Chapter IV: Part 4

O Land whom the Gods,--loving most,--most sorely in wisdom have tried, England! since Time was Time, thrice swept by the conqueror tide, Why on thyself thrice turn, thrice crimson thy greenness in gore, With the slain of thy children, as sheep, thy meadows whitening-o'er? Race impatiently patient; tenacious of foe as of friend; Slow to take flame; but, enflamed, that burns thyself out to the end: Slow to return to the balance, once moved; not easily sway'd From the centre, and, star-like, retracing thy orbit through sunlight and shade! --Without hate, without party affection, we now look back on the fray, Through the mellowing magic of time the phantoms emerging to day! Grasping too much for self, unjust to his rival in strife, Each foe with good conscience and honour advances; war to the knife! Lo, where with feebler hand the Stuart essays him to guide The disdainful coursers of Henry, the Tudor car in its pride! For he saw not the past was past; nor the swirl and inrush of the tide, A nation arising in manhood; its will would no more be denied. They would share in the labour and peril of State; they must perish or win; 'Tis the instinct of Freedom that cries; a voice of Nature within! Narrow the cry and sectarian oft: true sons of their age; Justice avenged unjustly; yet more in sorrow than rage; Till they drank the poison of power, the Circe-cup of command, And the face of Liberty fail'd, and the sword was snatch'd from her hand. Now Law 'neath the scaffold cowers, and,--shame engendering shame,-- The hell-pack of war is laid close on the land for ruin and flame. For as things most holy are worst, from holiness when they decline, So Law, in the name of law once outraged, demon-divine, Swoops back as Anarchy arm'd, and maddens her lovers of yore, Changed from their former selves, and clothed in the chrisom of gore. Then Falkland and Hampden are gone; and darker counsels arise; Vane with his tortuous soul, through over-wisdom unwise; Pym, deep stately designer, the subtle in simple disguised, Artist in plots, projector of panics he used, and despised! --But as, in the mountain world, where the giants each lift up their horn To the skies defiant and pale, and our littleness measure and scorn, Frowning-out from their far-off summits: and eye and mind may not know Which is hugest, where all are huge: But, as from the region we go Receding, the Titan of Titans comes forth, and above him the sky Is deepest: and lo!--'tis the White One, the Monarch!--He mounts, as we fly! Or as over the sea the gay ships and the dolphins glisten and flit, And then that Leviathan comes, and takes his pastime in it; And wherever he ploughs his dark road, they must sink or follow him still, For his is the bulkiest strength, the proud and paramount will! --Thou wast great, O King! (for we grudge not the style thou didst yearn- for in vain, But a river of blood was between and an ineffaceable stain), Great with an earth-born greatness; a Titan of awe, not of love; 'Twas strength and subtlety balanced; the wisdom not from above. For he leant o'er his own deep soul, oracular; over the pit As the Pythia throned her of old, where the rock in Delphi was split; And the vapour and echo within he mis-held for divine; and the land Heard and obey'd, unwillingly willing, the voice of command. --Soaring enormous soul, that to height o'er the highest aspires; All that the man can seize being nought to what he desires! And as, in a palace nurtured, the child to courtesy grows, Becoming at last what it acts; so man on himself can impose, Drill and accustom himself to humility, till, like an art, The lesson the fingers have learn'd appears the command of the heart; Whilst pride, as the snake at the charmer's command, coils low in its place, And he wears to himself and his fellows the mask that is almost a face. Truest of hypocrites, he!--in himself entangled, he thinks Earth uprising to Heaven, while earth-ward the heavenly sinks: Conscience, we grant it, his guide; but conscience drugg'd and deceived; Conscience which all that his self-belief whisper'd as duty believed. And though he sought earnest for God, in life-long wrestle and prayer, Yet the sky by a veil was darken'd, a phantom flitting in air; For a cloud from that seething cavernous heart fumed out in his youth, And whatever he will'd in the strength of the soul was imaged as truth:-- Grew with his growth: And now 'tis Ambition, disguised in success; And he walks with the step assured, that cares not its issue to guess, Clear in immediate purpose: and moulding his party at will, He thrones it o'er obstinate sects, his ideal constrain'd to fulfil. Cool in his very heat, self-master, he masters the realm: God and His glory the flag; but King Oliver lord of the helm! As he needs, steers crooked or straight: with his eye controlling the proud, While blandness runs from his tongue, as the candidate fawns on the crowd; Sagest of Titans, he stands; dark, ponderous, muddy-profound, Greatness untemper'd, untuned; no song, but a chaos of sound:-- Yet the key-note is ever beneath: 'Mere humble instruments! See! Poor weak saints, at the best: but who has triumph'd as we?' Thanks the Lord for each massacre-mercy, His glory, for His is the Cause: Catlike he bridles, and purrs about God: but within are the claws, The lion-strength is within!--Vane, Ludlow, Hutchinson, knew, When the bauble of Law disappear'd, and the sulky senate withdrew: When the tyrannous Ten sword-silenced the land, and the necks of the strong By the heel of their great Dictator were bruised, wrong trampling on wrong. Least willing of despots! and fain the fair temple of Law to restore, Sheathing the sword in the sceptre: But lo! as in legends of yore, Once drawn, once redden'd, it may not return to the scabbard!--and straight On that iron-track'd path he had framed to the end he is goaded by Fate. And yet, as a temperate man, to flavour some exquisite dish, Without stint pours forth the red wine, thus only can compass his wish; Upon Erin the death-mark he brands, the Party and Cause to secure; Not bloodthirsty by birth; just, liquor 'twas needful to pour; Only the wine of man's blood! . . . But the horrible sacrament thrill'd Right through the heart of a nation; nor yet is the memory still'd; E'en yet the dim spectre returns, the ghost of the murderous years, Blood flushing out in hatred; or blood transmuted to tears! --Ah strange drama of Fate! what motley pageantries rise On the stage of this make-shift world! what irony silenced in sighs! For as when the Switzer looks down on the dell, from the pass and the snow, Sees the peace of the fields, the white farms, the clear equable streamlet below, And before him the world unknown, the blaze of the shadowless Line, Riches ill-purchased in exile, the toiling plantation and mine; And the horn floats up the faint music of youth from his forefathers' fold, And he sighs for the patient life, the peace more golden than gold:-- So He now looks back on the years, and groans 'neath the load he must bear, Loving this England that loathed him, and none the burden to share! Gagging not gaining souls: to the close he wonders in vain Why he cannot win hearts: why 'tis only the will that resigns to his reign. As that great image in Dura, the land perforce must obey, Unloved, unlovely,--and not the feet only of iron and clay,-- Atlas of this wide realm! in himself he summ'd up the whole; Its children the Cause had devour'd: the sword was childless and sole.

--Ah strange drama of Fate! what motley pageantries rise On the stage of this make-shift world! what irony silenced in sighs! In the strait beneath Etna for as the waves ebb, and Scylla betrays The monster below, foul scales of the serpent and slime,--could we gaze On Tyranny stript of her tinsel, what vision of dool and dismay! Terror in confidence clothed, and anarchy biding her day: Selfishness hero-mask'd; stage-tricks of the shabby-sublime; Impotent gaspings at good; and the deluge after her time!

--Is it war that thunders o'er England, and bursts the millennial oak From his base like a castle uprooted, and shears with impalpable stroke The sails from the ocean, the houses of men, while the Conqueror lay On the morn of his crowning mercy, and life flicker'd down with the day? Is it war on the earth, or war in the skies, or Nature who tolls Her passing-bell as from earth they go up, her imperial souls? --He rests:--'Tis a lion-sleep: and the sternness of Truth is reproved: The sleep of a leader of men; unhuman, to watch him unmoved! In the stillness of pity and awe we remember his troublesome years, For man is the magnet to man, and mortal failure has tears. --He rests:--On the massive brows, as a rock by the sunrise is crown'd, His passionate love for the land, in a glory-coronal bound! And Mercy dawns fast o'er the dead, from the bier as we turn and depart, England for England's sake clasp'd firm as a child to his heart. --He rests:--And the storm-clouds have fled, and the sunshine of Nature repress'd Breaks o'er the realm in smiles, and the land again has her rest. He rests: the great spirit is hid where from heaven the veil is unroll'd, And justice merges in love, and the dross is purged from the gold.

The general point of view from which this subject is here approached is given in the following passages:--'The whole nation,' says Macaulay (1659), 'was sick of government by the sword, and pined for government by the law.' Hence, when Charles landed, 'the cliffs of Dover were covered by thousands of gazers, among whom scarcely one could be found who was not weeping with delight . . . Every where flags were flying, bells and music sounding, wine and ale flowing in rivers to the health of him whose return was the return of peace, of law, and of freedom.' Nor was this astonishing: the name of the Commonwealth, a greater than Macaulay remarks, 'was grown infinitely odious: it was associated with the tyranny of ten years, the selfish rapacity of the Rump, the hypocritical despotism of Cromwell, the arbitrary sequestrations of committee-men, the iniquitous decimations of military prefects, the sale of British citizens for slavery in the West Indies, the blood of some shed on the scaffold without legal trial, . . . the persecution of the Anglican Church, the bacchanalian rant of sectaries, the morose preciseness of puritans . . . It is universally acknowledged that no measure was ever more national, or has ever produced more testimonies of public approbation, than the restoration of Charles II. . . . For the late government, whether under the parliament or the protector, had never obtained the sanction of popular consent, nor could have subsisted for a day without the support of the army. The King's return seemed to the people the harbinger of a real liberty, instead of that bastard Commonwealth which had insulted them with its name' (Hallam: _Const. Hist_. ch. x and xi).

_Peace in her car_; It will be seen that the Rospigliosi _Aurora_, Guido's one inspired work, has been here before the writer's memory.

_On thyself thrice turn_; The civil wars of the Barons, the Roses, and the Commonwealth.

_He saw not_; Ranke's dispassionate summary of the attempted 'arrest of five members,' which has been always held one of the King's most arbitrary steps, as it was, perhaps, the most fatal, illustrates the view here taken: 'The prerogative of the Crown, _in the sense of the early kings_' (unconditional right of arrest, in cases of treason), 'and the privilege of Parliament, _in the sense of coming times_, were directly contradictory to each other': (viii: 10).

_Till they drank the poison_; A sentence weighty with his judicial force may be here quoted from Hallam:--'The desire of obtaining or retaining power, if it be ever sought as a means, is soon converted into an end.' The career of the Long Parliament supports this judgment: of it 'it may be said, I think, with not greater severity than truth, that scarce two or three public acts of justice, humanity, or generosity, and very few of political wisdom and courage, are recorded of them from their quarrel with the King to their expulsion by Cromwell': (_Const. Hist_. ch. x: Part i).

_The chrisom_; Name for the white cloth in which babes were veiled immediately after Baptism.

_Artist in plots_; See Ranke (viii: 5) for Pym's skilful use of a supposed plot, (the main element in which was known by himself to be untrue), in older to terrify the House and ensure the destruction of Stafford; and Hallam (ch. ix).--Admiration of Pym may be taken as a proof that a historian is ignorant of, or faithless to, the fundamental principles of the Constitution:--as the worship of Cromwell is decisive against any man's love of liberty, whatever his professions.

_O King_; 'Cromwell, like so many other usurpers, felt his position too precarious, or his vanity ungratified, without the name which mankind have agreed to worship.' The conversations recorded by Whitelock are conclusive on this point: 'and, though compelled to decline the crown, he undoubtedly did not lose sight of the object for the short remainder of his life' (_Hallam_).

_The sky by a veil_; See _Appendix_ D.

_And he walks_; 'He said on one occasion, _He goes furthest who knows not whither he is going_': (Ranke: xii: 1).

_Purrs about God_; Examples, (the tone of which justifies this phrase, and might deserve a severer), may be found by the curious in the frailties of poor human nature, _passim_, in Cromwell's 'Letters and Speeches,' for which, (although not always edited with precise accuracy), we are indebted to Mr. T. Carlyle. But the view which he takes of his 'hero,' whether in regard of many particular facts alleged or neglected, or of the general estimate of Cromwell as a man,--as it appears to the author plainly untenable in face of proved historical facts, is here rejected.

The familiar figure of the Tyrant, too long known to the world,--with the iron, the clay, and the little gold often interfused also in the statue,--has been always easily recognisable by unbiassed eyes in Oliver Cromwell. His tyranny was substantially that of his kind, before his time and since, in its actions, its spirit, its result. Fanaticism and Paradox may come with their apparatus of rhetoric to blur, as they whitewash, the lineaments of their idol. Such eulogists may 'paint an inch thick': yet despots,--political, military, ecclesiastical,--will never be permanently acknowledged by the common sense of mankind as worthy the great name of Hero.

_The tyrannous Ten_; The Major-Generals, originally ten, (but the number varied), amongst whom, in 1655, the Commonwealth was divided. They displayed 'a rapacity and oppression beyond their master's' (Hallam): a phrase amply supported by the hardly-impeachable evidence of Ludlow.

_The horrible sacrament_; See _Appendix_ D.

_Why he cannot win hearts_; 'In the ascent of this bold usurper to greatness . . . he had encouraged the levellers and persecuted them; he had flattered the Long Parliament and betrayed it; he had made use of the sectaries to crush the Commonwealth; he had spurned the sectaries in his last advance to power. These, with the Royalists and Presbyterians, forming in effect the whole people . . . were the perpetual, irreconcilable enemies of his administration' (Hallam ch. x).

_Stage-tricks_; See the curious regal imitations and adaptations of the Protector during his later years, in matters regarding his own and his family's titles and state, or the marriage of his daughters.

_Mortal failure_; See _Appendix_ D.

THE POET'S EUTHANASIA

November: 1674

Cloked in gray threadbare poverty, and blind, Age-weak, and desolate, and beloved of God; High-heartedness to long repulse resign'd, Yet bating not one jot of hope, he trod The sunless skyless streets he could not see; By those faint feet made sacrosanct to me.

Yet on that laureate brow the sign he wore Of Phoebus' wrath; who,--for his favourite child, When war and faction raised their rancorous roar, Leagued with fanatic frenzy, blood-defiled, To the sweet Muses and himself untrue,-- Around the head he loved thick darkness threw.

--He goes:--But with him glides the Pleiad throng Of that imperial line, whom Phoebus owns His ownest: for, since his, no later song Has soar'd, as wide-wing'd, to the diadem'd thrones That, in their inmost heaven, the Muses high Set for the sons of immortality.

Most loved, most lovely, near him as he went, Vergil: and He, supremest for all time, In hoary blindness:--But the sweet lament Of Lesbian love, the Parian song sublime, Follow'd:--and that stern Florentine apart Cowl'd himself dark in thought, within his heart

Nursing the dream of Church and Caesar's State, Empire and Faith:--while Fancy's favourite child, The myriad-minded, moving up sedate Beckon'd his countryman, and inly smiled:-- Then that august Theophany paled from view, To higher stars drawn up, and kingdoms new.

The last ten years of Milton's life were passed at his house situate in the (then) 'Artillery Walk,' Bunhill, near Aldersgate. He is described as a spare figure, of middle stature or a little less, who walked, generally clothed in a gray camblet overcoat, in the streets between Bunhill and Little Britain.

_Vergil_; placed first as most like Milton in consummate art and permanent exquisiteness of phrase. It is to him, also, (if to any one), that Milton is metrically indebted.--The other poets classed as 'Imperial' are Homer, Sappho, Archilochus, Dante, Shakespeare. The supremacy in rank which the writer has here ventured to limit to these seven poets, (though with a strong feeling of diffidence in view of certain other Hellenic and Roman claims), is assigned to Sappho and Archilochus, less on account of the scanty fragments, though they be 'more golden than gold,' which have reached us, than in confidence that the place collateral with Homer, given them by their countrymen (who criticized as admirably as they created), was, in fact, justified by their poetry.

_The dream_; Dante's political wishes and speculations, wholly opposed to Milton's, are, however, like his in their impracticable originality.

_Theophany_; Vision of the Gods.

WHITEHALL GALLERY

February 11: 1655

As when the King of old
'Mid Babylonian gold,
And picture-woven walls, and lamps that gleam'd
Unholy radiance, sate,
And with some smooth slave-mate
Toy'd, and the wine laugh'd round, and music stream'd
Voluptuous undulation, o'er the hall,--
Till on the palace-wall

Forth came a hand divine
And wrote the judgment-sign,
And Babylon fell!--So now, in that his place
Of Tudor-Stuart pride,
The golden gallery wide,
'Mid venal beauty's lavish-arm'd embrace,
And hills of gambler-gold, a godless King
Moved through the revelling

With quick brown falcon-eye
And lips of gay reply;
Wise in the wisdom not from Heaven!--as one
Who from his exile-days
Had learn'd to scorn the praise
Of truth, the crown by martyr-virtue won:
Below ambition:--Grant him regal ease!
The rest, as fate may please!

--O royal heir, restored
Not by the bitter sword,
But when the heart of these great realms in free,
Full, triple, unison beat
The Martyr's son to greet,
Her ancient law and faith and flag with thee
Rethroned,--not thus!--in this inglorious hall
Of harem-festival,

Not thus!--For even now,
The blaze is on thy brow
Scored by the shadowy hand of him whose wing
Knows neither haste nor rest;
Who from the board each guest
In season calling,--knight and kerne and king,--
Where Arthur lies, and Alfred, signs the way;--
--We know him, and obey.

Lord Macaulay's lively description of this scene (_Hist_. Ch iv) should be referred to. 'Even then,' he says, 'the King had complained that he did not feel well.'

_Tudor-Stuart_; This famous Gallery was of sixteenth-century date.

_When the heart_; The weariness of England under the triple yoke of Puritanism, the Independents, and the Protector, has been already noticed: (Note on p. 125).

'The Restoration,' says Professor Seeley, in an able essay on current perversions of seventeenth-century-history, 'was not a return to servitude, but the precise contrary. It was a great emancipation, an exodus out of servitude into liberty . . . As to the later Stuarts, I regard them as pupils of Cromwell: . . . it was their great ambition to appropriate his methods,' (and, we may add, to follow his foreign policy in regard to France and Holland), for the benefit of the old monarchy. They failed where their model had succeeded, and the distinction of having enslaved England remained peculiar to Cromwell.'

THE BALLAD OF KING MONMOUTH

1685

_Fear not_, _my child, though the days be dark_,
_Never fear_, _he will come again_,
_With the long brown hair_, _and the banner blue_,
_King Monmouth and all his men_!

The summer-smiling bay
Has doff'd its vernal gray;
A peacock breast of emerald shot with blue:
Is it peace or war that lands
On these pale quiet sands,
As round the pier the boats run-in their silent crew?

Bent knee, and forehead bare;
That moment was for prayer!
Then swords flash out, and--Monmouth!--is the cry:
The crumbling cliff o'erpast,
The hazard-die is cast,
'Tis James 'gainst James in arms! Soho! and Liberty!

--_Fear not, my child, though he come with few_;
_Alone will he come again_;
_God with him, and his right hand more strong_
_Than a thousand thousand men_!

They file by Colway now;
They rise o'er Uplyme brow;
And faithful Taunton hails her hero-knight:
And girlhood's agile hand
Weaves for the patriot band
The crown-emblazon'd flag, their gathering star of fight.

--Ah flag of shame and woe!
For not by these who go,
Scythe-men and club-men, foot and hunger-worn,
These levies raw and rude,
Can England be subdued,
Or that ancestral throne from its foundations torn!

Yet by the dour deep trench
Their mettle did not blench,
When mist and midnight closed o'er sad Sedgemoor;
Though on those hearts of oak
The tall cuirassiers broke,
And Afric's tiger-bands sprang forth with sullen roar:

Though the loud cannon plane
Death's lightning-riven lane,
Levelling that unskill'd valour, rude, unled:
--Yet happier in their fate
Than whom the war-fiends wait
To rend them limb from limb, the gibbet-withering dead!

--_Yet weep not, my child, though the dead be dead_,
_And the wounded rise not again_!
_For they are with God who for England fought_,
_And they bore them as Englishmen_.

Stout hearts, and sorely tried!
--But he, for whom they died,
Skulk'd like the wolf in Cranborne, torn and gaunt:--
Till, dragg'd and bound, he knelt
To one no prayers could melt,
Nor bond of blood, nor fear of fate, from vengeance daunt.

--O hill of death and gore,
Fast by the tower'd shore,
What wealth of precious blood is thine, what tears!
What calmly fronted scorn;
What pangs, not vainly borne!
For heart beats hot with heart, and human grief endears!

--_Then weep not, my child, though the days be dark_;
_Fear not; He will come again_,
_With Arthur and Harold and good Saint George_,
_King Monmouth and all his men_!

Monmouth's invasion forms one of the most brilliant,--perhaps the most brilliant,--of Lord Macaulay's narratives. But many curious details are added in the _History_ by Mr. G Roberts (1844).

The belief, which this poem represents, that 'King Monmouth,' as he was called in the West, would return, lasted long. He landed in Lyme Bay, June 11, 1685, between the Cobb (Harbour-pier) and the beginning of the Ware cliffs: marching north, after a few days, by the road which left the ruins of Colway House on the right and led over Uplyme to Axminster.

_Soho_; the watch-word on Monmouth's side at Sedgemoor; his London house was in the Fields, (now Square), bearing that name.

_Faithful Taunton_; here the Puritan spirit was strong; and here Monmouth was persuaded to take the title of king (June 20), symbolized by the flag which the young girls of Taunton presented to him. It bore a crown with the cypher J B.--Monmouth's own name being James.

_Dour deep trench_; Sedgemoor lies in a marshy district near Bridgewater, much intersected by trenches or 'Rhines.' One, the Busses Rhine, lay between the two armies as they fought, July 6. Monmouth was caught hiding in Cranborne Chase, July 8; executed, after a vain attempt to move the heart of his uncle the king, July 15, on Tower Hill.

_Afric's tiger-bands_; Kirke savage troops from Tangier.

WILLELMUS VAN NASSAU

Yes! we confess it! 'mong the sons of Fate, Earth's great ones, thou art great! As that tall peak which from her silver cone Of maiden snow unstain'd All but the bravest scares, and reigns alone

In glacier isolation: Thus wert thou, With that pale steadfast brow, Gaunt aquiline: Thy whole life one labouring breath, Yet the strong soul untamed; France bridled, England saved, thy task ere death!

--O day of triumph, when thy bloodless host From Devon's russet coast Through the fair capital of the garden-West, And that, whose gracious spire Like childhood's prayer springs heaven-ward unrepress'd,

To Thames march'd legion-like, and at their tread The sullen despot fled, And Law and Freedom fair,--so late restored, And to so-perilous life, While Stuart craft replaced the Usurper's sword,--

Broke forth, as sunshine from the breaking sky, When vernal storm-wings fly! That day was thine, great Chief, from sea to sea: The whole land's welcome seem'd The welcome of one man! a realm by thee

Deliver'd!--But the crowning hour of fame, The zenith of a name Is ours once only: and he, too just, too stern, Too little Englishman, A nation's gratitude did not care to earn,

On wider aims, not worthier, set:--A soul Immured in self-control; Saving the thankless in their own despite:-- Then turning with a gasp Of joy, to his own land by native right;

Changing the Hall of Rufus and the Keep Of Windsor's terraced steep For Guelderland horizons, silvery-blue; The green deer-twinkling glades, And long, long, avenues of the stately Loo.

'William,' says his all too zealous panegyrist, 'never became an Englishman. He served England, it is true; but he never loved her, and he never obtained her love. To him she was always a land of exile, visited with reluctance and quitted with delight. . . . Her welfare was not his chief object. Whatever patriotic feeling he had was for Holland. . . . In the gallery of Whitehall he pined for the familiar House in the Wood at the Hague, and never was so happy as when he could quit the magnificence of Windsor for his humbler seat at Loo:' (Macaulay: _Hist_. ch. vii)

_One labouring breath_; William throughout life was tortured by asthma.

_Demon's russet coast_; Torbay.--_Capital of the garden-West_; Exeter.--_Gracious spire_; Salisbury.--_Hall of Rufus_; The one originally built by William II at Westminster.

THE CHILDLESS MOTHER

1700-1702

Oft in midnight visions
Ghostly by my bed
Stands a Father's image,
Pale discrowned head:--
--I forsook thee, Father!
Was no child to thee!
Child-forsaken Mother,
Now 'tis so with me.

Oft I see the brother,
Baby born to woe,
Crouching by the church-wall
From the bloodhound-foe.
Evil crown'd of evil,
Heritage of strife!
Mine, an heirless sceptre:
His, an exile life!

--O my vanish'd darlings,
From the cradle torn!
Dewdrop lives, that never
Saw their second morn!
Buds that fell untimely,--
Till one blossom grew;
As I watch'd its beauty,
Fading whilst it blew.

Thou wert more to me, Love,
More than words can tell:
All my remnant sunshine
Died in one farewell.
Midnight-mirk before me
Now my life goes by,
For the baby faces
As in vain I cry.

O the little footsteps
On the nursery floor!
Lispings light and laughter
I shall hear no more!
Eyes that gleam'd at waking
Through their silken bars;
Starlike eyes of children,
Now beyond the stars!

Where the murder'd Mary
Waits the rising sign,
They are laid in darkness,
Little lambs of mine.
Only this can comfort:
Safe from earthly harms
Christ the Saviour holds them
In His loving arms:--

Spring eternal round Him,
Roses ever fair:--
Will His mercy set them
All beside me there?
Will their Angels guide me
Through the golden gate?
--Wait a little, children!
Mother, too, must wait!

_I forsook thee_; Marlborough, desirous to widen the breach between Anne and William III, influenced her to write to her Father, 'supplicating his forgiveness, and professing repentance for the part she had taken.'

_Now 'tis so_; Anne 'was said to attribute the death of her children to the part she had taken in dethroning her father:' (Lecky, _History of the Eighteenth Century_).

_The brother_; The infant son of James, known afterwards as the 'Old Pretender,' or as James III. He was carried as an infant from the Palace (Dec. 1688) to Lambeth, where he was in great peril of discovery. The story is picturesquely told by Macaulay.

_One blossom_; The Duke of Gloucester, who grew up to eleven years, dying in July 1700. After his death Anne signed, in private letters, 'your unfortunate' friend.

Anne's character, says the candid Lecky, 'though somewhat peevish and very obstinate, was pure, generous, simple, and affectionate; and she displayed, under bereavements far more numerous than fall to the share of most, a touching piety that endeared her to her people.'

_Where the murder'd Mary_; 'Above and around, in every direction,' says Dean Stanley, describing the vault beneath the monument of Mary of Scotland in Henry the Seventh's Chapel,--'crushing by the accumulated weight of their small coffins the receptacles of the illustrious dust beneath, lie the eighteen children of Queen Anne, dying in infancy or stillborn, ending with William Duke of Gloucester, the last hope of the race:' (_Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey_, ch. iii).

BLENHEIM

August 13: 1704

Oft hast thou acted thy part,
My country, worthily thee!
Lifted up often thy load
Atlantean, enormous, with glee:--
For on thee the burden is laid to uphold
World-justice; to keep the balance of states;
On thee the long cry of the tyrant-oppress'd,
The oppress'd in the name of liberty, waits:--
Ready, aye ready, the blade
In its day to draw forth, unafraid;
Thou dost not blench from thy fate!
By thy high heart, only, secure; by thy magnanimity, great.

E'en so it was on the morn
When France with Spain, in one realm
Welded, one thunderbolt, stood,
With one stroke the world to o'erwhelm.
--They have pass'd the great stream, they have stretch'd their white
camp
Above the protecting morass and the dell,
Blenheim to Lutzingen, where the long wood
In summer-thick leafage rounds o'er the fell:
--England! in nine-fold advance
Cast thy red flood upon France;
Over marsh over beck ye must go,
Wholly together! or, Danube to Rhine, all slides to the foe!

As the lava thrusts onward its wall,
One mass down the valley they tramp;
Fascine-fill the marsh and the stream;
Like hornets they swarm up the ramp,
Lancing a breach through the long palisade,
Where the rival swarms of the stubborn foe,
While the sun goes high and goes down o'er the fight,
Sting them back, blow answering blow:--
O life-blood lavish as rain
On war's red Aceldama plain!
While the volleying death-rattle rings,
And the peasant pays for the pride and the fury-ambition of kings!

And as those of Achaia and Troia
By the camp on the sand, so they
In the aether-amber of evening
Kept even score in the fray;
Rank against rank, man match'd with man,
In backward, forward, struggle enlaced,
Grappled and moor'd to the ground where they stood
As wrestlers wrestling, as lovers embraced:--
And the lightnings insatiable fly,
As the lull of the tempest is nigh,
And each host in its agony reels,
And the musket falls hot from the hand, enflamed by the death that it
deals.

But, as when through the vale the rain-clouds
Darker and heavier flow,
Above them the dominant summit
Stands clad in calmness and snow;
So thou, great Chief, awaiting the turn
Of the purple tide:--And the moment has come!
And the signal-word flies out with a smile,
And they charge the foe in his fastness, home:--
As one long wave when the wind
Urges an ocean behind,
One line, they sweep on the foe,
And France from our battle recoils, and Victory edges the blow.

As a rock by blue lightning divided
Down the hillside scatters its course,
So in twain their army is parted
By the sabres sabring in force:
They have striven enough for honour! . . . and now
Crumble and shatter, and sheer o'er the bank
Where torrent Danube hisses and swirls
Slant and hurry in rankless rank:--
There are sixty thousand the morn
'Gainst the Lions marching in scorn;
But twenty, when even is here,
Broken and brave and at bay, the Lilied banner uprear.

--So be it!--All honour to him
Who snatch'd the world, in his day,
From an overmastering King,
A colossal imperial sway!
Calm adamantine endurant chief,
Fit forerunner of him, whose crowning stroke,
Rousing his Guards on the Flandrian plain,
Unvassall'd Europe from despot yoke!
He who from Ganges to Rhine
Traced o'er the world his red line
Irresistible; while in the breast
Reign'd devotedness utter, and self for England suppress'd!

O names that enhearten the soul,
Blenheim and Waterloo!
In no vain worship of glory
The poet turns him to you!
O sung by worthier song than mine,
If the day of a nation's weakness rise,
Of the little counsels that dare not dare,
Of a land that no more on herself relies,--
O breath of our great ones that were,
Burn out this taint in the air!
The old heart of England restore,
Till the blood of the heroes awake, and shout in her bosom once more!

--Morning is fresh on the field
Where the war-sick champions lie,
By the wreckage of stiffening dead,
The anguish that yearns but to die.
Ah note of human agony heard
The paean of victory over and through!
Ah voice of duty and justice stern
That, at e'en this price, commands them to do!
And a vision of Glory goes by,
Veil'd head and remorseful eye,
A triumph of Death!--And they cried
'Only less dark than defeat is the morning of conquest';--and sigh'd.

Blenheim is fully described in Lord Stanhope's _Reign of Queen Anne_. Its importance as a critical battle in European history lies in the fact that the work of liberating the Great Alliance against the paramount power of France under Lewis XIV, (which England had unwisely fostered from Cromwell to James II), was secured by this victory. 'The loss of France could not be measured by men or fortresses. A hundred victories since Rocroi had taught the world to regard the armies of Lewis as all but invincible, when Blenheim and the surrender of the flower of the French soldiery broke the spell': (Green: _History of the English People_: B. VIII: ch. iii).

'The French and Bavarians, who numbered, like their opponents, some fifty thousand men, lay behind a little stream which ran through swampy ground to the Danube . . . It was not till midday that Eugene, who commanded on the right, succeeded in crossing the stream. The English foot at once forded it on the left.' They were repelled for the time. But, in the centre, Marlborough, 'by making an artificial road across the morass which covered it,' in two desperate charges turned the day.

A map of 1705 in the _Annals of Queen Anne's Reign_, shows vast hillsides to the right of the Allies covered with wood. This map also specifies the advance of the English in nine columns.

_Only less_; 'Marlborough,' says Lord Stanhope, 'was a humane and compassionate man. Even in the eagerness to pursue fresh conquests he did not ever neglect the care of the wounded.'

AT HURSLEY IN MARDEN

1712

We count him wise,
Timoleon, who in Syracuse laid down
That gleaming bait of all men's eyes,
And for his cottage changed the invidious crown;
Moving serenely through his grayhair'd day
'Mid vines and olives gray.

He also, whom
The load of double empire, half the world
His own, within a living tomb
Press'd down at Yuste,--Spain's great banner furl'd
His winding-sheet around him,--while he strove
The impalpable Above

Though mortal yet,
To breathe, is blazon'd on the sages' roll:--
High soaring hearts, who could forget
The sceptre, to the hermitage of the soul
Retired, sweet solitudes of the musing eye,
And let the world go by!

There, if the cup
Of Time, that brims ere we can reach repose,
Fill'd slow, the soul might summon up
The strenuous heat of youth, the silenced foes;
The deeds of fame, star-bright above the throne;
The better deeds unknown.

There, when the cloud
Eased its dark breast in thunder, and the light
Ran forth, their hearts recall the loud
Hoarse onset roar, the flashing of the fight;
Those other clouds piled-up in white array
Whence deadlier lightnings play.

There, when the seas
Murmur at midnight, and the dome is clear,
And from their seats in heaven the breeze
Loosens the stars, to blaze and disappear,
_And such as Glory_! . . . with a sigh suppress'd
They smile, and turn to rest.

--But he, who here
Unglorious hides, untrain'd, unwilling Lord,
The phantom king of half a year,
From England's throne push'd by the bloodless sword,
Unheirlike heir to that colossal fame;--
How should men name his name,

How rate his worth
With those heroic ones who, life's labour done,
Mark'd out their six-foot couch of earth,
The laurell'd rest of manhood's battle won?
--Not so with him! . . . Yet, ere we turn away,
A still small voice will say,

By other rule
Than man's coarse glory-test does God bestow
His crowns: exalting oft the fool,
So deem'd, and the world-hero levelling low.
--And he, who from the palace pass'd obscure,
And honourably poor,

Spurning a throne
Held by blood-tenure, 'gainst a nation's will;
Lived on his narrow fields alone,
Content life's common service to fulfil;
Not careful of a carnage-bought renown,
Or that precarious crown:--

Him count we wise,
Him also! though the chorus of the throng
Be silent: though no pillar rise
In slavish adulation of the strong:--
But here, from blame of tongues and fame aloof,
'Neath a low chancel roof,

--The peace of God,--
He sleeps: unconscious hero! Lowly grave
By village-footsteps daily trod
Unconscious: or while silence holds the nave,
And the bold robin comes, when day is dim,
And pipes his heedless hymn.

_Timoleon_; was invited from Corinth by the Syracusans (B.C. 344) to be their leader in throwing off the tyranny of the second Dionysius. Having effected this, defeated the Carthaginian invaders, and reduced all the minor despotisms within Sicily, he voluntarily resigned his paramount power and died in honoured retirement.

_He also_; In 1556 the Emperor Charles V gave up all his dominions, withdrawing in 1557 to Yuste;--a monastery situated in a region of singular natural beauty, between Xarandilla and Plasencia in Estremadura. He died there, Sep. 21, 1558.

_Loosens the stars_; So Vergil, _Georg_. I., 365:

Saepe etiam stellas vento inpendente videbis
Praecipites caelo labi . . .

_The phantom king_; Richard Cromwell was Protector from Sep. 3, 1658 to May 25, 1659. After 1660 his life was that of a simple country gentleman, till his death in 1712, when he was buried at Hursley near Winchester.

_Unheirlike heir_; See _Appendix_ E.

CHARLES EDWARD AT ROME

1785

1

O sunset, of the rise
Unworthy!--that, so brave, so clear, so gay;
This, prison'd in low-hanging earth-mists gray,
And ever-darken'd skies:--
Sad sunset of a royal race in gloom,
Accomplishing to the end the dolorous Stuart doom!

2

Ghost of a king, he sate
In Rome, the city of ghosts and thrones outworn,
Drowsing his thoughts in wine;--a life forlorn;
Pageant of faded state;
Aged before old age, and all that Past,
Like a forgotten thing of shame, behind him cast.

3

Yet if by chance the cry
Of the sharp pibroch through the palace thrill'd,
He felt the pang of high hope unfulfill'd:--
And once, when one came by
With the dear name of Scotland on his lips,
The heart broke forth behind that forty-years' eclipse,

4

Triumphant in its pain:--
Then the old days of Holyrood halls return'd
The leaden lethargy from his soul he spurn'd,
And was the Prince again:--
All Scotland waking in him; all her bold
Chieftains and clans:--and all their tale, and his, he told:

5

--Told how, o'er the boisterous seas
From faithless France he danced his way
Where Alban's thousand islands lay,
The kelp-strown ridge of the lone Hebrides:--
How down each strath they stream'd as springtide rills,
When he to Finnan vale
Came from Glenaladale,
And that snow-handful grew an avalanche of the hills.

6

There Lochiel, Glengarry there,
Macdonald, Cameron: souls untried
In war, but stout in mountain-pride
All odds against all worlds to laugh and dare:
Unpurchaseable faith of chief and clan!
Enough! Their Prince has thrown
Himself upon his own!
By hearts not heads they count, and manhood measures man!

7

--Torrent from Lochaber sprung,
Through Badenoch bare and Athole turn'd,
The fettering Forth o'erpast and spurn'd,
Then on the smiling South in fury flung;
Now gather head with all thine affluent force,
Draw forth the wild mellay!
At Gladsmuir is the fray;
Scotland 'gainst England match'd: White Rose against White Horse!

8

Cluster'd down the slope they go,
Red clumps of ragged valour, down,
While morn-mists yet the hill-top crown:--
Clan Colla! on!--the Camerons touch the foe!
One touch!--the battle breaks, the fight is fought,
As summit-boulders glide
Riddling the forest-side,
And in one moment's crash an army melts to nought!

9

--Ah gay nights of Holyrood!
Star-eyes of Scotland's fairest fair,
Sun-glintings of the golden hair,
Life's tide at full in that brief interlude!
Then as a bark slips from her natural coast
Deep into seas unknown,
Scotland went forth alone,
Unfriended, unallied; a handful 'gainst a host.

10

By the Bolder moorlands bare,
By faithless Solway's glistening sands,
And where Caer Luel's dungeon stands,
Huge keep of ancient Urien, huge, foursquare:--
Preston, and loyal Lancashire; . . . and then
From central Derby down,
To strike the royal town,
And to his German realm the usurper thrust again!

11

--O the lithesome mountaineers,
Wild hearts with kingly boyhood high,
And victory in each forward eye,
While stainless honour his white banner rears!
Then all the air with mountain-music thrill'd,
The bonnets o'er the brow,--
My gallant clans! . . . and now
The voices closed in earth, in death the pibroch still'd!

12

--As beneath Ben Aille's crest
The west wind weaves its roof of gray,
And all the glory of the day
Blooms off from loch and copse and green hill-breast;
So, when that craven council spoke retreat,
The fateful shameful word
They heard,--and scarcely heard!
At Scotland's name how should the blood refuse to beat?

13

--O soul-piercing stroke of shame!
O last, last, chance,--and wasted so!
Work wanting but the final blow,--
And, then, the hopeless hope, the crownless name,
The heart's desire defeated!--What boots now
That ice-brook-temper'd will,
Indomitable still
As on through snow and storm their path the dalesmen plough?

14

--Yet again the tartans hail
One smile of Scotland's ancient face;
One favour waits the faithful race,--
One triumph more at Falkirk crowns the Gael!
And O! what drop of Scottish blood that runs
Could aught, save do or die,
And Bannockburn so nigh?
What cause to higher height could animate her sons?

15

Up the gorse-embattled brae,
With equal eager feet they dash,
And on the moorland summit clash,
Friend mix'd with foe in stormy disarray:
Once more the Northern charge asserts its right,
As with the driving rain
They drive them down the plain:
That star alone before Drummossie gilds the night.

16

--Ah! No more!--let others tell
The agony of the mortal moor;
Death's silent sheepfold dotted o'er
With Scotland's best, sleet-shrouded as they fell!
There on the hearts, once mine, the snow-wreaths drift;
Night's winter dews at will
In bitter tears distil,
And o'er the field the stars their squadrons coldly shift.

17

Faithful in a faithless age!
Yet happier, in that death-dew drench'd,
In each rude hand the claymore clench'd,
Than who, to soothe a nation's craven rage,
To the red scaffold went with steady eye,
And the red martyr-grave,
For one, who could not save!
Who only lives to weep the weight of life, and die!

18

--He ended, with such grief
As fits and honours manhood:--Then, once more
Weaving that long romantic lay, told o'er
The names of clan and chief
Who perill'd all for him, and died;--and how
In islets, caves, and clefts, and bare high mountain-brow

19

The wanderer hid, and all
His Odyssey of woes!--Then, agonized
Not by the wrongs he suffer'd and despised,
But for the Cause's fall,--
The faces, loved and lost, that for his sake
Were raven-torn and blanch'd, high on the traitor's stake,

20

As on Drummossie drear
They fell,--as a dead body falls,--so he;
Swoon-senseless at that killing memory
Seen across year on year:
O human tears! O honourable pain!
Pity unchill'd by age, and wounds that bleed again!

21

--Ah, much enduring heart!
Ah soul, miscounsell'd oft and lured astray,
In that long life-despair, from wisdom's way
And thy young hero-part!--
--And yet--DILEXIT MULTUM!--In that cry
Love's gentler judgment pleads; thine epitaph a sigh!

The sad old age of Prince Charles is described by Lord Mahon [Stanhope] in his able _History_: ch. xxx: and some additional details will be found in Chambers' narrative of the expedition. During later life, an almost entire silence seems to have been maintained by the Prince upon his earlier days and his royal claims. But the bagpipe was occasionally heard in the Roman Palace, and a casual visit, which Lord Mahon fixes in 1785, drew forth the recital which is the subject of this poem. The prince fainted as he recalled what his Highland followers had gone through, and his daughter rushing in exclaimed to the visitor, 'Sir! what is this! You must have been speaking to my father about Scotland and the Highlanders! No one dares to mention these subjects in his presence:' (Mahon: ch. xxvi).

St. 2 _Drowsing His thoughts_; The habit of intemperance, common in that century to many who had not Charles Edward's excuses, appear to have been learned during the long privations which accompanied his wanderings, between Culloden and his escape to France.

St. 5 _Hebrides_; Charles landed at Erisca, an islet between Barra and South Uist, in July 1745.

St. 7 _Fettering Forth_; 'Forth,' according to the proverb, 'bridles the wild Highlandman.'--Charles passed it at the Ford of Frew, about eight miles above Stirling.--_At Gladsmuir_; or Preston Pans; Sep. 21, 1745.--_White Horse_; The armorial bearing of Hanover.

St. 8 _Clan Colla_; general name for the sept of the Macdonalds.

St. 10 _Caer Luel_; Urien ap Urbgen is an early hero of Strathclyde or Alcluith, the British kingdom lying between Dumbarton and Carlisle, then Caer Luel.

St. 12 _Ben Aille_; a mountain over Loch Ericht in the central Highlands.

St. 13 _Ice-brook-temper'd_; 'It is a sword of Spain, the ice-brook's temper': (_Othello_: A. 5: S. 2).

St. 14 _At Falkirk_; Jan 17, 1746. 'On the eve after his victory Charles again encamped on Bannockburn.'

St. 16 _The mortal moor_; named Culloden and Drummossie: Ap. 16, 1746. The cold at that time was very severe.

St. 17 A _nation's craven rage_; See _Appendix_ F.

St. 21 _Love's gentler judgment_; We may perhaps quote on his behalf Vergil's beautiful words

. . . utcumque ferent ea facta minores,
Vincet amor patriae laudumque inmensa cupido.

--It is also pleasant to record that over the coffin of Charles in S. Peter's, Rome, a monument was placed by George the Fourth, upon which, by a graceful and gallant 'act of oblivion,' are inscribed the names of James the Third, Charles the Third, and Henry the Ninth, 'Kings of England.'

On the simple monument set up by his brother Henry in S. Pietro, Frascati, it may be worth notice that Charles is only described as _Paterni iuris et regiae_ | _dignitatis successor et heres_:--the title, King, (given to his Father in the inscription), not being assigned to Charles, or assumed by the Cardinal.

TRAFALGAR

October 21: 1805

Heard ye the thunder of battle
Low in the South and afar?
Saw ye the flash of the death-cloud
Crimson o'er Trafalgar?
Such another day never
England will look on again,
When the battle fought was the hottest,
And the hero of heroes was slain!

For the fleet of France and the force of Spain were gather'd for fight, A greater than Philip their lord, a new Armada in might:-- And the sails were aloft once more in the deep Gaditanian bay, Where _Redoubtable_ and _Bucentaure_ and great _Trinidada_ lay; Eager-reluctant to close; for across the bloodshed to be Two navies beheld one prize in its glory,--the throne of the sea! Which were bravest, who should tell? for both were gallant and true; But the greatest seaman was ours, of all that sail'd o'er the blue.

From Cadiz the enemy sallied: they knew not Nelson was there; His name a navy to us, but to them a flag of despair. 'Twixt Algeziras and Ayamonte he guarded the coast, Till he bore from Tavira south; and they now must fight, or be lost;-- Vainly they steer'd for the Rock and the Midland sheltering sea, For he headed the Admirals round, constraining them under his lee, Villeneuve of France, and Gravina of Spain: so they shifted their ground, They could choose,--they were more than we;--and they faced at Trafalgar round; Rampart-like ranged in line, a sea-fortress angrily tower'd! In the midst, four-storied with guns, the dark _Trinidada_ lower'd.

So with those.--But meanwhile, as against some dyke that men massively rear, From on high the torrent surges, to drive through the dyke as a spear, Eagled-eyed e'en in his blindness, our chief sets his double array, Making the fleet two spears, to thrust at the foe, any way, . . . 'Anyhow!--without orders, each captain his Frenchman may grapple perforce: Collingwood first' (yet the _Victory_ ne'er a whit slacken'd her course) 'Signal for action! Farewell! we shall win, but we meet not again!' --Then a low thunder of readiness ran from the decks o'er the main, And on,--as the message from masthead to masthead flew out like a flame, ENGLAND EXPECTS EVERY MAN WILL DO HIS DUTY,--they came.

--Silent they come:--While the thirty black forts of the foeman's array Clothe them in billowy snow, tier speaking o'er tier as they lay; Flashes that thrust and drew in, as swords when the battle is rife;-- But ours stood frowningly smiling, and ready for death as for life. --O in that interval grim, ere the furies of slaughter embrace, Thrills o'er each man some far echo of England; some glance of some face! --Faces gazing seaward through tears from the ocean-girt shore; Faces that ne'er can be gazed on again till the death-pang is o'er. . . . Lone in his cabin the Admiral kneeling, and all his great heart As a child's to the mother, goes forth to the loved one, who bade him depart . . . O not for death, but glory! her smile would welcome him home! --Louder and thicker the thunderbolts fall:--and silent they come.

As when beyond Dongola the lion, whom hunters attack, Plagued by their darts from afar, leaps in, dividing them back; So between Spaniard and Frenchman the _Victory_ wedged with a shout, Gun against gun; a cloud from her decks and lightning went out; Iron hailing of pitiless death from the sulphury smoke; Voices hoarse and parch'd, and blood from invisible stroke. Each man stood to his work, though his mates fell smitten around, As an oak of the wood, while his fellow, flame-shatter'd, besplinters the ground:-- Gluttons of danger for England, but sparing the foe as he lay; For the spirit of Nelson was on them, and each was Nelson that day.

'She has struck!'--he shouted--'She burns, the _Redoubtable_! Save whom we can, Silence our guns':--for in him the woman was great in the man, In that heroic heart each drop girl-gentle and pure, Dying by those he spared;--and now Death's triumph was sure! From the deck the smoke-wreath clear'd, and the foe set his rifle in rest, Dastardly aiming, where Nelson stood forth, with the stars on his breast,-- 'In honour I gain'd them, in honour I die with them' . . . Then, in his place, Fell . . . 'Hardy! 'tis over; but let them not know': and he cover'd his face. Silent, the whole fleet's darling they bore to the twilight below: And above the war-thunder came shouting, as foe struck his flag after foe.

To his heart death rose: and for Hardy, the faithful, he cried in his pain,-- 'How goes the day with us, Hardy?' . . . ''Tis ours':--Then he knew, not in vain Not in vain for his comrades and England he bled: how he left her secure, Queen of her own blue seas, while his name and example endure. O, like a lover he loved her! for her as water he pours Life-blood and life and love, lavish'd all for her sake, and for ours! --'Kiss me, Hardy!--Thank God!--I have done my duty!'--And then Fled that heroic soul, and left not his like among men.