&U)RY JJ AND NATIONAL POEMS W.C.BENNETT. THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES ^ 5> gjefritafton. TO THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P., D.C.L., &c, STATESMAN, ORATOR, AND POET, WHOSE NAME IS ALREADY WEITTEN ON "OUE GLOEY-EOLL," AND IN THE HEAETS OF ENGLISHMEN, I DEDICATE THIS ATTEMPT TO MAKE THE GLOEIES OF OUE 1I1STOHV " HOUSEHOLD WOEDS " ON THE LIPS OF THE PEOPLE. • "PR PREFACE Fragments of " Our Glory-Roll " and of " The Fall of Harald Hardrada" appeared in the Collected Edition of my Poems pub- lished by Messrs. Eoutledge in their Series of the Poets. They now appear complete for the first time. Of the remaining poems in the volume, the attempt to com- plete Lord Macaulay's famous lines "The Armada/' and "Old Benbow " and " The False Alarm " are here first printed. Blackheath, Dec, 1866. 824016 CONTENTS PAGE OUR GLORY-ROLL 1 THE FALL OF HARALD HARDRADA 31 THE WATCH OF THE CRUSADES ... .... .50 QUEEN ELEANOR'S VENGEANCE 59 THE ARMADA : A COMPLETION OF LORD MACAULAY'S FRAGMENT . . 79 MARSTON MOOR 91 OLD BENBOW 98 UFTON COURT 104 THE FALSE ALARM . 110 TRAFALGAR 114 THE DEEDS OF WELLINGTON 122 THE DEATH-MARCH OF WELLINGTON 133 GOD BLESS THE DEAR OLD LAND ! 136 THE LUCK OF EDEN HALL 141 ENGLAND 146 O my land, mother land. How our hearts within us yearn To you ! How our hearts within us burn Your mighty love to earn, And some deed, with head or hand, That shall make you yet more grand, O my land, In our turn, To do! O my land, mighty land,, How your past's great thousand years, For you, Have won, 'mid toils and tears, From dangers, joys and fears, A rule to your great hand That the deeds must make more grand, O my land, That our years Must do. O my land, glorious land, Who, to glory, is as dear As you ! Not for us is it to hear That your present has a peer ; XI 'Tis for us to make you stand High in glory, sole and grand, O my land, Your work here, To do. O my land, chainless land, Freedom laughs her strength to see In you ; To the nations, chained and free, She gives you, their hope, to be ; Stronger, in her strength, to stand, Be it yours ! that work, your hand, O my land, For the free May do. Xll O my land, my own land, O let right still be strong In you ! To you God bids belong Might supreme, that the wrong That would trample earth, your hand For the weak may still withstand ; O my land, Right thou'rt strong To do. O my land, my own land, Do the nations, scorning say, From you, Rule and might even to-day From your grasp shall pass away ! Xlll Fools ! to you shall God's right hand Still give lordship and command ; Who, my land, Your decay Shall view ! O my land, peerless land, Time, to you, nor shame nor scorn, Shall do. Still to you are great souls born, From whom life must first be torn Ere a foe wrench from vour hand Right or sway that makes you grand ; Sweet, my land, Were death, borne For you. XIV O my land, my own land, Earth is great with nations sown By you ; Earth is girt by you alone With free rules that proudly own You their mother, that would stand, "Were there strife, at your right hand, Your will, land, That alone, To do. O my land, mightiest land, As it has been, it shall be With you ; Still all coming time shall see Your great brood but wax more free; XV Yet, still mightier, shall you stand Through the future, yet more grand, To God, land, If you be Still true. OUR GLORY-ROLL. O my land, thou land of heroes ! through my thoughts what glories pour, As thy mighty past to memory tells thy roll of glory o'er, As it numbers up in trumpet-tones thy hosts of mighty names. All the deathless deeds with which thy brood have matched the ancient fames ! Saints and heroes ! mighty mother, well exultant may'st thou be, As thou think'st of all the great ones all thy years have borne to thee ! Saints and heroes ! each a glory, still creative, still to last, Still to throng thy mightier future with the grandeurs of thy past, is 2 OUR GLORY-ROLL. Still to haunt thy countless children with the ghosts of wonders done, Till with deeds that match their fathers', each shall prove himself their son. Saints and heroes ! who may name all who have toiled and thought and bled For thy sake, since, from thy fierce ones, Home and Caesar almost fled, Since, but dim-seen through thy long-past, with thine Arthur, knight on knight, All the might of all thy Table Round streamed on through Badou's fight. Since from his freed Saxon England, mightiest in his mightiest reign, Thy great Alfred's dragons swept the sea, and hurled to hell the Dane, Since thy flarold to Hardrada gave seven feet of English shore, Since his Saxon blood made Hastings' hills holy for evermore. Thine were they, the great of heart of old, who dared draw freemen's breath, Though it could be only drawn by them within the grasp of death ; So lived he, thy Saxon Hereward, in life, in death, still free. So lived they, green Sherwood's outlaws bold, so dear to song and thee. OUR GLOBY-EOLL. 3 So thy mighty will, "live free ! die free I", thy Wallace dared to learn, And thy Bruce and Douglas rang it down to us from Bannockburn. Praise to them, our Norman fathers, whose mailed gauntlets rent away From the despot's grasp at Runuymede the rights we hold to-day, To De Montfort, thy " Great Baron !" he whose strong arm planted d First our rightful power to rule ourselves, the power that still we keep. Nor, if they blindly strove for wrong, name we with aught but pride Strong a Becket and proud Wolsey, who for thy sake strove and died ; Nor forget we those, thy glory in the old and stormy years, Those of Ascalon and Agincourt, of Crecy and Poitiers. From thy lion-hearted Richard to thy Edwards, peerless two, Who, with Manny and with Chandos, showc:! what thine could dare and do, From thy Talbot, France's terror, and thy Hal, who smote her down, To each bowman and each billmau good, who struck for thy renown. Cold is his heart who even to-day without a throb can be For these, his fearless fathers, still the boast of fame and thee. Yet saintlier laurels have been Avon by these, thy mighty brood, 4 OUR GLORY-ROLL. And holier glories than are reaped in fiercest fields of blood. Thy martyrs, who shall count them, who, for God and conscience' sake, Have, dauntless, faced the screw and rack, and smiled upon the stake, Through the dungeon and the torture, on to death and heaven have trod, Caught, like the prophet rapt of old in fire right up to God ! Thine is the still sweet savour of thy Latimer's blessed name, Thine thy Hooper's saintly glory and thy white-haired Ridley's fame. For God and holiest truth and thee, thou saw'st thy Cranmer stand Calm 'mid the flames, while in the fire blackened his thrust-out hand. And thine were all of whom to tell the tongue of History tires, The souls, to live on high, who died on earth in Smithfield's fires. Their pains are past ; their trials here, their bliss hath all forgot, Yet fettered be the faith they freed, when we tell of them not ! O days, o'erfilled with thought and deed ! O days of high emprize, That, from our Lion-Queen's great reign, flash on our dazzled eyes, Who can, in tones that fitly tell their greatness, utter o'er The names that were earth's wonders then, and shall be evermore ! OUE GLORY-ROLL. One then, O mother-land, was thine, still peerless and alone, Thy Shakespeare, greatest gift that God has given His earth to own, Whose equal Time shall never see, as it has never seen, Sun in the heavens of glory, sole to be, as he has been ; And thine, old land, were then the stars his light alone could dim, Thy Spenser, Jonson, Beaumont, all who only pale by him ; Thy Bacon, lord of thought, who saw, with all-beholding eyes, The ways where wisdom always dwells, and bared them to the wise, Thy Burleigh and thy Walsingham, thy Sydney and De Vere, Who gave thee might and conquest then, to all thy foes a fear. Then didst thou send thy sea-hearts forth, dreadless, afar to gain Knowledge and spoils and lands for thee, despite of hell and Spain. For thee, thy Drake dared gird the earth, God and his heart his guide, For thee thy Raleigh wrote and bled, thy Grenville dauntless died. Thy Hawkins and thy Frobishcr and Cavendish, for thee Brought wounds and gold and galleons back from every unknown sea. For thee, no fear of pike or shot, or storm or odds, they knew, Winning from death Panama's bars, the ingots of Pern. 6 OUR GLORY-ROLL. For thee thy countless ocean-kings hung on the Great Fleet's track, Till the Invincible, aghast, fled, foiled and shattered, back ; Till these, thy Vikings, with red hands, gave, for all time, to thee Unfettered faith and thy proud right to rule on every sea. O mighty Tudor times ! O souls and deeds of greatness ! well, Old land, may'st thou still, with proud eyes, of these unto us tell. Nor need'st thou lower for after-deeds, O land, thy mighty voice, Nor bid us less, in later fames, to evermore rejoice, To reverence those to whose free tongues and hearts and hands we know, Our priceless power to live this hour self-ruled and free, we owe. Who knows them not ? who needs this hour their great names to be told Who from the paltering Stuarts wrung the rights to-day we hold ? No blood of thine is that, old land, which does not kindle high At thought of those who, for thy sake and freedom's, smiled to die, Who, by slit nose and grubbed-out ears and branded cheeks, unawed, Unblenching fronted Strafford's frown, and dared the hate of Laud. Yes, Star Chambers might torture, and their High Commissions kill, OUR GLORY-FxOLL. 7 The tyrant fins and pillory, these stood for thy great rights still. Stood for them in the evil days when Buckingham had power, When renegades, like Wentworth and like base Hyde, had their hour, When cringing things that scoffed at laws, of Eliot's death made sport, And strove to doom us, like themselves, the gagged slaves of a court, AVhen Popish prelates, fell as Rome's, the people's laws trod down, And basely would have bound us serfs to priests and to the crown, Then, England, in thy darkest hour, when men's hearts well might fear, When thy black night grew but more black, nor hope of day seemed near, Then how they rose, rose up, all thine, through evil as through good, Then, for thy great free life and ours, thy Pym and Hampden stood, Then their strong cry for thy old laws through all the hushed land rang, And armed and stern, thy roused-up sons to guard their birthright spraug, And when the tyrant loosed at last his hell-hounds on their prey, And through thy ways his cry went forth to plunder, bind, and slay, Then with lit eye, thou well might'st see how gathered to thy side The stern ones who on Marston Moor broke fiery Rupert's pride, Whom Naseby's day and Worcester's fray, thy conquering soldiers saw, 8 OUR GLORY-ROLL. Who fought thy fight at red Dunbar, Wexford, and Philiphaugh, Thy Roundhead ranks, thy Ironsides, who down the scoffers trod On many a field of blood for thee, for law and right and God. Then towered aloft thy Cromwell, thine, who knew thy word alone, Thine and his God's, and in that strength brake down the tyrant's throne. Then through the battle-smoke of days, thy Blake thou smil'dst to see Shatter the vaunting Dutchman's pride and give renown to thee. No nobler hearts, no dearer names than these, old land, hast thou ; Dear were they to thee while they breathed ; dear are they to us now. When dear they are not, then thy end, old land, shall not be far ; Thy glory too shall die with theirs who made us what we are. Nor in thy lowest depths of shame, thy sorest of mischance, When thy lewd basest Stuart sold, for gold, thy power to France, When mistresses misruled thy state and bastards were thy peers, When thou wert fallen to be the spoil of corsairs of Algiers, When bloody Claverhouse dragooned thy servants of the Lord, And preached the faith of Laud again with thumbscrew, boot, and sword, OUR GLORY-ROLL. 9 When from thy once unfearing homes, the heart seemed to have fled, And banned and gagged, reviled and scorned, even hope in thee seemed dead, Even then, in that dark evil hour, in that thrice-cursed reign, For testifiers for thy right thou didst not ask in vain ; From stern and plain God-fearing men, who feared none else, came forth A cry unto the heavens for thee, from out the blood-soaked North ; And in thy London, freedom's home, beneath thv tvrant's eve, Rose some to dare the strife for thee, for thee content to die. AY hen thou dost count thv martyrs o'er, thou dost remember well How Russell on the scaffold bled, how murdered Sydney fell ; But their blood sank not in the earth ; its cry was never dumb, Until thy day of vengeance full, till freedom's hour was come. Thy time of torture and disgrace yet longer might endure, Thy Romish Stuart, worst and last, might drench with blood Sedgemoor; Might gloat while drunken Jeffreys joyed to do his bloody work, Might give thy daughters to the will of the foul Lambs of Kirke, Their curses and our endless hate, by hell's own deeds mighl earn, 10 OUR GLORY -ROLL. As merciless to all as when his foot could Monmouth spurn : But still the cry of righteous blood unto the heavens went up ; God, in his time, to the accurst dealt out their own red cup, Gave them to taste, when thou didst arm and William's Dutchmen came, Their victims' portion, hate and scorn and exile, want and shame, Gave the dark evil soul of James in his grey age to feel Such bitterness as his own hand had dealt to Alice Lisle ; Gave him and his sons' sons to know what they he'd exiled felt, Their tools to kneel on scaffolds where his victims once had knelt, Till the Boyne and red Culloden all their savage clans clove down And made us freemen, nevermore to dread a Stuart's frown, No more, for all our fathers won, to battle, or to be, Save what we are, thanks unto them ! those who can but be free. And since the evil Stuart days in mercy God bade cease, Since under kings that rule by law and love, we've dwelt in peace, What souls have been thine own, to tell of whom thy tongue delights ! What glories have been thine, what deeds, what ever-broadening rights ! OUR GLORY-ROLL. 11 What might and thought and wealth and rule, that still know greater growth ! What triumphs still in war and peace ! thou, still the first in both; What statesmen, mightier than Greece knew, thou here hast heard at home, What orators thine ears have stilled that shamed the tongues of Rome, Since Somers, pure as wise, for thee in stormiest councils fought, Since lower-so uled, but all thine own, thy Walpole for thee wrought, Since Chatham's rushing thunders at his foes and thine were hurled, And, with the bolts of his fierce words, he smote to awe the world, Since, for thy rule, his mighty will launched Wolfe afar, to wrest From France's hold, on Abraham's heights, her empire of the West, Since, eagle-eyed, with fierce delight, he saw thy sway increased, Where thy young Clive at Plassey grasped for thee the trembling East; Thine was the brain that Hastings owned, for widest empire fit, Thine Pitt's clear thought, and Fox's fire and Sheridan's bright wit, Thine Grattau's grasp and Curran's strength and Burke, to whom 'twas known To soar to heights, unsealed by thought, save in his words alone ; 12 OUR GLORY-ROLL. Thine, too was Canning's airy grace, and thine the living fire That scorched and seared from Brougham's lips the foes who dared his ire ; Of later names, why need I tell, of whom renown is loud, Of living fames that on my thought in world-known greatness crowd ! To-day thy Cobden's love for all, strikes the world's barred ways free, Thy Bright is thundering for the rights of all who spring from thee ; Not from thy might/ blood old land thy ancient power has died, While, great as all thy greatest gone, thy Gladstone is thy pride ; Nor shall thy glory pale to-day, thy old renown grow dim, While Chatham's fire and Fox's force and Burke's thought live in him. Exult, old land, be proud of heart that thou hast these to praise Who mate thy living glories now with those of ancient days, Who highest thought and noblest speech from wisdom's lips have caught Amid the thunders of debate and the fierce clash of thought, Who with great laws still bless thy sons and make our hours sublime, And thee amid the nations still the awe and boast of time. Thine have been war's red triumphs, thine, unnumbered sons whose breath OUR GLORY-ROLL. 13 Was spent to reap renown for thee in fiercest fields of death ; What conquests and what boasts were thine o'er vaunting Louis, when Thy Churchill proved how well he'd been the pupil of Turenne, When Marlborough's hand from the Great King rent rule and power away At Ramilies and Blenheim, Oudenarde and Malplaquet ; Still, with quick breath and flushing blood, the conquering tale is read Of how before him Tallard fell and boastful Villars fled, How, Wellington of that old time, on many a field of fight, Before him France's strength went down, her marshals spurred in flight ; And only unto him, to him, and one yet greater, yield Thy uearer sons who hurled thy rauks through many a famous field, From when thy dying Wolfe exulting heard, " The French — they run ! " From when thy boyish Clive won states beneath the Indian sun, From when Gibraltar fire-girt saw thy Elliott bide the shock Of empires armed, and fling them back foiled from its unwon rock, From when upon Corunna's heights thy sons turned in their track, And with worn ranks, beneath dead Moore, struck their pursuers back, From when thy Abcrcrombic's hand at Alexandria tore 14 OUR GLORY-ROLL. * From the fierce eagle's clutch the prey the Mameluke dropped before, Till when, across green Maida's plain, thy bayonets Stuart flung In answer stern to the vain boasts of Regnier's taunting tongue, Till when thy Marlborough's greater peer, thy Wellesley, first, away In the far East, gave to thy flags Argaum and fierce Assaye ; Till Junot, Marmont, Massena, and Victor he overthrew In fields almost as stern as thine, O world-known Waterloo ! O old Yalkyrii, work ye had, ye choosers of the slain, In all his hundred conquering strifes that freed the fields of Spain ; Busaco, Talavera, Salamanca, well each name Thou know'st, old land ; well know'st thou, too, Yittoria's greater fame ; Oft hast thou told of Graham and Barossa ; oft hast told How, from red Albuera's ridge, thy ranks, the Frenchmen, rolled, Through what a fiery breach at last strong Badajos was won, How grimly St. Sebastian fell, thy prey, to Wellington, And how he gave our conquering flags at last out to the breeze, And bade them gaze on France, their spoil, from off the Pyrenees. In vain against him there did Soult lead on his gleaming lines; OUR GLORY-ROLL. 15 Through pass and cloud, he hurled them down from Ivantelly's pines, Till hunted back they turned, and he the strife did not refuse, And smote them yet again and shamed their eagles at Toulouse ; But yet by this, thy mightiest son, a mightier foe was seen When the great Conqueror vainly strove to win thy ridge, St. Jean ; A sterner strife, a nobler hour, old land, you never knew Than when you smote Napoleon down, destroyed at Waterloo. Yet, O ye years that we have seen, ye too our blood could stir With deeds that show that we, this hour, are all our fathers were ; No nobler hearts, through Fontenoy or lost Almanza, kept Their even tread and steady pulse, while down their ranks were swept, Than those that at Mooltan's far walls with Edwardes did not fail, Than those that, in Jellalabad, upbore thy flag with Sale, Than Nott and Pollock, they whose arms retrieved thy shame and rule, And planted once again, in might, thy standards on Cabul ; Dear as Cornwallis's to thee, as Peterborough's, dear, His fame who crushed at Hydrabad its many a fierce Ameer, 1G OUR GLORY-ROLL. Who, counting not the swarming swords whose strokes his weak ranks thinned, Unpausing, closed at Meeanee with the wild hosts of Scinde, He, thy Napier, he of that brood whom glory holds above All others in our own great days, for ever, in its love ; Nor when the fiery hosts of Sikhs the Sutlej dared swarm o'er To know thy might at Aliwal, Moodkee, and Ferozepore, Didst thou in vain for strong ones ask in that thrice-dangerous hour To smite them back, and guard unscathed thy glory and thy power ; Thy Hardinge, Gough and Harry Smith, thy Littler, well they kept Thy name unshamed, while, victors, through Sobraon's guns they swept ; And, when against thee yet again in might the smitten rose, At bloody Chillianwallah and Ramnugger crushed thy foes, Rolled conquering on through steel and fire, through Gujerat's red roar, And gave new nations to thy rule and throned thee in Lahore. And, later still, new triumphs flash fresh glories on our eyes, And, nearer yet, old land, our day gives thee new fames to prize ; OUR GLORY-ROLL. 17 How ever yet thy mighty blood with fiery gladness thrills As thou rememberest how thy ranks charged up the Alma's hills. How, all unsuccoured, with the Turk, thy boldest gathered scars With Williams, while the Russian hordes rolled from the mounds of Kars, How thou didst weep proud tears for those who in the deathless ride Of Balaclava, at thy word, without a murmur, died, How never yet a fiercer thrill of joy through thy veins ran Than when thou heard'st thy soldiers' deeds at gory Inkermann ; Long, through all future coming years, shalt thou delight thy soul With thoughts of those, thy sons, who won for thee Sebastopol. But brighter yet shall blaze thine eye and deeper flush thy cheek, When thou unto thy children shalt of later glories speak, When thou shalt, wrung with rage and grief and wondering joy tell o'er Thy wrath and tears and vengeance for the slaughtered of Cawnpore, Tell how, when, sudden, fierce and fell thy trusted Sepoys rose, Thy sons, unknowing fear or doubt, unquailing faced their foes, But knew that they were thine, thy heart and their own hearts but knew, D 18 OUR GLORY-ROLL. And, in that dreaclest of thine hours, still unto both were true ; Long unto distant marvelling years shall the proud tale be sung, How Wilson, Hodson, and thy few to Delhi's hill-tops clung, Clung, victors over foes, disease and death, with lips all dumb To murmurs, till their hour of strength and vengeance full, should come, Till thy own Lawrence, whose strong arm upheld thee there, at last Thy Nicholson's fierce strength of Sikhs into their weak ranks cast, And in their might they straight went down and cleansed away thy shame, And smote and trod on Delhi's hate and gave its homes to flame ; Then, when thou think' st of all who stood by thee that hour, with those Who were thy noblest, thou dost tell of Outram, Peel, and Rose, Of Kavanagh, of Arrah's few, by thousands girt about, Who paled not, and of grey-haired Clyde who trod the fierce strife out. But quicker yet, with eager love, at one name thou wilt start While there shall beat a single throb, old land, within thy heart, While thou hast one faint gleam of life or memory, to thee, Greatness and pride, above all pride, thy Havelock shall be ; OUE GLORY-ROLL. 19 Yes, in the weakness of thine age, thy memory must be dim Ere thou shalt cease, with love how dear, with awe to tell of him, Tell how, defying foes, disease, and the fierce blasting sun, He thundered on, through armies crushed, each day a battle won, Swept, conquering, on, resistless, on, through all that barred his way, To where the hosts of howling fiends in Lucknow girt their prey, Then, through the storm of fire, at last fought on to InghV side, And, when thy children all were saved, blessed God and thee, and died. But nobler crowns than those that earth has wreathed around thy brow, From every sea that knows thy sails and owns thy rule, hast thou ; What oceans have not given thee fame, lent to thy heroes, graves, Thy mighty, caught to them whilst thou didst thunder-calm their waves, Thy sea-kings who from age to age have shown the heart of Drake, Have matched the deeds of Frobisher, and lived the days of Blake ; Through all the centuries, through our veins has leapt the salt sea-spray ; They who joy not to front the storm, no sons of thine are they ; Thou, throned upon the subject isles, what triumphs, land, to thee, 20 OUR GLORY-ROLL. What spoils and rules, thy brave have borne from every wind-swept sea ! How have they joyed as through the thundering lines they cleft their way, As gun to gun, for fiery hours, amid the foe they lay, As their fierce broadsides, crash on crash, through side and porthole roared, And shroud and sail and splintering mast went over by the board ! Thunder, thou sea, the mighty fames that made our glory sure, How Edward smote crushed France at Sluys, and Bedford at Harfleur; Fitly, how Spain's Armada came and was not, must be sung, O Earth, to thee in ocean-bursts by tempests to thee flung. O savage tongues of storms and seas, wild voices of the deep, Chant ye the world-known deeds of Blake, ye sang to death's own sleep, Repeat, with savage love, the days, with you, that Russell knew, The deeds that Rooke and Shovel dared in ocean's sight to do, How Anson streamed our conquering flag in triumph round the world, How Vernon its consuming fire to Darien's winds unfurled, How through the shoals of Quiberon, through its white breakers' roar, In storm and fire, our fearless Hawke, brave Confians, clutched and tore ; Nor yet forget how, one to ten, bold Benbow struck Du Casse. OUR GLORY-ROLL. 21 Nor how keen Rodney and stout Hood in thunder crushed De Grasse, How, on that day that brightens still June with its far renown, Our Howe from many a crashing mast tore the white lilies down. Still in your dash, O wind-swept waves, these glories England hears, Still swells to catch St. Vincent's roar and Camperdown's fierce cheers, Still hearkens, with lit eyes, to all told by the billows' roar Of Exmouth, Cochrane, and Napier, and fames unnumbered more. But one great name, O mighty land, dearer than all to thee, With countless memories to thine ear is thundered by the sea; No other, with an equal love, can bid thee throb the while Thou tak'st his to thy mother-heart with all exultant smile ; Unto thy lips, O sceptred land, what other glories are As dear as his whose broadsides stilled the Nile and Trafalgar, Who, from a hundred battle-days, for thee, red conquest, tore, And gave to thee thy ocean-rule and glory evermore ? These were thy thunderbolts of war that clothed thee in their might, llobed thee with power and rule that earth might tremble in thy sight, 22 OUR GLORY-ROLL. But when thy clays of conquering fields, in goodness, God bade cease, What great ones have exalted thee with conquests won from peace ! Through God's vast night his countless worlds, as at creation, sang,- Darkness to man, as on that morn when from His hand they sprang ; Who should His mysteries dare to read ? what thought might dare, through space, Endless, to tread the deep profound, with Him His ways to trace, Back from the depths of night to bear the words that should unfold The law^s by which the suns are ruled, by which the worlds are rolled ! 2>Fot from swart Egypt's priestly lips, not in the Hebrew flame Of prophet fire, not from keen Greek, to man that wisdom came ; Thee, land, He chose out from all lands, His mysteries forth to show, Thy tongue, to bid the sons of men His wondrousness to know, Through thee, He spake the words of power that lit the ends of night, Through Newton's lips, His wisdom came and evermore was light. Lowlier than he, and yet how high are other names that earth Repeats and, telling o'er, recounts thy glory in their birth, OUR GLORY-ROLL. 23 Those who, with Davy, nature's laws have bared to human thought, Those who, with Dalton, Owen, Smith, her mysteries have taught, With Harvey, Hunter, Jenner, Bell, have grasped the laws of life, Armed man that, battling with disease, he conquers in the strife, With Wheatstone, seized the power that earth, with mortal utterance, girds And made all space that sundered man, at once repeat his words ; Rich art thou in the wise who feed the souls of men, no less Thy wondrous minds have thought and toiled, men's lowlier needs, to bless ; By Arkwright's breath, the whirling wheels that clothe mankind are driven, At Wedgwood's word, thy potters' gifts load every wind of heaven ; To man, the gift of sumless power, thy Watt and Boulton gave, Made the unmeasured might of steam henceforth our toiling slave; Lo, at thy word, from Stephenson, the magic dragons came Aud flashed man round the wondering earth, wrapped in their breath of flame. Who were thy sons whose mighty souls adored their God in stone ? With Him to whom they piled their prayers, their memory lives alone. 24 OUR GLORY-ROLL. Their frozen music chants His praise for ever in our sight From carven shaft and still white aisle where dim day dies to night ; Their worship lives, thy glory still, though Wykeham's sainted name Alone has wandered down through time to clothe thee in its fame ; Yes, nameless they whose holy roofs make Westminster divine, Who bow our souls in Salisbury's gloom, yet lives their glory thine. O stony dream Ictinus wrought up the blue Attic air, Still, still thy white perfection makes the thoughts of centuries fair, Still is his Florence glorified by Brunelleschi's dome, Still Michael Angelo's dread thought soars vast o'er prostrate Rome ; And hast thou one thy lips dare name when men's lips marvelling speak His fame from whose soul's depths arose that glory of the Greek ? What fame hast thou to mate with his ? what son, O land, is thine Who may be breathed, uncrushed, with him, the mighty Florentine ? One; when all nations utter these, O mother-land, even then Thou, thou can'st dare to breathe with theirs the glory of thy Wren ; Thy swelling heart, even with their fames, his vast renown recalls, And Pallas' fane, St. Peter's pile but mate with thy St. Paul's. OUR GLORY-ROLL. 25 If less the greatness of thy brood, in kindred arts, is shown, Yet canst thou call the holiest fame in music, half thine own, Milton of sound, when HandeFs soul to God in thunders soared, Upon the wings of thy great speech, upmounting, he adored. If not, from canvasses of thine, faith's visions awe or melt, Nor to God-babe or Maid Divine, before them, souls have knelt, The sin and sorrow of the earth, how well thy Hogarth gives ! From Reynolds' hands, for ever fair, how mortal beauty lives ! With matchless truth, thy Wilkie rules our hearts to grief or mirth ; Thy Gainsborough and thy Turner glorify air, sea and earth ; Thy Flaxman bids our eyes to see what Homer's darkness saw, And gods live from thy Gibson's touch, our wonder and our awe. How many a greatness, all thine own, not yet has crossed my tongue That might by Glory's own bright lips and thine be fitlier sung, The sunrise of thy deathless verse that made its morning bright, Thy Chaucer, whose clear radiance first brake sweetly up the night, i: 26 OUR GLORY-ROLL. Thy Massinger, Green, Decker, Peele, and Marlowe, all who lit, With Fletcher, honey-tongued, and Ford, the Mermaid bright with wit ; Thy Herri ck, Carew, Suckling, Lovelace, Marvel, and their crew, Thy nightingales, whose sweetness well their mightier fellows knew ; And he, thy Dante, who on earth lived for and still with God, Milton, who here the fields of heaven and hell's red darkness trod ; To whom, with the dread Florentine, 'twas given in life alone Alike to see the torturing flames and gaze upon The Throne. These flash down on us, shining ones that lustrous make thy past, Nor others dost thou seek in vain, whose light as long shall last ; See, Christian, through the flood, to the Celestial Gate has striven, That " tale divine," to our rapt ears, was by thy Bunyan given ; Those laughs of ringing centuries tell of humour strangely true, 'Tis his, thy Butler's, who, for us, the canting crop-ears drew ; Ah ! Crusoe's lonely island-life of years; how well we know ! That fiction's moving truth of truth, won life from thy Defoe ; Thine, too, were Goldsmith's tender thought, and humour dear and whim ; Thine, he who gentlest Toby drew, and the kind heart of Trim ; OUR GLORY-ROLL. 27 Thine, Richardson and Smollett, Steele and Fielding, fellows fit; Thine, Yanbrugh's, Farquhar's dazzling scenes, and Congreve's diamond wit; Thiue was the hand and the fine brain whose quaint and gentle powers, How tenderly and rarely well, made his " Sir Roger " ours; Thine, Dryden's strong resounding lines, and Pope's point, bright and keen; Thine, Swift's fierce heart, that madness made so savage, sore, and mean ; Thine, Young's drear thoughts, and Thomson's verse that rhymes the year away, And Ramsay's bonnie lassies' chat, and the dear lines of Gay ; Thy Cowper's quiet feeling yet our grateful reverence earns ; Still, on our tongues and in our blood, dance on the songs of Burns ; Xor later songs and nearer names by thee shall be forgot, Thy great in verse, and mightier far in prose, thy wizard, Scott. When to thy Byron's fiery joy of song, wilt thou be cold? With blood unstirred, when wilt thou hear thy Campbell's thunder rolled ? Pair are the dreams unto thine eves thy Keats for ever brings ; Sweet arc the streams of thoughts divine thy Shelley to thee sings. Still thy rough Crabbe, thy softer Moore now wake thy sighs or mirth ; 28 OUR GLORY-ROLL. Thy Coleridge still delights thy soul with music not of earth ; The fiery pulse of thy far youth, does thy great heart desire ? Thy Lockhart, thy Macaulay thrill thy blood, old land, to fire ; Christ's tender love for all, thy Hood unto thy heart has taught ; To nature's Avorship, nature's calm, thy Wordsworth stills thy thought ; The wonder of men's living hearts, thy rugged Browning lays Bare to thy sight, till, bees in glass, they work beneath thy gaze ; One other name thou too hast now, that fitly may be told When nations ask thee for a fame to mate thy great of old : Fellow unto thy greatest gone, old land, hast thou not one, Glory and joy to thee and thine, thy laurelled Tennyson ? These built on high thy greatness, land ; shall not that greatness last ? Shall not thy future teem with souls as matchless as thy past ? Yes, in thy wondrous years to be, a greatness shall be seen That dwarfs the triumphs of thy past, thy grandeurs that have been. Up to hero-height, thy future, all the powers of all, shall school ; All thy souls shall then be lifted to the greatness of self-rule ; OUR GI.ORT-ROLL. 29 Then all lives shall live the grandeur of the powers their God has willed, And the days of all, with blessedness of wisdom, shall be filled ; Not the few alone, existence, as a treasure, then shall prize ; All shall grasp the comfort of the rich, the knowledge of the wise. Thy present, in exulting thought, to Pisgah heights can win And view the sumless bliss to which thy future enters in ; Then, not only to the high and few, the crown and palm shall fall, Then glory and acclaim shall be the heritage of all ; What harvests of all greatness then within thine isles shall rise ! Shall the young years not be richer than the old beneath thine eyes ? But not only from thy home-earth, then for thee such harvests are ; Thou hast girt the world with peoples ; thou hast flung thy seed afar ; O, thou mother-land of nations, from thy mighty loins have sprung States, the rulers of the times to be, to rule them in thy tongue ; Not from these, thy ancient isles, for thee shall spring thy great alone, But from rules and far dominions that thy mighty hands have sown, Isles and continents thy conquering sons have swarmed forth and possest, Planting chainlesa faith and freedom in the South and mighty West; BO OUR GLORY-ROLL. These shall glory to thy great ones to add kindred glories, these Shall breed heroes thon shalt warm to by the far Australian seas ; Lo, they gather, these thy nations, from the broad Atlantic's roar, From the Mexic bay, Vancouver's seas, to the white Arctic shore ; Young giants, how they laugh aloud to feel their infant strength ! AY hat shall be their awful greatness when their manhood comes at length, When the trembling rules of Europe shall grow weakness at their word, And the will that none shall question, from their dread lips shall be heard ! Then their Shakespeares, then their Bacons, then their Miltons that shall be, They that sun the earth with glory, they shall glories be to thee ; As the New World's hosts of nations, these shall glorify and guide, Looking seaward, O my England, how thy heart shall leap with pride ! Not thy past is starred with grandeurs as the centuries that arise ; Look not back, O mighty mother, forward flash thy hungering eyes ; Shout aloud for thy great greatness ! are the dawning centuries dumb Of thy tongue the world's one language, and thy rule supreme to come, When countless as the sea-sands, as the heaven's bright suns, shall be The wise and pure and mighty who shall give renown to thee. THE FALL OF HARALD HARDRADA. Hear the fame of Harald the strife-lover ! Hear the fall of Harald of the fair hair ! In his hall the son of Sigurd feasted ; On the benches lay and drank his war-men. On the hall-hearth redly blazed the pine logs ; Fast the horns went round, with ale white-foaming. Then sang Snorr, the Scald, the Rune-compeller, The fierce Norse hearts joying with his sagas. 32 THE FALL OF HARALD HARDRADA. Through his chant was heard the clash of war-ships, Clang of shields and helms, and shrieks of slaughter. For he told the war-deeds of Hardrada, Told the deeds of Harald the Helm-cleaver. " Fiercely forth to ocean sweep his war-ships, " Sweep his dragons forth, his fierce sea-roamers. " Halland sees, aghast, his gleaming war-shields ; " Valland glares with red fires of his kindling. " Well Northumbria knows his axe-men's war-play ; " White-lipped Mercia shrieks before his war-cry. " Erin's widows wail his stormful coming ; " Bretland's maids remember well the Viking. " Hungered are ye, kites, ye yellow-footed ? " Follow far his steeds, his ocean-riders ! THE FALL OF HARALD HARDRADA. 33 " Norrasund's blue straits his swift keels furrow ; ft Serkland's spoils sink deep his sea-kissed gunwales. tc Jorsalaland greets the mailed Norseman ; " Loud the Greekland's city greets the Varing.