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 bayHas doff’d its vernal gray;A peacock breast of emerald shot with blue:Is it peace or war that landsOn 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 strongThan 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 handWeaves for the patriot bandThe 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 trenchTheir mettle did not blench,When mist and midnight closed o’er sad Sedgemoor;Though on those hearts of oakThe tall cuirassiers broke,And Afric’s tiger-bands sprang forth with sullen roar:

Though the loud cannon planeDeath’s lightning-riven lane,Levelling that unskill’d valour, rude, unled:—Yet happier in their fateThan whom the war-fiends waitTo 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 kneltTo 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 theHistoryby 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.

Yes!we confess it! ’mong the sons of Fate,Earth’s great ones, thou art great!As that tall peak which from her silver coneOf maiden snow unstain’dAll 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 hostFrom Devon’s russet coastThrough the fair capital of the garden-West,And that, whose gracious spireLike childhood’s prayer springs heaven-ward unrepress’d,

To Thames march’d legion-like, and at their treadThe 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’dThe welcome of one man! a realm by thee

Deliver’d!—But the crowning hour of fame,The zenith of a nameIs 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 soulImmured in self-control;Saving the thankless in their own despite:—Then turning with a gaspOf joy, to his own land by native right;

Changing the Hall of Rufus and the KeepOf Windsor’s terraced steepFor 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.

1700-1702

Oft in midnight visionsGhostly by my bedStands a Father’s image,Pale discrownéd 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-wallFrom 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 neverSaw 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 sunshineDied in one farewell.Midnight-mirk before meNow my life goes by,For the baby facesAs in vain I cry.

O the little footstepsOn the nursery floor!Lispings light and laughterI shall hear no more!Eyes that gleam’d at wakingThrough their silken bars;Starlike eyes of children,Now beyond the stars!

Where the murder’d MaryWaits the rising sign,They are laid in darkness,Little lambs of mine.Only this can comfort:Safe from earthly harmsChrist the Saviour holds themIn His loving arms:—

Spring eternal round Him,Roses ever fair:—Will His mercy set themAll beside me there?Will their Angels guide meThrough 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 thePalace (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).

August 13: 1704

Oft hast thou acted thy part,My country, worthily thee!Lifted up often thy loadAtlantean, enormous, with glee:—For on thee the burden is laid to upholdWorld-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 bladeIn 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 mornWhen France with Spain, in one realmWelded, one thunderbolt, stood,With one stroke the world to o’erwhelm.—They have pass’d the great stream, they have stretch’d their white campAbove the protecting morass and the dell,Blenheim to Lutzingen, where the long woodIn summer-thick leafage rounds o’er the fell:—England! in nine-fold advanceCast 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 rainOn 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 TroiaBy the camp on the sand, so theyIn the aether-amber of eveningKept 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 stoodAs 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-cloudsDarker and heavier flow,Above them the dominant summitStands clad in calmness and snow;So thou, great Chief, awaiting the turnOf 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 windUrges 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 dividedDown the hillside scatters its course,So in twain their army is partedBy the sabres sabring in force:They have striven enough for honour! . . . and nowCrumble and shatter, and sheer o’er the bankWhere torrent Danube hisses and swirlsSlant 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 himWho 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 RhineTraced o’er the world his red lineIrresistible; while in the breastReign’d devotedness utter, and self for England suppress’d!

O names that enhearten the soul,Blenheim and Waterloo!In no vain worship of gloryThe 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 fieldWhere the war-sick champions lie,By the wreckage of stiffening dead,The anguish that yearns but to die.Ah note of human agony heardThe paean of victory over and through!Ah voice of duty and justice sternThat, 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’sReign 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. Ahundred 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 theAnnals 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.’

1712

We count him wise,Timoleon, who in Syracuse laid downThat 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, whomThe load of double empire, half the worldHis own, within a living tombPress’d down at Yuste,—Spain’s great banner furl’dHis winding-sheet around him,—while he stroveThe impalpable Above

Though mortal yet,To breathe, is blazon’d on the sages’ roll:—High soaring hearts, who could forgetThe sceptre, to the hermitage of the soulRetired, sweet solitudes of the musing eye,And let the world go by!

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

There, when the cloudEased its dark breast in thunder, and the lightRan forth, their hearts recall the loudHoarse onset roar, the flashing of the fight;Those other clouds piled-up in white arrayWhence deadlier lightnings play.

There, when the seasMurmur at midnight, and the dome is clear,And from their seats in heaven the breezeLoosens the stars, to blaze and disappear,And such as Glory! . . . with a sigh suppress’dThey smile, and turn to rest.

—But he, who hereUnglorious 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 worthWith 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 ruleThan man’s coarse glory-test does God bestowHis 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 throneHeld 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 throngBe silent: though no pillar riseIn 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 graveBy village-footsteps daily trodUnconscious: 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 ofsingular 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 videbisPraecipites 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; SeeAppendixE.

1785

Osunset,of the riseUnworthy!—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!

Ghost of a king, he sateIn 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.

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

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

—Told how, o’er the boisterous seasFrom faithless France he danced his wayWhere 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 valeCame from Glenaladale,And that snow-handful grew an avalanche of the hills.

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

—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!

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 glideRiddling the forest-side,And in one moment’s crash an army melts to nought!

—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 coastDeep into seas unknown,Scotland went forth alone,Unfriended, unallied; a handful ’gainst a host.

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 thenFrom central Derby down,To strike the royal town,And to his German realm the usurper thrust again!

—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 nowThe voices closed in earth, in death the pibroch still’d!

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

—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 nowThat ice-brook-temper’d will,Indomitable stillAs on through snow and storm their path the dalesmen plough?

—Yet again the tartans hailOne 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 runsCould aught, save do or die,And Bannockburn so nigh?What cause to higher height could animate her sons?

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 rainThey drive them down the plain:That star alone before Drummossie gilds the night.

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

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!

—He ended, with such griefAs fits and honours manhood:—Then, once moreWeaving that long romantic lay, told o’erThe names of clan and chiefWho perill’d all for him, and died;—and howIn islets, caves, and clefts, and bare high mountain-brow

The wanderer hid, and allHis Odyssey of woes!—Then, agonizedNot by the wrongs he suffer’d and despised,But for the Cause’s fall,—The faces, loved and lost, that for his sakeWere raven-torn and blanch’d, high on the traitor’s stake,

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

—Ah, much enduring heart!Ah soul, miscounsell’d oft and lured astray,In that long life-despair, from wisdom’s wayAnd thy young hero-part!——And yet—Dilexit multum!—In that cryLove’s gentler judgment pleads; thine epitaph a sigh!

The sad old age of Prince Charles is described by Lord Mahon [Stanhope] in his ableHistory: 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 beenspeaking to my father about Scotland and the Highlanders! No one dares to mention these subjects in his presence:’ (Mahon: ch. xxvi).

St. 2Drowsing 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. 5Hebrides; Charles landed at Erisca, an islet between Barra and South Uist, in July 1745.

St. 7Fettering 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. 8Clan Colla; general name for the sept of the Macdonalds.

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

St. 12Ben Aille; a mountain over Loch Ericht in the central Highlands.

St. 13Ice-brook-temper’d; ‘It is a sword of Spain, the ice-brook’s temper’: (Othello: A. 5: S. 2).

St. 14At Falkirk; Jan 17, 1746. ‘On the eve after his victory Charles again encamped on Bannockburn.’

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

St. 17 Anation’s craven rage; SeeAppendixF.

St. 21Love’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 asPaterni 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.

October 21: 1805

Heard ye the thunder of battleLow in the South and afar?Saw ye the flash of the death-cloudCrimson o’er Trafalgar?Such another day neverEngland 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,WhereRedoubtableandBucentaureand greatTrinidadalay;Eager-reluctant to close; for across the bloodshed to beTwo 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 darkTrinidadalower’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 theVictoryne’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 arrayClothe 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 heartAs 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 theVictorywedged 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, theRedoubtable! 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 vainNot 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 poursLife-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 thenFled that heroic soul, and left not his like among men.

Hear ye the heart of a nationGroan, for her saviour is gone;Gallant and true and tender,Child and chieftain in one?Such another day neverEngland will weep for again,When the triumph darken’d the triumph,And the hero of heroes was slain.

1810

As who, while erst the Achaians wall’d the shore,Stood Atlas-like before,A granite face against the Trojan seaOf foes who seethed and foam’d,From that stern rock refused incessantly;

So He, in his colossal lines, astrideFrom sea to river-side,Alhandra past Aruda to the Towers,Our one true man of menFrown’d back bold France and all the Imperial powers.

For when that Eagle, towering in his mightBeyond the bounds of Right,O’ercanopied Europe with his rushing wings,And all the world was proneBefore him as a God, a King of Kings;

When Freedom to one isle, her ancient shrine,O’er the free favouring brineFled, as a girl by lustful war and shameDiscloister’d from her home,Barefoot, with glowing eyes, and cheeks on flame,

And call’d aloud, and bade the realm awakeTo arms for Freedom’s sake:—Yet,—for the land had rusted long in rest,The nerves of war unstrung,Faint thoughts or rash alternate in her breast,

While purblind party-strife with venomous spiteMade plausible wrong seem right,—O then for that unselfish hero-chiefTender and true, and lostAt Trafalgar,—or him, whose patriot grief

Died with the prayer for England, as he died,In vain we might have cried!But this one pillar rose, and bore the warUpon himself alone;Supreme o’er Fortune and her idle star.

For not by might but mind, by skill, not chance,He headed stubborn FranceFrom Tagus back by Douro to Garonne;And on the last, worst, field,The crown of all his hundred victories won,

World-calming Waterloo!—Then, laying byWar’s fearful enginery,In each state-tempest mann’d the wearying helm;E’en through life’s winter-yearsServing with all his strength the ungrateful realm.

O firm and foursquare mind! O solid willFix’d, inexpugnableBy crowns or censures! only bent to doThe day’s work in the day;—Fame with her idiot yelp might come, or go!

O breast that dared with Nature’s patience waitTill the slow wheels of FateStruck the consummate hour; in leash the whileReining his eager bands,The prey in view,—with that foreseeing smile!

And when for blood on Salamanca ridgeMorn broke, or Orthez’ bridge,He read the ground, and his stern squadrons movedAnd placed with artist-skill,Red counters in the perilous game they loved,

Impassive, iron, he and they!—and thenWith eagle-keener kenGlanced through the field, the crisis-instant knew,And through the gap of warHis thundering legions on their victory threw.

Not iron, he, but adamant! Diamond-strong,And diamond-clear of wrong:For truth he struck right out, whate’er befall!Above the fear of fear:Duty for duty’s sake his all-in-all.

Among the many wonders of Wellington’s Peninsular campaign, from Vimiera (1808) to Toulouse (1814), the magnificent unity of scheme preserved throughout is, perhaps, the most wonderful: the dramatic coherence, development, and final catastrophe of triumph. For this, however, readers must be referred to Napier’sHistory; Enough here to add that one of the most decisive steps was the formation of the lines in defence of Lisbon, of which the most northerly ran from Alhandra on the Tagus by Aruda and Zibreira to Torres Vedras near the sea-coast at the mouth of the Zizandre.

When Freedom; the unwise and uncertain management of the campaign by the English home Government has been set forth by Napier with so much emphasis as, in some degree, to impair the reader’s full conviction. Yet the amazing superiority in energy and wisdom with which Wellington towered over his contemporaries, (the field being, however, cleared by the recent deaths of Nelson and Pitt), is so patent, that this attempt to do justice to his greatness is offered with hesitation and apology.

Orthez’ Bridge; crosses the river named Gave de Pau;—and covered Soult’s forces then lying north of it.

November 5: 1854

In the solid sombre mistAnd the drizzling dazzling showerThey may mass them as they list,The gray-coat Russian power;They are fifties ’gainst our tens, they, and more!And from the fortress-townIn silent squadrons downO’er the craggy mountain-crownUnseen, they pour.

On the meagre British lineThat northern ocean press’d;But we never knew how fewWere we who held the crest!While within the curtain-mist dark shadows loomMaking the gray more gray,Till the volley-flames betrayWith one flash the long array:And then, the gloom.

For our narrow line too wideOn the narrow crest we stood,And in pride we named itHome,As we sign’d it with our blood.And we held-on all the morning, and the tideOf foes on that low dykeSurged up, and fear’d to strike,Or on the bayonet-spikeFlung them, and died.

It was no covert, that,’Gainst the shrieking cannon-ball!But the stout hearts of our menWere the bastion and the wall:—And their chiefs hardly needed give command;For they tore through copse and grayMist that before them lay,And each man fought, that day,For his own hand!

Yet should we not forget’Gainst that dun sea of foesHow Egerton bank’d his line,Till in front a cloud uproseFrom the level rifle-mouths; and they divedWith bayonet-thrust beneath;Clench’d teeth and sharp-drawn breath,Plunging to certain death,—And yet survived!

Nor the gallant chief who ledThose others, how he fell;When our men the captive gunsSet free they loved so well,And embraced them as live things, by loss endear’d:—Nor, when the crucial strokeOn their last asylum broke,And e’en those hearts of oakMight well have fear’d,—

How Stanley to the foreThe citadel rush’d to guard,With that old Albuera cryFifty-seventh!Die hard!Yet saw not how his lads clear the crest,And, each one confronting five,The stubborn squadrons rive,And backward, downward, drive,——Death-call’d to rest!

—O proud and sad for thee!And proud and sad for thoseWho on that stern foreign fieldNot seeking, found repose,As for England dear their life they gladly shed!Yet in death bethought them where,Not on these hillsides bare,But within sweet English airTheir own home-dead

In a green and sure reposeBeside God’s house are laid:—Then faced the charging foesUnmoved, unhelp’d, unafraid:—For they knew that God would rate each shatter’d limbDeath-torn for England’s sake,And in Christ’s own mercy takeOn the day when souls shall wake,Their souls to Him!

The battle of Inkermann was mainly fought on a ridge of rock which projects from the south-eastern angle of Sebastapol: the English centre of operations being the ill-fortified line named the ‘Home Ridge.’ The numbers engaged in field-operations, roughly speaking, were 4,000 English against 40,000 Russians.

The curtain-mist; The battle began about 6a.m.under heavy mist and drizzling rain, which lasted for several hours. Through this curtain the Russian forces coming down from the hill were seen only when near enough to darken the mist by their masses.

Egerton; He commanded four companies of the 77th, and charged early in the battle with brilliant success;—his men, about 250, scattering 1500 Russians.

The gallant chief; General Soimonoff, killed just after Egerton’s charge.

With that old Albuera cry; Prominent in the defence of the English main base of operations, the Home Ridge, against a weighty Russian advance, was Captain Stanley, commanding the 57th. This regiment, it was said, at the battle of Albuera had been encouraged by its colonelwith the words, ‘Fifty-seventh, die hard’:—and Stanley, having less than 400 against 2000, thought the time had come to remind his ‘Die-hards’ of their traditional gallantry;—after which he himself at once fell mortally wounded.

June: 1857

Fourteen,all told, no more,Pack’d close within the doorOf that old idol-shrine:And at them, as they stand,And from that English band,The leaden shower went out, and Death proclaim’d themMine!Fourteen against an army; they, no more,Had ’scaped Cawnpore.

With each quick volley-flashThe bullets ping and plash:Yet, though the tropic noonWith furnace-fury brokeThe sulphur-curling smoke,Scarr’d, sear’d, thirst-silenced, hunger-faint, they stood:And soonA dusky wall,—death sheltering life,—uproseAgainst their foes.

Behind them now is castThe horror of the past;The fort that was no fort,The deep dark-heaving floodOf foes that broke in bloodOn our devoted camp, victims of fiendish sport;From that last huddling refuge lured to fly,—And help so nigh!

Down toward the reedy shoreThat fated remnant pour,Had Fear and Death beside;And other spectres yetOf darker vision flit,—Old unforgotten wrongs, the harshness and the prideOf that imperial race which sway’d the landBy sheer command!

O little hands that strainA mother’s hand in vainWith terror vague and vast:—Parch’d eyes that cannot shedOne tear upon the head,A young child’s head, too bright for such fell death to blast!Ah! sadder captive train ne’er filed to doomThrough vengeful Rome!

From Ganges’ reedy shoreThe death-boats they unmoor,Stack’d high with hopeless hearts;A slowly-drifting freightThrough the red jaws of Fate,Death-blazing banks between, and flame-wing’d arrow-darts:—Till down the holy stream those cargoes pourTheir flame and gore.

In feral order slowThe slaughter-barges go,Martyrs of heathen scorn:While, saved from flood and fireTo glut the tyrant’s ire,The quick and dead in one, from their red shambles borne,Maiden and child, in that dark grave they throw,Our well of woe!

Ah spot on which we gazeThrough Time’s all-softening haze,In peace, on them at peaceAnd taken home to God!—O whether ’neath the sod,Or sea, or desert sand, what care,—if that releaseFrom this dim shadow-land, through pathways dim,Bear us to Him!

But those fourteen, the while,Wrapt in the present, smileOn their grim baffled foe;Till o’er the wall he heapsThe fuel-pile, and steepsWith all that burns and blasts;—and now, perforce, they goHack’d down and thinn’d, beyond that temple-doorBut Seven,—no more.

O Elements at strifeWith this poor human life,Stern laws of Nature fair!By flame constrain’d to flyThe treacherous stream they try,—And those dark Ganges waves suck down the souls they bear!—Ah, crowning anguish! Dawn of hope in sight;Then, final night!

And now, Four heads, no more,Life’s flotsam flung ashore,They lie:—But not as theyWho o’er a dreadful pastThe heart’s-ease sigh may cast!Too worn! too tried!—their lives but given them as a prey!Whilst all seems now a dream, a nought of nought,For which they fought!

—O stout Fourteen, who bledO’erwhelm’d, not vanquishéd!In those dark days of bloodHow many dared, and died,And others at their sideFresh heroes, sprang,—a race that cannot be subdued!—Like them who pass’d Death’s vale, and lived;—the FourSaved from Cawnpore!

The English garrison at Cawnpore, with a large number of sick, women, and children, were besieged in their hastily made and weak earthworks by Nana Sahib from June 6 to June 25, 1857. Compelled to surrender, under promise of safe convoy down the Ganges, on the 27th they were massacred by musketry from the banks; the thatch of the river-boats being also fired. The survivors were murdered and thrown into the well upon Havelock’s approach on July 15.

One boat managed to escape unburnt on June 27. It was chased through the 28th and 29th, by which time the crowd on board was reduced to fourteen men, one of whom, Mowbray-Thomson, has left a narrative equally striking from its vividness and its modesty. Seven escaped from the small temple in which they defended themselves; four only finally survived to tell the story.

A dusky wall; ‘After a little time they stood behind a rampart of black and bloody corpses, and fired, with comparative security, over this bulwark:’ (Kaye:Sepoy War: B. V: ch. ii).

October 5: 1860

Before the hero’s grave he stood,—A simple stone of rest, and bareTo all the blessing of the air,—And Peace came down in sunny floodFrom the blue haunts of heaven, and smiledUpon the household reconciled.

—A hundred years have hardly flownSince in this hermitage of the West’Mid happy toil and happy rest,Loving and loved among his own,His days fulfill’d their fruitful round,Seeking no move than what they found.

Sweet byways of the life withdrawn!Yet here his country’s voice,—the cryOf man for natural liberty,—That great Republic in her dawn,The immeasurable Future,—broke;And to his fate the Leader woke.

Not eager, yet, the blade to bareBefore the Father-country’s eyes,——E’en if a parent’s rights, unwise,With that bold Son he grudged to share,In manhood strong beyond the sea,And ripe to wed with Liberty!

—Yet O! when once the die was thrown,With what unselfish patient skill,Clear-piercing flame of changeless will,The one high heart that moved aloneSedate through the chaotic strife,—He taught mankind the hero-life!

As when the God whom Pheidias moulds,Clothed in marmoreal calm divine,Veils all that strength ’neath beauty’s line,All energy in repose enfolds;—So He, in self-effacement great,Magnanimous to endure and wait.

O Fabius of a wider world!Master of Fate through self-controlAnd utter stainlessness of soul!And when war’s weary sign was furl’d,Prompt with both hands to welcome inThe white-wing’d Peace he warr’d to win!

Then, to that so long wish’d repose!The liberal leisure of the farm,The garden joy, the wild-wood charm;Life ebbing to its perfect closeLike some white altar-lamp that palesAnd self-consumed its light exhales.

No wrathful tempest smote its wingAgainst life’s tender flickering flame;No tropic gloom in terror came;Slow waning as a summer-springThe soul breathed out herself, and slept,And to the end her beauty kept.

Then, as a mother’s love and fearsThrong round the child, unseen but felt,So by his couch his nation knelt,Loving and worshipping with her tears:—Tears!—late amends for all that debtDue to the Liberator yet!

For though the years their golden roundO’er all the lavish region roll,And realm on realm, from pole to pole,In one beneath thy stars be bound:The far-off centuries as they flow,No whiter name than this shall know!

—O larger England o’er the wave,Larger, not greater, yet!—With joyOf generous hearts ye hail’d the BoyWho bow’d before the sacred grave,With Love’s fair freight across the seaSped from the Fatherland to thee!

And Freedom on that Empire-throneBlest in his Mother’s rule revered,On popular love a kingdom rear’d,And rooted in the years unknown,—Land rich in old Experience’ storeAnd holy legacies of yore,

And youth eternal, ever-new,—From the high heaven look’d out:—and sawThis other later realm of Law,Of that old household first-born true,And lord of half a world!—and smiledUpon the nations reconciled.

The date prefixed is that of the visit which the Prince of Wales paid to the tomb of Washington: carrying home thence, as one of the most distinguished of his hosts said, ‘an unwritten treaty of amity and alliance.’

Mount Vernon on the Potomac, named after the Admiral, was the family seat of Augustine, father to George Washington, and the residence of the latter from 1752. But all his early years also had been spent in that neighbourhood, in those country pursuits which formed his ideal of life: and thither, on resigning his commission as Commander-in-Chief, he retired in 1785; devoting himself to farming and gardening with all the strenuousness and devoted passion of a Roman of Vergil’s type. And there (Dec. 1799) was he buried.

Not eager; When the ill-feeling between England and America deepened after 1765, Washington ‘was less eager than some others in declaring or declaiming against the mother country;’ (Mahon:Hist. ch. lii).

Ripe to wed with Liberty; SeeAppendixG.

And to the end; See Petrarch’s beautiful lines:Trionfo della Morte, cap. I.

Due to the Liberator; Compare the epitaph by Ennius on Scipio:

Hic est ille situs, cui nemo civi’ neque hostisQuivit pro factis reddere opis pretium.

History, it may be said with reasonable confidence, records no hero more unselfish, no one less stained with human error and frailty, than George Washington.

The years unknown; It is to Odin, whatever date be thereby signified, that our royal genealogy runs back.

1871

In the drear November gloomAnd the long December night,There were omens of affright,And prophecies of doom;And the golden lamp of life burn’d spectre-dim,Till Love could hardly markThe little sapphire sparkThat only made the darkMore dark and grim.

There not around aloneWatch’d sister, brother, wife,And she who gave him life,White as if wrought in stoneUnheard, invisible, by the bed of deathStood eager millions by;And as the hour drew nigh,Dreading to see him die,Held their breath.

Where’er in world-wide skiesThe Lion-Banner burns,A common impulse turnsAll hearts to where he lies:—For as a babe the heir of that great throneIs weak and motionless;And they feel the deep distressOn wife and mother press,As ’twere their own.

O! not the thought of raceFrom Asian Odin drawnIn History’s mythic dawn,Nor what we downward trace,—Plantagenet, York, Edward, Elizabeth,—Heroic names approved,—The blood of the people moved;But that, ’mongst those he loved,He fought with death.

And if the Reason said‘’Gainst Nature’s law and deathPrayer is but idle breath,’—Yet Faith was undismayed,Arm’d with the deeper insight of the heart:—Nor can the wisest sayWhat other laws may swayThe world’s apparent way,Known but in part.

Nor knew we on that lifeWhat burdens may be cast;What issues wide and vastDependent on that strife:—This only:—’Twas the son of those we loved!That in his Mother’s handPeace set her golden wand;’Mid heaving realms, one landLaw-ruled, unmoved.

—He fought, and we with him!And other Powers were by,Courage, and Science high,Grappling the spectre grimOn the battle-field of quiet Sandringham:And force of perfect Love,And the will of One above,Chased Death’s dark squadrons off,And overcame.

—O soul, to life restoredAnd love, and wider aimThan private care can claim,—And from Death’s unsheath’d sword!By suffering and by safety dearer made:—O may the life new-foundThrough life be wisdom-crown’d,—Till in the common groundThou too art laid!

Back to Index Next