Poems and Ballads (Third Series) | Page 6

and lit of men's hands for a
shrine or a pyre;?And the east and the west wind scattered their ashes abroad, that
his name should be blest?Of the tribes of the chosen whose blessings are curses from
uttermost east unto west.
II
I
Hell for Spain, and heaven for England,--God to God, and man to
man,--?Met confronted, light with darkness, life with death: since time
began,?Never earth nor sea beheld so great a stake before them set, Save when Athens hurled back Asia from the lists wherein they
met;?Never since the sands of ages through the glass of history ran Saw the sun in heaven a lordlier day than this that lights us
yet.
II
For the light that abides upon England, the glory that rests on her
godlike name,?The pride that is love and the love that is faith, a perfume
dissolved in flame,?Took fire from the dawn of the fierce July when fleets were
scattered as foam?And squadrons as flakes of spray; when galleon and galliass that
shadowed the sea?Were swept from her waves like shadows that pass with the clouds
they fell from, and she?Laughed loud to the wind as it gave to her keeping the glories of
Spain and Rome.
III
Three hundred summers have fallen as leaves by the storms in their
season thinned,?Since northward the war-ships of Spain came sheer up the way of the
south-west wind:?Where the citadel cliffs of England are flanked with bastions of
serpentine,?Far off to the windward loomed their hulls, an hundred and
twenty-nine,?All filled full of the war, full-fraught with battle and charged
with bale;?Then store-ships weighted with cannon; and all were an hundred and
fifty sail.?The measureless menace of darkness anhungered with hope to prevail
upon light,?The shadow of death made substance, the present and visible spirit
of night,?Came, shaped as a waxing or waning moon that rose with the fall of
day,?To the channel where couches the Lion in guard of the gate of the
lustrous bay.?Fair England, sweet as the sea that shields her, and pure as the
sea from stain,?Smiled, hearing hardly for scorn that stirred her the menace of
saintly Spain.
III
I
"They that ride over ocean wide with hempen bridle and horse of
tree,"?How shall they in the darkening day of wrath and anguish and fear
go free??How shall these that have curbed the seas not feel his bridle who
made the sea?
God shall bow them and break them now: for what is man in the Lord
God's sight??Fear shall shake them, and shame shall break, and all the noon of
their pride be night:?These that sinned shall the ravening wind of doom bring under, and
judgment smite.
England broke from her neck the yoke, and rent the fetter, and
mocked the rod:?Shrines of old that she decked with gold she turned to dust, to the
dust she trod:?What is she, that the wind and sea should fight beside her, and war
with God?
Lo, the cloud of his ships that crowd her channel's inlet with
storm sublime,?Darker far than the tempests are that sweep the skies of her
northmost clime;?Huge and dense as the walls that fence the secret darkness of
unknown time.
Mast on mast as a tower goes past, and sail by sail as a cloud's
wing spread;?Fleet by fleet, as the throngs whose feet keep time with death in
his dance of dread;?Galleons dark as the helmsman's bark of old that ferried to hell
the dead.
Squadrons proud as their lords, and loud with tramp of soldiers
and chant of priests;?Slaves there told by the thousandfold, made fast in bondage as
herded beasts;?Lords and slaves that the sweet free waves shall feed on, satiate
with funeral feasts.
Nay, not so shall it be, they know; their priests have said it; can
priesthood lie??God shall keep them, their God shall sleep not: peril and evil
shall pass them by:?Nay, for these are his children; seas and winds shall bid not his
children die.
II
So they boast them, the monstrous host whose menace mocks at the
dawn: and here?They that wait at the wild sea's gate, and watch the darkness of
doom draw near,?How shall they in their evil day sustain the strength of their
hearts for fear?
Full July in the fervent sky sets forth her twentieth of changing
morns:?Winds fall mild that of late waxed wild: no presage whispers or
wails or warns:?Far to west on the bland sea's breast a sailing crescent uprears
her horns.
Seven wide miles the serene sea smiles between them stretching from
rim to rim:?Soft they shine, but a darker sign should bid not hope or belief
wax dim:?God's are these men, and not the sea's: their trust is set not on
her but him.
God's? but who is the God whereto the prayers and incense of these
men rise??What is he, that the wind and sea should fear him, quelled by his
sunbright eyes??What, that men should return again, and hail him Lord of the
servile skies?
Hell's own flame at his heavenly name leaps higher and laughs, and
its gulfs rejoice:?Plague and death from his baneful breath take life and lighten, and
praise his choice:?Chosen are they to devour for prey the tribes that hear not and
fear his voice.
Ay, but