lived, by each other.

Unregarded the boat, for none care from their post
To steal off while the Prince is beside them,
All, all, side by side with his comrades to share
Till the death-plunge at last shall divide them.

Ah, sharp in his bosom meanwhile is the smart,
He alone for his king is contending!
And the brightness and blaze of his youth in its prime
Must here in mid-waves have their ending!

--The seas they break over, the seas they press in
From fo'csle to binnacle streaming;
And a ripple runs over the Admiral's deck,
With blue cold witch-fire gleaming.

O then in a noble rebellion they rise;
They may die, but the Prince shall o'erlive them!
With a loving rough force to the boat he is thrust,
And he must be saved and forgive them!

Now their flame-pikes they lift, the last signal for life,
Flaring wild in the wild rack above them:--
And each breast has one prayer for the Mercy on high,
And one for the far-off who love them.

O high-beating hearts that are still'd in the deep
Unknown treasure-caverns of Ocean!
There, where storms cannot vex, the three hundred are laid
In their silent heroic devotion.

Rupert, nephew to Charles through his sister Elizabeth, wife to the Elector Palatine, after the ruin of his uncle's cause, carried on the struggle at sea. The incident here treated occurred on one of his last voyages, when cruising in the Atlantic near the Canaries: it is told at full length in E. Warburton's narrative of Rupert's life.

_Brother is parting from brother_; Maurice, a year younger than himself,--then in the companion ship _Swallow_, in which Rupert, by the devoted determination of his comrades, was ultimately saved. Maurice was not long after drowned in the West Indies.

_Flame-pikes_; Two 'fire-pikes,' it is stated, were burned as a signal just before the flag-ship sank. Three hundred and thirty-three was the estimate of the number drowned.

THE RETURN OF LAW

1660

At last the long darkness of anarchy lifts, and the dawn o'er the gray In rosy pulsation floods; the tremulous amber of day: In the golden umbrage of spring-tide, the dewy delight of the sward, The liquid voices awake, the new morn with music reward. Peace in her car goes up; a rainbow curves for her road; Law and fair Order before her, the reinless coursers of God;-- Round her the gracious maids in circling majesty shine; They are rich in blossoms and blessings, the Hours, the white, the divine!

Hands in sisterly hands they unite, eye calling on eye; Smiles more speaking than words, as the pageant sweeps o'er the sky. Plenty is with them, and Commerce; all gifts of all lands from her horn Raining on England profuse; and, clad in the beams of the morn, Her warrior-guardian of old the red standard rears in its might; And the Love-star trembles above, and passes, light into light.

Many the marvels of earth, the more marvellous wonders on high, Worlds past number on worlds, blank lightless abysses of sky; But thou art the wonder of wonders, O Man! Thy impalpable soul, Atom of consciousness, measuring the Infinite, grasping the whole: Then, on the trivialest transiencies fix'd, or plucking for fruit Dead-sea apples and ashes of sin, more brute than the brute. Yet in thy deepest depths, filth-wallowing orgies of night, Lust remorseless of blood, yet, allow'd an inlet for light: As where, a thousand fathom beneath us, midnight afar Glooms in some gulph, and we gaze, and, behold! one flash of one star! For, ever, the golden gates stand open, the transit is free For the human to mix with divine; from himself to the Highest to flee. Lo on its knees by the bedside the babe:--and the song that we hear Has been heard already in Heaven! the low-lisp'd music is clear:-- For, fresh from the hand of the Maker, the child still breathes the light air Of the House Angelic, the meadow where souls yet unbodied repair, Lucid with love, translucent with bliss, and know not the doom In the Marah valley of life laid up for the sons of the womb. --I speak not of grovelling hearts, souls blind and begrimed from the birth, But the spirits of nobler strain, the elect of the children of earth:-- For the needle swerves from the pole; they cannot do what they would; In their truest aim is falsehood, and ill out-balancing good. Faith's first felicities fade; the world-mists thicken and roll, 'Neath the heavens arching their heaven; o'er-hazing the eye of the soul. Then the vision is pure no longer; refracted above us arise The phantasmal figures of passion; earth's mirage exhaled to the skies. And they go as the castled clouds o'er the verge when the tempest is laid, Towering Ambition, and Glory, and Self as Duty array'd:-- Idols no less than that idol whom lustful Ammon of yore With the death-scream of children, a furnace of blood, was fain to adore! So these, in the shrine of the soul, for a Moloch sacrifice cry, The conscience of candid childhood, the pure directness of eye:-- Till the man yields himself to himself, accepting his will as his fate, And the light from above within him is darkness; the darkness how great!