Ride to the Lady | Page 5

his Puritan ball,
To
annul the charms of the flesh, though painted!
I have worn like a jewel the life they gave;
As the ring in mine ear I
can lightly lose it,
If my days be done, why, my days were brave!
If
the end arrive, I as master choose it!
Then fill to the brim, and a health, I say,
To our liege King Charles,
and I pray God bless him!
'T would amend worse vintage to drink
dismay
To the clamorous mongrel pack that press him!
And a health to the fair women, past recall,
That like birds astray
through the heart's hall flitted;
To the lean devil Failure last of all,

And the lees in his beard for a fiend outwitted!
II
THE YOUNG MAN CHARLES STUART REVIEWETH THE
TROOPS ON BLACKHEATH
(Private Constant-in-Tribulation Joyce, May, 1660)
We were still as a wood without wind; as 't were set by a spell Stayed
the gleam on the steel cap, the glint on the slant petronel. He to left of
me drew down his grim grizzled lip with his teeth,-- I remember his
look; so we grew like dumb trees on the heath.
But the people,--the people were mad as with store of new wine; Oh,
they cheered him, they capped him, they roared as he rode
down the line:
He that fled us at Worcester, the boy, the green
brier-shoot, the son Of the Stuart on whom for his sin the great
judgment was done!
Swam before us the field of our shame, and our souls walked afar; Saw
the glory, the blaze of the sun bursting over Dunbar;
Saw the faces of

friends, in the morn riding jocund to fight; Saw the stern pallid faces
again, as we saw them at night!
"O ye blessed, who died in the Lord! would to God that we too Had so
passed, only sad that we ceased his high justice to do, With the words
of the psalm on our lips that from Israel's once came, How the Lord is a
strong man of war; yea, the Lord is his name!
"Not for us, not for us! who have served for his kingdom seven years,
Yea, and yet other seven have we served, sweating blood, bleeding
tears,
For the kingdom of God and the saints! Rachel's beauty made
bold, Yet we bear but a Leah at last to a hearth that is cold!"
Burned the fire while I mused, while I gloomed; in the end came a call;
Settled o'er me a calm like a cloud, spake a voice still and small: "Take
thou Leah to bride, take thou Failure to bed and to board! Thou shalt
rear up new strengths at her knees; she is given
of the Lord!
"If with weight of his right hand, with power, he denieth to deal, And
the smoke clouds, and thunders of guns, and the lightnings
of steel,
Shall the cool silent dews of his grace, in a season of peace,
Not descend on the land, as of old, for a sign, on the fleece?
"Hath he cleft not the rock, to the yield of a stream that is sweet? Hath
he set in the ribs of the lion no honey for meat?
Can he bring not
delight to the desert, and buds to the rod? He will shine, he will visit his
vine; he hath sworn, he is God!"
Then I thought of the gate I rode through on the roan that's
long dead,--
I remember the dawn was but pale, and the stars
overhead;
Of the babe that is grown to a maid, and of Martha, my
wife, And the spring on the wolds far away, and gave thanks for my
life!

THE STORY OF THE "ORIENT"
'T was a pleasant Sunday morning while the spring was in its glory,
English spring of gentle glory; smoking by his cottage door,
Florid-faced, the man-o'-war's-man told his white-head boy the story,
Noble story of Aboukir, told a hundred times before.
"Here, the Theseus_--here, the _Vanguard;" as he spoke
each name sonorous,--
Minotaur, Defence, Majestic, stanch old
comrades of the brine, That against the ships of Brucys made their
broadsides roar
in chorus,--
Ranging daisies on his doorstone, deft he mapped the
battle-line.
Mapped the curve of tall three-deckers, deft as might
a man left-handed,
Who had given an arm to England later on at
Trafalgar.
While he poured the praise of Nelson to the child with eyes
expanded, Bright athwart his honest forehead blushed the scarlet
cutlass-scar.
For he served aboard the Vanguard, saw the Admiral blind and
bleeding Borne below by silent sailors, borne to die as then they
deemed. Every stout heart sick but stubborn, fought the sea-dogs on
unheeding, Guns were cleared and manned and cleared, the battle
thundered,
flashed, and screamed.
Till a cry swelled loud and louder,--towered on fire the
Orient stately,
Brucys' flag-ship, she that carried guns a