Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. | Page 4

multitude?With stir about the towns; and waggons rolled?With offerings for the army and the fleet.?Then to our hearts valour crept home again,?The loathèd name of Alva fanning it;?Alva who did convert from our old faith?With many a black deed done for a white cause?(So spake they erewhile to it dedicate)?Them whom not death could change, nor fire, nor sword,?To thirst for his undoing.
Ay, as I am a Christian man, our thirst?Was comparable with Queen Mary's. All?The talk was of confounding heretics,?The heretics the Spaniards. Yet methought,?'O their great multitude! Not harbour room?On our long coast for that great multitude.?They land--for who can let them--give us battle,?And after give us burial. Who but they,?For he that liveth shall be flying north?To bear off wife and child. Our very graves?Shall Spaniards dig, and in the daisied grass?Trample them down.'
Ay, whoso will be brave,?Let him be brave beforehand. After th' event?If by good pleasure of God it go as then?He shall be brave an' liketh him. I say?Was no man but that deadly peril feared.
Nights riding two. Scant rest. Days riding three,?Then Foulkstone. Need is none to tell all forth?The gathering stores and men, the charter'd ship?That I, with two, my friends, got ready for sea.?Ready she was, so many another, small?But nimble; and we sailing hugged the shore,?Scarce venturing out, so Drake had willed, a league,?And running westward aye as best we might,?When suddenly--behold them!
On they rocked,?Majestical, slow, sailing with the wind.?O such a sight! O such a sight, mine eyes,?Never shall you see more!
In crescent form,?A vasty crescent nigh two leagues across?From horn to horn, the lesser ships within,?The great without, they did bestride as 't were?And make a township on the narrow seas.
It was about the point of dawn: and light.?All grey the sea, and ghostly grey the ships;?And after in the offing rocked our fleet,?Having lain quiet in the summer dark.
O then methought, 'Flash, blessed gold of dawn,?And touch the topsails of our Admiral,?That he may after guide an emulous flock,?Old England's innocent white bleating lambs.?Let Spain within a pike's length hear them bleat,?Delivering of their pretty talk in a tongue?Whose meaning cries not for interpreter.'
And while I spoke, their topsails, friend and foe,?Glittered--and there was noise of guns; pale smoke?Lagged after, curdling on the sun-fleck'd main.?And after that? What after that, my soul??Who ever saw weakling white butterflies?Chasing of gallant swans, and charging them,?And spitting at them long red streaks of flame??We saw the ships of England even so?As in my vaunting wish that mocked itself?With 'Fool, O fool, to brag at the edge of loss.'?We saw the ships of England even so?Run at the Spaniards on a wind, lay to,?Bespatter them with hail of battle, then?Take their prerogative of nimble steerage,?Fly off, and ere the enemy, heavy in hand,?Delivered his reply to the wasteful wave?That made its grave of foam, race out of range,?Then tack and crowd all sail, and after them?Again.
So harassed they that mighty foe,?Moving in all its bravery to the east.?And some were fine with pictures of the saints,?Angels with flying hair and peakèd wings,?And high red crosses wrought upon their sails;?From every mast brave flag or ensign flew,?And their long silken pennons serpented?Loose to the morning. And the galley slaves,?Albeit their chains did clink, sang at the oar.
The sea was striped e'en like a tiger skin?With wide ship wakes.
And many cried, amazed,?'What means their patience?'
'Lo you,' others said,?'They pay with fear for their great costliness.?Some of their costliest needs must other guard;?Once guarded and in port look to yourselves,?They count one hundred and fifty. It behoves?Better they suffer this long running fight--?Better for them than that they give us battle,?And so delay the shelter of their roads.
'Two of their caravels we sank, and one?(Fouled with her consort in the rigging) took?Ere she could catch the wind when she rode free.?And we have riddled many a sail, and split?Of spars a score or two. What then? To-morrow?They look to straddle across the strait, and hold?Having aye Calais for a shelter--hold?Our ships in fight. To-morrow shall give account?For our to-day. They will not we pass north?To meddle with Parma's flotilla; their hope?Being Parma, and a convoy they would be?For his flat boats that bode invasion to us;?And if he reach to London--ruin, defeat.'
Three fleets the sun went down on, theirs of fame?Th' Armada. After space old England's few;?And after that our dancing cockle-shells,?The volunteers. They took some pride in us,?For we were nimble, and we brought them powder,?Shot, weapons. They were short of these. Ill found,?Ill found. The bitter fruit of evil thrift.?But while obsequious, darting here and there,?We took their messages from ship to ship,?From ship to shore, the moving majesties?Made Calais Roads, cast anchor, all their less?In the middle ward; their greater ships outside?Impregnable castles fearing not assault.
So did we read their thought,