Poems and Ballads (Third Series) | Page 9

jewels of light in the ring of the
golden sea.
But the men that within them abide
Are stout of spirit and stark
As
rocks that repel the tide,
As day that repels the dark;
And the light
bequeathed from their swords unsheathed shines lineal
on Wight and on Sark.
And eastward the storm sets ever,
The storm of the sails that strain

And follow and close and sever
And lose and return and gain;
And
English thunder divides in sunder the holds of the ships of
Spain.
Southward to Calais, appalled
And astonished, the vast fleet veers;

And the skies are shrouded and palled,
But the moonless midnight
hears
And sees how swift on them drive and drift strange flames that
the
darkness fears.
They fly through the night from shoreward,
Heart-stricken till
morning break,
And ever to scourge them forward
Drives down on
them England's Drake,
And hurls them in as they hurtle and spin and
stagger, with storm
to wake.
VI

I
And now is their time come on them. For eastward they drift and reel,

With the shallows of Flanders ahead, with destruction and havoc at
heel,
With God for their comfort only, the God whom they serve; and
here
Their Lord, of his great loving-kindness, may revel and make
good cheer;
Though ever his lips wax thirstier with drinking, and
hotter the
lusts in him swell;
For he feeds the thirst that consumes him with
blood, and his
winepress fumes with the reek of hell.
II
Fierce noon beats hard on the battle; the galleons that loom to the lee

Bow down, heel over, uplifting their shelterless hulls from the sea:

From scuppers aspirt with blood, from guns dismounted and dumb, The
signs of the doom they looked for, the loud mute witnesses come.

They press with sunset to seaward for comfort: and shall not they
find it there?
O servants of God most high, shall his winds not pass
you by, and
his waves not spare?
III
The wings of the south-west wind are widened; the breath of his
fervent lips,
More keen than a sword's edge, fiercer than fire, falls full
on the
plunging ships.
The pilot is he of their northward flight, their stay and
their

steersman he;
A helmsman clothed with the tempest, and girdled with
strength to
constrain the sea.
And the host of them trembles and quails, caught
fast in his hand
as a bird in the toils;
For the wrath and the joy that fulfil him are
mightier than man's,
whom he slays and spoils.
And vainly, with heart divided in sunder,
and labour of wavering
will,
The lord of their host takes counsel with hope if haply their star
shine still,
If haply some light be left them of chance to renew and
redeem the
fray;
But the will of the black south-wester is lord of the councils of
war to-day.
One only spirit it quells not, a splendour undarkened of
chance or
time;
Be the praise of his foes with Oquendo for ever, a name as a
star
sublime.
But here what aid in a hero's heart, what help in his hand
may be? For ever the dark wind whitens and blackens the hollows and
heights
of the sea,
And galley by galley, divided and desolate, founders; and
none
takes heed,
Nor foe nor friend, if they perish; forlorn, cast off in their
uttermost need,
They sink in the whelm of the waters, as pebbles by
children from

shoreward hurled,
In the North Sea's waters that end not, nor know
they a bourn but
the bourn of the world.
Past many a secure unavailable harbour, and
many a loud stream's
mouth,
Past Humber and Tees and Tyne and Tweed, they fly,
scourged on from
the south,
And torn by the scourge of the storm-wind that smites as a
harper
smites on a lyre,
And consumed of the storm as the sacrifice loved of
their God is
consumed with fire,
And devoured of the darkness as men that are
slain in the fires of
his love are devoured,
And deflowered of their lives by the storms, as
by priests is the
spirit of life deflowered.
For the wind, of its godlike mercy, relents
not, and hounds them
ahead to the north,
With English hunters at heel, till now is the herd
of them past the
Forth,
All huddled and hurtled seaward; and now need none wage
war upon
these,
Nor huntsmen follow the quarry whose fall is the pastime
sought of
the seas.
Day upon day upon day confounds them, with measureless
mists that
swell,
With drift of rains everlasting and dense as the fumes of

ascending
hell.
The visions of priest and of prophet beholding his enemies
bruised
of his rod
Beheld but the likeness of this that is fallen on the faithful,
the
friends of God.
Northward, and northward, and northward they
stagger and shudder
and swerve and flit,
Dismantled of masts and of yards, with sails by
the fangs of the
storm-wind split.
But north of the headland whose name is Wrath, by
the wrath or the
ruth of the sea,
They are swept or sustained to