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 % ^sallitb m\ Song Ijistorg of (ffnjlimb, 
 
 AND THE STATES SPRUNG FROM HER. 
 
 EDITED WITH HISTORICAL, BIOGRAPHICAL, AND CRITICAL KOTES, 
 
 BY 
 
 W. C. BENNETT.
 
 L5 
 
 PEOPOSALS FOE AND CONTEIBUTIONS 
 
 A BALLAD HISTORY OF ENGLAND 
 
 ^bc ^^^fafes ..Spninci: from Ijer 
 
 W. C. BENjN'ETT. 
 
 " Love thou thy land, with love far-brought 
 From out the pictured past." 
 
 Tennyson. 
 
 " A people which takes no pride in the noble achievements of remote 
 ancestors, will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered with 
 pride by remote descendants. It is a sentiment which belongs to the 
 higher and purer part of human nature, and which adds not a little to 
 the strength of SXaXQ&."—MMaalay's History of EngUmd. 
 
 LONDON : 
 HAMILTON, ADAMS & CO., 33, TATEENOSTEU ROT^^ 
 
 1868.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY WERTHEIMER. LEA AND CO., 
 
 CIRCUS PLACE, FINSBURY.
 
 
 TO THE 
 
 EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P., D.C.L., &c., 
 
 STATESMAN, ORATOR, AND POET, 
 
 31 IDctiicate 
 
 THIS ATTEMPT TO MAKE THE GLORIES OF OUR HISTORY 
 
 " HOUSEHOLD WORDS " 
 
 OX THE LIPS OF THE PEOPLE. 
 
 ^'O J 4-.*'v>' ' <*
 
 CONTEXTS. 
 
 shall we have a xatioxal ballad history f ok the people .' 
 ;the fall of harald hardrada 
 the hunt of the saxox swixe 
 the burial of "william the coxqueror 
 
 "god ■WILLS it" the CRY OF THE CRUSADES 
 THE WATCH OF THE CRUSADES . 
 QUEEX ELEAXOR's VEXGEAXGE . 
 
 IX WARWICK CASTLE 
 
 BEFORE BOSWORTH FIELD .... 
 
 THE MARTYRDOM OF RIDLEY' AXD LATIMER 
 
 THE ARMADA, — A COMPLETIOX OF LORD MACAULAY's FRAGMENT 
 
 RUPERT IS OUT . 
 
 THE MARCH TO BREXTFORD OF THE LOXDOX TRAIXED-BAXDS 
 
 MARSTOX MOOR . 
 
 CORPORAL JOHX . 
 
 OLD BEXliOW 
 
 UFTOX COURT 
 
 NELSOX'S BRIDGE 
 
 THE FALSE ALARM 
 
 TRAFALGAR 
 
 THE DEEDS OF WELLINGTOX 
 
 THE DEATH-MARCH OF WELLIXGTOX 
 
 PAGE 
 IX 
 15 
 27 
 31 
 
 33 
 3G 
 41 
 oi 
 5-5 
 57 
 GO 
 69 
 70 
 73 
 77 
 80 
 83 
 86 
 87 
 89 
 93 
 99
 
 Vni CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 COSSACK, AVE WILL NEVER BE 100 
 
 HARK ! THE WOLVES ARE ON THE TRACK . . * . . . 102 
 
 BALACLAVA 104 
 
 INKERMANN 108 
 
 THE TRICOLOR Ill 
 
 OUR GUARDS 115 
 
 OUR GREAT ENGLAND OVER THE WATER . . . . . .117 
 
 GOD BLESS THE DEAR ,OLD LAND 118 
 
 THE RAISING OF THE FLAG AT FORT SUMTER . . . . .120 
 
 THE LUCK OF EDEN HALL 123 
 
 OUR GLORY-ROLL 125 
 
 M\- LAND — MOTHEK-LAND 141
 
 SHALL WE HAVE A XATIOXAL BALLAD HISTORY FOR 
 
 THE PEOPLE ? 
 
 AN APPEAL TO THE POETS OF ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 
 
 English History is almost unknown to the English people. It lives 
 neither in the memories nor on the tongues of the great race whose deeds it 
 records. Yet in grandeur, in the variety and influence of the principles 
 which its actors have fought into facts — in the multitude and power of the 
 minds that have played out its wondrous dramas — ^-hat history, ancient or 
 modem, can compare with it ? Prose has told portions of its grand tale 
 more and more fitly. "What Hume and Robertson did for our forefathers, 
 Carlyle and Macaulay have done, Froude and Motley are doing, for us 
 ■with that clearer perception of what constitutes the reality of History, and 
 that freer play of the imagination, which give to their narratives the truth 
 to life and the pictorial power of the poem and the play. 
 
 But these are for the cultivated few. The millions of the English race 
 are ignorant alike of historians and of history. Life with them is too 
 leisureless and too overworked for studious reading. In mind they are not 
 far removed from those to whom the gleemen and the minstrels of our 
 Saxon and Norman days chanted the ballad and the laj'. 
 
 It is due to the literature of fiction, not to that of fact, that any living 
 knowledge of their forefathers reaches nine-tenths of the Englishmen of to- 
 day. " Where did you get your knowledge of history ? " was asked of one 
 of our by-gone Statesmen. " From Shakespeare," was his reply. Let the 
 same question be put to all but the exceptional readers of oilt middle and 
 working classes. What must be their answer ? " From Shakespeare and
 
 X INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Scott, Bul-n-er and Kingsley — the novelists and the i^oets." But what 
 memory can hope to retain the actual words of the di-amatic chronicle, and 
 the novel? The pictures of " Kenilworth" and of " Old Mortality" are 
 fading recollections, while the very lines of the " The Armada," " The 
 Bonnets of Bonny Dundee," and " The Charge of the Light Brigade," 
 are on the tongues of their readers. 
 
 Our history must reach the people now as it reached them of old. They 
 are to be moved by the same means which have moved them through all 
 ages — as the universal mind of the Greek races was kindled and ennobled 
 by the thunder-march of the Ballad-epics of Homer ; as the imagination of 
 the Teutonic nations was swept along by the gloomy ton-ent of the 
 Nibelungenlied ; as the Spaniard was fired and nationalised by the battle- 
 music of the Cid. And how much our national life needs the delight and 
 the foi-getfulness of self which the Ballad and Song can give ! 
 
 CivUisation has diversified and intensified, but for the many, it has 
 hardly ennobled life. Men should be raised in mind and soul, as well as iu 
 comfort and power, by the application to their uses of the discoveries of 
 science, by their more ready access to intellectual enlightenment, and by 
 theu- nearer approaches to social consideration and political equaHty with 
 all. Doubtless, slowly but surely, the mass is drawn up into a higher life 
 by potent influences, acting more and more stronglj'- from generation to 
 generation. But our life is through all classes too much a material one. 
 The spirit of work for the bread that perisheth engrosses lis overmuch : 
 
 Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; 
 the means of living become to us the ends of our struggles and our hopes ; 
 the gold fever possesses oirr traders, and necessity absorbs in endless toil the 
 existence of our labouring classes. AYe do not " work our souls as nobly as 
 our iron;" nor with all the wondrousness of our "steam horses" can we 
 nndoubtingly afiirm that " we are greater than the fii-st men -who led black 
 ones by the mane." 
 
 But in the Ballad and the Soxo we have a measureless power of 
 weaving through the existence of the many, nobility in the knowledge 
 of the achievements of our noblest; strength and endui-ance, piuity and
 
 INTRODUCTION. XI 
 
 holiness of soul, in the remembrance of all that has given to us the holy 
 array of our martyrs and our saints. 
 
 To supply a great race with such refining, ennobling, and ever-enduring 
 rafluences is a -work vrorthy of our worthiest. "Who can measure the high 
 results to Scotland, to Germany, to France, of the existence of Burns, of 
 Schiller, of Beranger ? 
 
 I ask the English poets of our time — and in that word English I include 
 rejoicingly those of the mighty States beyond the Atlantic — to aid me in 
 giving to the English-speaking peoples of to-day and of the future the 
 blessing and treasui-e of such a National Ballad and Song literature as shall 
 make the great deeds of theii- fathers a dailj^ part of their thoughts and 
 feelings, as shall weld together, in a common pride and love for a common 
 greatness, the scattered commonwealths of our kindred. In the lapse of 
 but a few ages — but days in the lives of nations — our tongue will become 
 the almost universal speech, and our race the all-ruling one. * Akeady we 
 add yearly to the Anglo-Saxon nations ringing the world, more than the 
 entire population of some of the secondary States of Europe ; nor is it 
 difficult to approach a calculation of that period when English will bear 
 that relation to the most important Continental tongues -nhich it now bears 
 to the local dialects of our native soil. 
 
 I propose to gather from our Ballad and Song Literature, ancient as well 
 as modem,' all that illustrates and expresses our national progress, and 
 gradually, quickly or slowly — it may be through years — to add to these 
 existing materials worthy celebrations of the events that have glorified, the 
 feelings that have moved, and the heroes who have illustrated the fifteen 
 hundred years that have made us the people that we are. 
 
 L appeal to pens, both in England and America, immeasurably more 
 powerful than my own, to work out this intent, assured that it is one that I 
 may fitly call on them to aid with the full powers of that genius with 
 which God has endowed them, in trust for the delight and elevation, not 
 of the cultivated few only, but of all their brother- men. 
 
 If any ask what materials lie ready to the hands of our singers, what a 
 rush of thronging recollections crowd upon us in answer ! "We remember the
 
 XU INTRODUCTION, 
 
 conflicts and passions of the races that have fought for the dominion of the 
 "White Isle ! The Briton, the Eoman, the Saxon, the Dane, the Norman, 
 the Lowland Scot, the Welsh, the Irish, and the Highland Celt — the full 
 Englishman of the past and of the present, wherever he treads the earth. 
 We recall the shocks of classes, sects, factions, and parties which have made 
 up, through a thousand years, the stormy life of England ; the striiggles of 
 serf, burgher, and noble, Lancastrian and Yorkist, Romanist and Puritan, 
 Cavalier and Roundhead, Hanoverian and Jacobite, Tory and Whig, Con- 
 servative and Radical. These, in the raging conflicts of thought and action, 
 have struck out our present beliefs in religion and politics ; and these, in 
 their triumphs and defeats, poetry should make to live again for us. Stam- 
 ford Bridge, Hastings, Lewes, Bannockburn and Bamet; Crecy, Poitiers 
 and Agincourt ; Naseby, the Boyne, Bothwell Bridge and Culloden ; Blen- 
 heim, Vittoria, "Waterloo, Inkermann ; Plassey, Sobraon and Meeanee ; the First 
 of June and Camperdown ; the Nile and Trafalgar, these very names are fiery 
 ballads, needing but fit pens to utter them. The struggles of Hereward, of 
 Wallace, of Bruce, of Llewellyn and of O'Neil ; the risings of "NY at Tyler, 
 of the Northern Earls and of Monmouth ; the burial of the Conqueror ; the 
 death of the Red King : Richard and Edward in Palestine ; the defeat of the 
 Armada ; the plot of Guy Faux ; the march of the Trained-bands to Brentford ; 
 the trials of Hampden, of Straff'ord, of Charles I., and of the Seven Bishops ; 
 the flight of James ; the coming of William the Deliverer ; the tyrannies of 
 " Bloody Mary" and of our Stuarts ; the butcheries of Claverhouse and of the 
 " Bloody Assizes ; " the martyrdoms of St. Alphege, of Ridley and his holy 
 companions ; of Cranmer, of Elliott, and of Alice Lisle ; the executions of 
 Sir Thomas More, of Lady Jane Grey, of Raleigh, of Riissell, of Sydney, and 
 of Argyle ; the sieges of Calais, Harfleiir and Orleans ; of Bhurtpoor, Badajos, 
 Delhi and Sebastopol ; the defence of Gloucester, Londonderry and Gibral- 
 tar ; of Acre, JeUalabad, Silistria, Ears and Lucknow ; the deaths of Talbot, 
 Grenville and Sidney ; of Wolfe, Abercrombie, Nelson and Franklin ; the 
 conquests of India and Canada ; the spread of our Commerce and our Colo- 
 nies ; the planting of the United States and of Australia ; Hawkins at St. 
 Jean d'LTloa and Drake on the Pacific ; Cromwell at Marston Moor and
 
 INTRODUCTION. XIU 
 
 Dunbar ; Rooke in the Bay of La Hogue ; Hawke among the breakers of 
 Quiberon and the fleet of Conlians ; the expeditions of Anson, of Cook and 
 of Parry ; the discoveries of Newton and of Watt, of Arkwright and of 
 Stephenson ; the triumphs of "Wren, Hogarth and their fellows ; Trynne 
 and Defoe in the pillory ; Bunyan in his prison ; "Wesley among the Cornish 
 miners; Howard and Elizabeth Fry in our dungeons; Florence Xightingale 
 in our hospitals, and Grace Darling in the tempest ; the struggles that 
 ■wrenched the Great Charter from John, and the assent to the Petition of 
 Rights from Charles, that swept away the penal disabilities of the Catholic 
 and the fetters of the negro, that won the Reform Bill and abolished the 
 Corn-laws, these, and a thousand other episodes of our national Ufe, ask a 
 lining existence such as the poet and the press can give to them. 
 
 And how many single names have we, to utter which thrills us with that 
 elevation of soul which is unwritten poetry ! Boadicea, Caractacus ; the 
 mythic Lear and Yortigem and Rowena ; Arthur and " the Table Round ; " 
 Canute, Athelstane, Alfred, Dunstan, Harold ; A'Becket, Chandos, Manny, 
 the Black Prince ; Talbot the fear of France, and Warwick the King- 
 maker ; Eleanor of Guienne and Margaret of Anjou ; Wyclitfe and Knox ; 
 the Lion Queen and her deadly sister of Scotland, " with eyes as bright and 
 heart as hard as a diamond ; " the countless glories of the Tudor times ; 
 " the great ones who called Milton ft-iend," Hampden and Pym, Yaue and 
 Cromwell — to name no nearer heroes — these are they who each and all 
 should live in music in the souls of Englishmen. And yet it were but a 
 narrow view of what constitutes our history to make it comprehend only 
 such events and lives as I have referred to. I would give to those living 
 in our day the common life of all classes of the past — the passions and 
 thoughts, the feelings and prejudices, the patriotic and local attachments, 
 the customs, appearance, pleasures, and occupations which together have 
 made up the existence of aU sections of the EngKsh people from century to 
 century. The primitive life and savage passions, the dark superstitions and 
 shadowy traditions of our earliest forefathers, should exist for us to-day ; 
 and with them all those changes which have succeeded to fhem, showing 
 through later days the softening and elevating effect of the gradual growth
 
 XIV INTRODUCTIOX. 
 
 of our milder civilisation and our purer faith. Thus I shall include, as a 
 necessary part of our poetical annals, those ballads and songs which recreate 
 for us the fashions of mind, of fancy, and of soul, which give voice to the 
 hopes and the fears, the triumphs and the griefs, the morals and religion, 
 which relate the crimes and striking current events, and picture to us the 
 dress, the sports, and habits of the successive generations which have borne 
 the English name down to our own times. 
 
 Lastly, my aim will be, not to offer to the people Dryasdust antiquarianism, 
 but living poetry. The very words of the past are inexpressibly valuable to 
 the historian and the poet, as interpreting it truly to the present. But to 
 offer them unselected to the people would be to appease their hunger with 
 Dead Sea apples — fair outside, but filled with ashes. Fortunately, among 
 our earlier ballads and songs, as well as those of a later date, there exist 
 many which are not only curious, but stirring, such as the people will 
 willingly take to their hearts. 
 
 If to these the imagination of to-day shall add, as it can, what is needful 
 to complete the whole expresssion of our national story, a work will have 
 been wrought of enduring interest and value to us. Those who labour at 
 it in the spirit I have invoked, will labour at once for the honovu'ing of 
 themselves and of their country, with whose glory they will thus unite 
 their own. 
 
 As in every Norwegian farmer's house the Heimskringla lies beside the 
 Bible, so will this work He, if it be worthily completed, a treasury of 
 elevating enjoyment and of noble feelings, in all the homes of our country. 
 
 ^Y. C. BENNETT. 
 
 Jilacl-Iteath.
 
 THE FALL OF HAEALD HARDRADA. 
 106G. 
 
 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 -vrar-men. 
 
 On the hall-hearth redly blazed the pine logs ; 
 
 Fast the horns ^-ent round, M-ith ale -n-hite-foamina:. 
 
 Then sang Snorr, the Scald, the Rune-compeller, 
 The fierce Xorse hearts joying with his sagas. 
 
 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 foi-th, his fierce sca-roamers.
 
 16 THE FALL OF HARALD HAKDRADA. 
 
 " Halland sees, aghast, his gleaming war-shields ; 
 " Valland glares with red fires of his kindling. 
 
 " "Well Northumhria 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 yeUow-footed ? 
 " Follow far his steeds, his ocean-riders ! 
 
 " Norrasund's blue straits his swift keels furrow ; 
 " Serkland's spoils sink deep his sea-kissed gunwales. 
 
 " Jorsalaland greets the mailed Norsemen ; 
 " Loud the Greekland's city greets the Varing. 
 
 " Home return his gilt-beaked barks, deep-laden, 
 " Laden deep with treasures, battle-gather' d. 
 
 " Jarl and Bonder hail the Kiiig returning, 
 " Joyful thione the sainted Olaf's brother. 
 
 " Let the Danes' land well its green coasts buckler, 
 " Shield its shore-towns well from Harald's Norsemen ! 
 
 " "WTiite in ashes lie green Jutland's homesteads ; 
 " Swend, the Danes' king, shields not smoking Fyen. 
 
 " Hela's ravening maw, so well who gorges, 
 
 " Joys so well the Dread ones, the Slain-choosers ?
 
 THE FALL OF HARALD HARDRADA. 17 
 
 " Grim the gory swoixl-strifo at Nisaa ; 
 
 " Sixty war- ships Swend lost in the sword- game. 
 
 " Why no more flaps death the di-ead Landeya, 
 " Haiald's flag, the dreaded far Land- waster ? 
 
 " Why no more heaps he the feast of ravens, 
 ■' Sigurdson, the stern, the gaunt wolf-gorger ? " 
 
 Then up through the hall, stern strode Earl Tosti ; 
 Fierce he strode, the \\Tathful son of Godwin. 
 
 And he spoke, " King, the White Isle greets you ; 
 " Knut's throne longs to hold the son of Sigurd. 
 
 " Curses on the crafty son of Godwin, 
 " He upon the throne of Edward seated ! 
 
 " Curses deep on him, horn of my mother ! 
 
 " Who ^nthstood me, Tosti, in my Earl-rights! 
 
 " Not for long shall he escape my vengeance ; 
 " Many they who soon shall cry my war-cry. 
 
 " Burgh, and thorpe, and grange, and tower are ready ; 
 " Thane and thrall shall muster to my coming. 
 
 " King, send forth thy message through thy Norsemen ! 
 " London soon shall throne thee in its Minster. 
 
 " Grasp the great sway held by Knut the mighty ! " 
 " So, with his, thy glory shall be mated." 
 
 B
 
 IS THE FALL OF HAKALD HARIJEADA. 
 
 Ceased the Earl, and loud round through the court-men, 
 Hoarsely rolled approval of his counsel. 
 
 But the King sat silent in his high-seat, 
 And on all the Eaii spoke, much he pondered. 
 
 Then arose the storm of song, fierce-chanted, 
 
 Snon-'s, the Scald's, song, sweeping all hearts -wanrards. 
 
 " Launch the serpents ! launch the gold-maned dragons ! 
 " Let their long keels cleave again the billows ! 
 
 " Let their dark sails hold again the storm-winds ! 
 " Let their tall masts creak before the tempests ! 
 
 " Let the sun glow red upon their shield-rows. 
 
 " On their steel scales ranked along theii- bulwarks ! 
 
 " Swift, with strong-armed stroke, we sweep the ocean ; 
 " Swift our long oars smite the foam-maned billows. 
 
 " Grey rise England's surf-swept cliifs to landwards ; 
 " Green her fields, and black her ports rise shorewards. 
 
 " Deep our furrows cut the rushy Humber ; 
 " Dark our anchors cleave the Ouse's tideway. 
 
 " Why so near to Yule-tide flash the Bael-fires ? 
 " Fast the beacons flame afar our coming. 
 
 " Why do thane and thrall snatch down their war-gear ? 
 " Fast from forest, moor, and dale, they muster.
 
 THE FALL OF HAHALD HAEDEADA. 19 
 
 " Fast the tliiekeiiing tide of vrav rolls onwards ; 
 " Fast the -war-raiLks pour towards the foemen. 
 
 " "Well may Jovick's Earls their war-men gather ! 
 " Sore shall wall and tall tower need their howmeu ! 
 
 " For he comes whose war-deeds scalds are chanting, 
 " He, the shield-ring-breaker in the war-fray. 
 
 " Through the sleet of hissing arrows stalks he, 
 "Where the death-sparks leap from helms deep-clo\en. 
 
 " "War-cries, and the shrill- tongued yells of slaughter 
 " Shriek the conquering war- way of Hardrada." 
 
 So sang Snon-, the Scald, and, to his singing, 
 Fiercely throbbed the war-men's hearts around him. 
 
 And around, the bearded court-men rising, 
 Clashed their liking of the stormy scald-song. 
 
 Then the rage of battle seized Hardrada, 
 The Berserker thirsting for the onset. 
 
 And his faith he plighted to Earl Tosti, 
 
 And his word sped forth through shore and upland. 
 
 Fast his host have gathered ; through the tempest. 
 Fast his dragons steers he towards tlie slaughter. 
 
 Scarborough is red with blood of foemen ; " 
 
 From the Ouse, the Earls have fled before him.
 
 20 THE FALL OF HARALD HARDRADA. 
 
 Fear is on the thanes and men of Jovick, 
 
 And their troth they plight it shall be rendered. 
 
 But on high in heaven, the great All-father 
 Wills to ■welcome to his halls the heroes. 
 
 Straightway earthwards stoop the dread slain- choosers, 
 Sigurd's son to summon unto Odin. 
 
 Bright the beams of morning flash from seawards ; 
 Hot on helm and shield and spear they glisten. 
 
 But no arrow-sleet, death-dealing, di-ead they ; 
 Mail nor hauberk deem they that they're needing. 
 
 Mailless stride they through the sultry noon-tide, 
 Blithe with thought of red gold won for ransom. 
 
 Hoarse on high, the raven croaks above them, 
 And the gavmt wolf leaps towards the slaughter. 
 
 High above the gilt helms of his coui-t-men. 
 Towers King Harald, forging runes of glory. 
 
 What afar is bright through dust-clouds gleaming ? 
 Who in arms come thus, the town, to render ? 
 
 Is it peace or is it war gleams towards them ? 
 Ere the night, the crow shall full be feasted. 
 
 Harold comes ; comes fast the son of Godwin ; 
 To the war-game, rolls the might of England.
 
 THE FALL OF HARALD HARDRADA. 21 
 
 Soon on shields and helms shall swords be ringing ; 
 Soon the axe shall reap the iron war-field. 
 
 King of men, he comes his land to buckler, 
 Godwin's son, the strong in war and council. 
 
 Not for sloth did thane and burgher choose him, 
 Throne him king on high in London's Minster. 
 
 Not for coward ease did saintly Stigand 
 I'our upon his head the oil of kingship. 
 
 Wise to think for, strong to lead his people. 
 Comes he, as when Gryffith fell before him. 
 
 Eange the heroes' benches in Valhalla ; 
 
 Brim, with foaming ale and mead, the skull-cups. 
 
 On his black steed leaps the fierce Hardrada ; 
 Bound his charger crowd his Earls to council. 
 
 " Counsel give me, Tosti. Ye, my court-men, 
 " Rede me counsel ; counsel good is needed." 
 
 Speaks grim Tosti, "Mailless shall we meet them ? 
 " To our ships, well were it that we hied us. 
 
 " There is choice to sail or there to bide them ; 
 " Swift does conquest dog my brother's war-way." 
 
 Speaks Hardrada, " Better is my counsel ; " 
 
 " Summon from our ships, in arms, my bonders.
 
 22 THE FALL OF HARALD HARDRADA. 
 
 " On our swiftest horses speed our message ; 
 " Hard shall be the fray before we lose it. 
 
 " To the breezes, Frirek, give my bamier ; 
 
 " Eing my ranks beneath my dread Land-waster. 
 
 " Round my Eaven- Standard, sound my war-horns, 
 "Blaring through its folds the din of onset. 
 
 •' Man to man, around it link the shield-ring ; 
 
 " Plant the spear-rows sharp against the horsemen." 
 
 Eides around his ranks the King of Norway ; 
 Falls his horse ; quoth he, " A fall is lucky." 
 
 " Who fell ? blue his kirtle ; gilt his helmet." 
 "Norway's king is he, son of Godwin." 
 
 " Stately is he ; kingly looks the hero ; 
 
 " But methinks full sure his luck has left him." 
 
 Forth from England's ranks a score of horsemen 
 Eide, their chargers mailed, aud mailed their riders. 
 
 Near the Northmen's steel array up-reining, 
 " Where is Tosti ? " shouts their kingly leader. 
 
 "I am he," quick answer makes the fierce Earl. 
 " To thee sends thy brother Harold greeting. 
 
 " Thine shall be again Northumbria's earldom ; 
 " Thou, his man, shalt rule with him his kingdom."
 
 THE FALL OF HARALD HABDRADA. 23 
 
 " Hate and scorn ye proffered me at Tule-tide ; 
 " Changed, metliinks, brother, are thy offers. 
 
 " Friendship had ye proffered then, full surely, 
 " Better had it been this day for England. 
 
 " But, if I, forgiving, take thy proffer, 
 
 " What giv'st thou to Harald, King of Norway ?" 
 
 HolloNv from the blue helm leaps the answer, 
 " Gift too will we give unto Hardrada. 
 
 " Seven feet of English earth shall his be ; 
 " More, if more be needed by his stature." 
 
 Grimly laugh around the mailed horsemen, 
 Fiercely joying in the kingly answer. 
 
 But in wrath dark grows the frown of Tosti, 
 From his Lips leap hoarse the words of thunder. 
 
 " Then let Harold boime him for the battle ; 
 " Xever Northman this shall say of Tosti, 
 
 "That, with Sigurd's son, I, warring westward, 
 " Basely left him, left him for his foemen. 
 
 " Fixed am I with him to die with honour, 
 " Or this land with him to win with glory." 
 
 Back the horsemen ride ; back turns Earl Tosti, >" 
 
 Thoughtful, to the son of Sigurd, riding.
 
 24 THE FALL OF HAEALD HARDEADA. 
 
 " Who was he, to thee who spoke so kingly ? " 
 " Harold was he, Godwin's son, my brother." 
 
 " Hadst thou told me, never to his people 
 
 " Back this Harold, England's king, had ridden." 
 
 "Peace, to me, and power and rule, he proffered; 
 " On me were his blood, had I betrayed him. 
 
 " Eather would I die by him than slay him, 
 " If fate wills by one should fall the other." 
 
 Towards the Northmen, roll the waves of battle ; 
 Flames the war-song from the son of Sigurd. 
 
 " Forward ! forward ! here no hauberks glisten, 
 
 " But, from swords in strong hands, light is gleaming. 
 
 "Forward! forward! here no mail-coat glances, 
 " But here beat the fearless hearts of heroes. 
 
 " Skill to-day and courage are our annour ; 
 "Eye and hand, instead of steely shall fend us." 
 
 Eoimd the bristling spear-ring, ride the horsemen ; 
 Back, the Northmen's shield-wall flings their billows. 
 
 Fixed, the stone-walled castle mocks the storm-wind ; 
 Bock, the Northmen breast the roar of England. 
 
 Bound they ride, ride round the dread shield-rampart ; 
 Breach nor break find they within the bulwark.
 
 THE FALL OF HARALD HARDRADA. 25 
 
 Borse and horsemen rear against the spear-heads, 
 From the sharp-set edge of death recoiling. 
 
 Fly the English ? breaks the serried shield-row, 
 On the flyers press the raging Northmen. 
 
 Back the foemen come ; the son of Godwin 
 
 Hews their way deep through the ranks of Norway. 
 
 And the hail of arrows on their bare breasts 
 Hurtles, in their mailless flesh finds welcome. 
 
 With the wild Berserker madness raging. 
 Through the press of heroes, hews Hardrada. 
 
 Hark, on high the dread Valkyrii call him. 
 
 In his bare thi-oat, drinks the shaft his life-blood. 
 
 Like the tall mast snapped before the storm- wind, 
 Falls he, like the pine cleft by the woodman. 
 
 Never more the strong shall fall before him. 
 While behind him pours the flood of battle. 
 
 Long his Queen shall watching look to westward, 
 Look across the long waves, for his coming. 
 
 Round him fight and fall the heaped-up corpse-ring. 
 Scorning Harold's profiered peace and mercy. 
 
 Falls fierce Tosti, grimly as the bear falls, - 
 
 Fell, at bay, amid the shouting huntsmen.
 
 26 THE FALL OF HARALD HARDRADA. 
 
 Eystein brings in vain his armed succours : 
 
 "Worn and wearied, press they from their war-ships, 
 
 Through the sultry noontide vainly toiling. 
 But to higher pile the battle's slaughter. 
 
 Falls at last the beacon of the war-field ; 
 The Land-Waster sinks, the Eaven- Standard. 
 
 Then again out speaks the son of Godwin, 
 " But to slaughter warring heroes, war I. 
 
 "Plight your troth no more yoiir ocean-riders, 
 "Viking-filled, shall come with fire and slaughter. 
 
 " So bear hence your kingly dead, Olaf, 
 
 " In your long ships, home, heroes, bear him. 
 
 " And with holy rites, in far-off Norway, 
 " Tomb him, peaceful after all his battles." 
 
 Forth to seawards sweep the Northmen's galleys, 
 Bearing home the restful son of Sigiu'd. 
 
 So fell Harald, last of aU the Yikings, 
 Scald, by scalds sung, Harald of the fair hair.
 
 27 
 
 THE HU^T OF THE SAXOX SWIXE. 
 
 1068. 
 
 Now woiild you hear a good lay trolled ? 
 
 Then hearken, you mates of mine, 
 And I'U sing you what Hurlstone's lords befell, 
 
 Tn their hunt of the Saxon swine. 
 
 Up the broad, broad Trent the chase lay loud, 
 Yet the game was not brought to bay, 
 
 When the hounds had nosed green Sherwood's glades 
 The half of an August day. 
 
 And what do the hunters chase this mom ? 
 
 And what is the game they track ? 
 For each knight is armed with hauberk and helm, 
 
 Xor the squires their armour lack. 
 
 I hawking is good by the reedy Trent, 
 
 And the heron and duck they scare ; 
 But heron nor duck need fear a hawk 
 
 From a mailed wrist that's there. 
 
 Through the stiU green glades and ferny dells 
 
 They rouse the boar and deer ; 
 But a fiercer prey than either at bay 
 
 Sir- Roger Malvoise seeks here. 
 
 For in Hurlstone's tower the Saxon ruled, 
 .And in Hurlstone the Norman reigns. 
 
 And the Saxon blood of Hereward's race :— 
 
 Gny Hurlstone's rafters stains.
 
 28 THE HUNT OF THE SAXON SWINE. 
 
 ! woe is me for great Henghist's race, 
 And woe for red Hastings' day ! 
 
 And, woe ! thrice woe ! that our Saxon land 
 Shoiild be the Norman's prey ! 
 
 woe is me ! That our fathers lie 
 Bemocked in their gory graves ! 
 
 Their daiighters — the toys of Norman lust, 
 Their sons— the Norman's slaves ! 
 
 But not the Bastard's thraUs are we, 
 "While our free-hom hands have swords ; 
 
 "While Sherwood has deer, and the Trent a flood, 
 We spit at our new-come Lords. 
 
 Oh ! outlawed men know cold and dole ; 
 
 But rather, I trow, we'd have 
 This windy roof of the greenwood free. 
 
 Than the haU-fire of the slave. 
 
 What though with forest wolves we lair, 
 And are chased with the hoimded deer, 
 
 Yet vengeance at times is wine and feast 
 To our Saxon free hearts here. 
 
 "What though they hold us as the beast. 
 Though their Saxon swine we be, 
 
 Sometimes men say, boars turn to bay. 
 And blood on their tusks ye see. 
 
 Last night its Norman master drank 
 
 In Here ward's ancient hall ; 
 By his side, its Saxon daughter shrank. 
 
 His paramour and thrall.
 
 THE HUNT OF THE SAXON SWINE. 29 
 
 He quaffed the red wine and the venison ate. 
 
 Drunk -with his scorn and pride, 
 Kor thought of the Saxon hate of hell 
 
 That she joyed in at his side. 
 
 And little recked he of the word she sped, 
 
 Or ever uprose the sun, 
 That should give his heir to the Saxon spear 
 
 In the day whose hours are nin. 
 
 "Why tarries Sir Lionel, his son ? 
 
 From the forest dies the day ; 
 The hunt it is done, and gone is the sun, 
 
 AVhy comes he not, I pray ? 
 
 The forest's glades are dim with gloom ; 
 
 Sir Lionel should be here. 
 To tell how the hunted Saxons died 
 
 To-day on his Norman spear. 
 
 The hall has gloomed from eve to night, 
 
 And cresset and torch flare red, 
 And the Baron sits grim in the ruddy light, 
 
 Now cursing, now dumb with dread. 
 
 "What falls through night in the Castle- court 
 
 "With a dull sound, heavy and dead ? 
 Full grim and gashed is that ghastly gift, 
 
 That slain man's gory head. 
 
 "With wide dead eyes, that Saxon's gift. 
 
 Up Ilurlstone's hall is borne, 
 And Sir Roger is 'ware that no more his heir 
 
 "Will rouse to the huntsman's horn.
 
 30 THE HUNT OF THE SAXON SWINE. 
 
 Let him think as his teeth he grinds in wrath, 
 
 As sonless he rages there, 
 Of the race, from that hearth, his sword drove forth, 
 To house in the wild wolf's lair. 
 
 Let him read the hate of her Saxon heart 
 
 Who glares by his heirless side, 
 She who fell the prej' of his lordly lust 
 
 In the hall where her father died. 
 
 Let him sound the depth of her eyes' fierce joy 
 
 At his whelpless raging there, 
 As she gloats on the tears in the ruthless eyes 
 
 That mocked at her fierce despair. 
 
 Let him vengeance vow, and arm, and out 
 
 With the first grey break of day. 
 But each Saxon boar that Sir Lionel tore, 
 
 I trow, it's far away. 
 
 That the boar has tusks he '11 mind fuU long; 
 
 He '11 mind, brothers mine, 
 The goodly sport that his son befell 
 
 In his hunt of the Saxon swine. 
 
 Now far let him trace and track and wind. 
 
 And hunt through glade and dell. 
 The game he seeks, he shall not find, 
 
 That trow we men right well. 
 
 He shall not glimpse the Saxon swine. 
 
 Till, brothers, we list to show 
 To the father these tusks of yours and mine. 
 
 These tusks that the son laid low.
 
 31 
 
 THE BURIAL OF WILLIAM THE COXQUEEOR. 
 
 10S7. 
 
 JIn bed of dole Eang "William lies ; three months lie there hath lain ; 
 AU gi'oss of body, sick he Kes, nor seeks to rise again ; 
 The horse champs idle in the camp ; sleep the good lance and sword ; 
 -\nd France may laugh to scorn his ii-e, till leeches heal their lord. 
 
 • " Now, by my faith," King Phillip laughed, his Frankish lords among, 
 " Onr cousin England's lying in, me thinks it lasts full long ; 
 " If ever it be OTer, at his churching sure there'll be 
 " Full store of jests and meniment, great thankfulness and glee." 
 
 " By the splendour and the birth of God ! " 'twas thus KingWUlIam swore, 
 When Phillip's bitter mocking, to his bed, his Normans bore, 
 "In Notre-Dame de Paris I'll be churched, and, at the sight, 
 " Ten thousand Norman lances this Phillip's church shall light." 
 
 And he hath leapt from forth his couch, and he hath armed in wrath, 
 And, through the summer fields of France, a desert tells his path ; 
 The wheat waved fair ; the vines rose green ; they withered in his frown ; 
 Fruit-tree and vine and grain, beneath his charger's hoofs, go down. 
 
 l "Woe unto Mantes-sur- Seine ! how gay and glad the fair town stood ; 
 
 . He comes ; its homes are red with flames, are soaked with steaming blood ; 
 
 '; And, through the crash of roofs, with heart all pitiless rides he ; 
 
 ', Through all its woes, its groans and shrieks, he shouts in savage glee. 
 
 r 
 
 ; " Vengeance is mine," so saith the Lord ; his charger plants its feet 
 ■ Upon the fiery embers that smoke along the street ; 
 ; It springs ; its heavy rider forgets his cruel mirth, 
 As, reai-ing high, his war-horse flings its ruthless lord to earth.
 
 32 THE BURIAL OF WILLIAM THE COXQUEROR. 
 
 Full lightly recked he evermore of dying sob and groan ; 
 
 He drains the cup he loved to deal ; God makes the draught his own ; 
 
 ile rode in joj' through Hastings' field, and now in pain and dole, 
 
 |[ts weight of woe afflicts him sore, its blood is on his soul. 
 
 i 
 
 weeks of leeches and of priests ! his weary hours are spent 
 In thoughts of deeds he would undo, that he can but sore repent ; 
 " Rebuild," he groans, " God's churches, the good towns burnt by me ; 
 " Deal my treasures out to England's poor, and set my captives free ! " 
 
 *' I may not bid a son of mine, the land I won, to heir ; 
 
 " Blood-bought, to none, but God aloue, to give that land, I dare ; 
 
 " Mary, holy Mother of God, my soul take thou ! 
 
 ^' "Wash thou its soiling sins away, its sins that crush me now I " 
 
 I 
 
 He dies ; but while St. Mary's bells, at prime, his life ring out, 
 
 What love salutes his glazing eyes ? who stand his couch about ? 
 
 iNor son, nor friend, nor Baron leal, weeps for his parting breath, 
 
 ;if or soothes, with loving looks, his soul to the great calm of death. 
 
 fSon, courtman, leech, " To horse ! to horse !" why should they lingering stav ? 
 'Off ! off ! with arms, with gold, with robes ; none spoiUess ride away ; 
 Now serf and \'illain strip the foi-m, so late they shook before ; 
 There lies their mighty lord, all lone, aU naked on the floor. 
 
 i- 
 
 "Wbo e\-il doth shall evil rue ;" all lonely there he lies ; 
 iNot one to straight his stiffening corpse, to close his staring eyes ; 
 !TiLl monks, in Christian pity, come, beside the dead to pray ; 
 And Eouen's Bishop fain, to Caen, would have it borne away. 
 
 I' For ruth and love of God," at last the stranger Herhn said, 
 f ' Be mine the cost, since none are here to tend and tomb the dead ;" 
 Lo, God is just ; to strangers' hands, broad England's lands he gave , 
 Now, unto him, a stranger's hands give, at the last, a grave.
 
 " GOD WILLS IT ! 33 
 
 , lu Stephen's Minster, in the church he built, there shall he lie ; 
 
 , Beside the altar gapes the grave ; stand monk and abbot by ; 
 
 ' The mass is done ; lower down the corpse ; but then from out the crowd, 
 
 Stept Asselin Fitz-Arthur, and, I wot, his cry was loud. 
 
 • 
 
 ■ " Ye shall not tomb the robber here ; he, priests, for whom ye pray, 
 " This earth in which his grave ye make, he seized by force away ; 
 
 . " My father's house stood here ; this land is mine ; my glebe I claim ; 
 " Ye shall not tomb the spoiler here ; I bar it in God's name." 
 
 " God knows it ; priests, he speaketh trath ; we know it this man's ground." 
 So, one and all, out cry the crowd, the burghers standing round ; 
 Then thirty pence the Bishops tell, and pledge its worth to pay 
 To him who owns the land, ere, in its grave, the dead they lay. 
 
 Uncoffined, wrapt in royal robes, they thrust him down the tomb. 
 To front God's awful judgment-seat, to hear God's awful doom; 
 Now would I not be he who goes to doom at God's dread bauds 
 For all his haut renown and rule, for all broad England's lands. 
 
 "DEUS LO VULT!" — GOD WILLS IT!" 
 
 THE CRY OF THE CRUSADES. 
 
 1095. 
 
 To market-cross, to hut and hall, the holy Hermit sped, 
 
 "With sackcloth on his saintly form, with ashes on his head ; 
 
 Bore travel-worn and swart, he came, all fiery, from the East p" 
 
 With wild fierce eyes, and wails and prayers, he burst on fray and feast ;
 
 34 "god wills it !" 
 
 From the blood-stained ways of pain and dole, that weary pilgrims go, 
 He came, with tongue that told their shame, with cry that cried their woe; 
 " "Woe ! woe ! " the holy Peter cried, " for the sights these eyes have seen, 
 " Where the holy Saints were martyred, where our dear Lord Christ hath 
 
 been; 
 " Within His blessed birth-place, the cursed brood are found ; 
 " By His dear tomb, they scoff at Him, they call upon Mahound ; 
 '" Through Bethlehem's ways, on Olivet, in Nazareth's sad street, 
 " Through Zion's woeful gateways tread their proud and faithless feet ; 
 "And they who, over sea and land, the pilgrim's staff have borne, 
 " They bear the unbelievers' stripes, their blows and taunts and scorn ; 
 " These eyes have seen their thousand woes, have heard their suffering cries ; 
 " These hands have dressed their bleeding wounds, have wiped their weeping 
 
 eyes; 
 " This heart hath burned, that Christ's dear flock to the accurst should pay 
 " To look upon the blessed spot where He, our dear Lord, lay ; 
 " How long shall Thy fierce foes exult and mock Thee, God ! how long 
 " Upon Thy name shall they heap shame, upon Thy servants, wrong ! " 
 
 In town and way, by night and day, that cry was ever heard, 
 And, as men hearkened to that voice, their hearts within them stirred ; 
 From town to tower, from tower to town, through palace, hut and hall, 
 It rang, and Baron, Knight and Squire armed, answering to its call ; 
 Nor burned in high-born breasts alone that fierce and holy ire ; 
 Burgher and serf and villain vile, all felt that raging fire ; 
 Wives, maids and infants drank it in, devoiu-ed with holy rage, 
 And babes their weakness all forgot, and eld knew not its age ; 
 For God and His dear sepulchre, who counteth wounds or loss ? 
 Weak is the heart that will not don, for Christ, His bleeding cross ; 
 Base is the soul that halts or shrinks, that M'ill not tread His path, 
 That will not hew the heathen down, and deal to them His wrath ; 
 For him who conquers is haut fame and Christ's all blessed love ; 
 For bim who falls assoil from sin and God' s high bliss above ;
 
 THE CRT OF THE CRUSADES. 35 
 
 Whet ye the sword and point the spear ; the huckler burnish bright ; 
 
 Rivet the mail ; the charger gird ; spur on, God's valiant knight ; 
 
 Know ye no fear, though thousands threat ; through hosts, aU fearless, ride ; 
 
 He arms thy hand ; He shields thy head ; the Lord is by thy side ; 
 
 Jerusalem, upon thy walls, His triumphs shall be blown. 
 
 His banners waved, His cross be reared, Zion once more His own. 
 
 Then shall His holy place be cleansed, washed clean with Paynim blood. 
 
 Then shaU His turbaned scoffing foes be heaped, the vultures' food ; 
 
 Meet sacrifice our Lord shall have, an air with incense dim. 
 
 The smoke of blood from heathen hounds that sweetly mounts to Him, 
 
 Meet orisons unto His ears, the scoffers' shrieks shall rise, 
 
 Blended with holy chanted hymns, and thunderous battle-cries ; 
 
 Sweet to His ears as unto ours, shall mingle groan and yell 
 
 From misbelieving crowds we smite down to Mahound in hell ; 
 
 sainted Hermit, peace for thee shall be ; the Lord on high 
 
 Hath vengeance taken for the wrong that woke thy woeful cry ; 
 
 Lo, Pagan blood, like Jordan's flood, is rolled through Zion's ways; 
 
 Lo, while a babe lives to be cleft, the hot sword slays and slays ; 
 
 0, more than rich reward for all, ye warriors of the Cross, 
 
 For hungered march and fiery thirst, for wounds and brethren's loss. 
 
 For blazing noons that scared us with the desert's blasting breath. 
 
 For plague-strewn camp and deadly scathe on many a field of death, 
 
 Lo, prostrate in the blood accurst that round their threshold swims. 
 
 Our souls in His blest Temple-gates, breathe out adoring hymns. 
 
 Praise unto Him who called us forth to wash away His shame. 
 
 To deal His wrath and, to all lands, to glorify His name !
 
 36 
 
 THE WATCH OF THE CRUSADES. 
 1099. 
 
 She sits in the eastern turret 
 
 Of that castle rugged and grey, 
 And ever her %vatch is eastward kept. 
 
 Till the long day dies away. 
 
 Till, behind her, dies the sunset. 
 
 And darkness the far view fills 
 That she looks across, from its English walls 
 
 To its circling English hills. 
 
 Yet they rise unseen before her, 
 
 Those hills of her own green Kent, 
 For ever a far-off landscape here 
 
 Is with her, since first he went ; 
 
 Since, the cross on his knightly shoulder, 
 
 And his vassals arrayed, woe ! 
 Lost, and, how long to be lost to her ! 
 
 Years since, she saw him go. 
 
 And ever the eastmost turret 
 
 She climbs to, to look in vain 
 To the turn in the road that must show him first, 
 
 When he comes, if he comes again. 
 
 And there, from that eastward tuiTct, 
 
 Her looks will roam and roam 
 Down the one grey road, from the hroidery raised 
 
 That is worked to greet him home.
 
 THE WATCH OF THE CRUSADES. 37 
 
 Her maids may wliisper and chatter, 
 
 But, jest and laugh as they may. 
 She tries in vain to heed their mirth, 
 
 All lost to what they say. 
 
 But most she loves to clamher 
 
 Up, up the steep winding stair. 
 To that grey still chamber, when no one, 
 
 Xo voice, and no laugh are there. 
 
 Then, then, in that grey stUl turret, 
 
 What sounds in her hushed ears ring ! 
 What scenes of sorrow, and ever one form, 
 
 To her eyes, her heart's fears bring ! 
 
 Look ! now, to her inward vision, 
 
 A cloudless sky is given, 
 A glaring earth, that fiercely glows 
 
 To the glow of a glaring heaven. 
 
 Blind to all outward seeing. 
 
 In thought, she only sees 
 The stirless shade of the desert palms 
 
 That know not of air or breeze. 
 
 And the stretch of the blinding desert 
 
 Glares redly across her sight. 
 Still sands that know no motion, 
 
 Bathed in eternal light. 
 
 Then forms are seen and horsemen 
 
 Upon the hot wastes rise. 
 The ranks of the worn Crusaders, " 
 
 They flicker before her eyes.
 
 38 THE "WATCH OP THE CRUSADES. 
 
 " Water ! Jesu ! water ! 
 
 " One drop ! " she hears that yell, 
 As if 'twere Dives, shrieking up 
 
 To Lazarus, out from hell. 
 
 And one gaunt shape she watches, 
 
 "Wordless, amid the din, 
 That onward toils through the molten sands, 
 
 To the mocking spring to win. 
 
 On the hot sand, who lies dj'ing, 
 
 Too weak to scare away 
 The Yulture from his charger's eyes, 
 
 He soon the foul bird's prey ? 
 
 Or, fetlock-deep, their chargers 
 
 Are toiling and toiling sore, 
 "While ever some sink 'neath the weary load 
 
 They never shall bear more. 
 
 A moment, the silence rings with shouts. 
 And the Arabs' j-ell she hears, 
 
 T'le Christians' shrieks, and the Paynim's cries. 
 And the spUnter and crash of spears. 
 
 Again, and the swarthy Moslem 
 Are gone, and the host toil by ; 
 
 God ! have they left him there alone, 
 Wounded, unshrived, to die ? 
 
 that her love could bear her. 
 As swift as her wild fear flies. 
 
 To pillow on hers his dying head, 
 And to bless his dying eyes !
 
 THE AVATCH OF THE CltUSAUES. 39 
 
 But sometimes the eastmost turret 
 
 Gives her brain as weary di-eams 
 Of cities and kiosked gardens, 
 
 And fountains and golden streams. 
 
 For, ever those gardens tending, 
 
 A Chi-istian slave is there, 
 That the bitter scoff of the Pagan hounds. 
 
 Must, smitten and shackled, bear ; 
 
 Till the knightly heart is broken. 
 
 And the haughty eye grows dim, 
 And the stately form is bowed and bent, 
 
 Till the meanest can scoff at him. 
 
 Or, hark ! his haughty spirit 
 
 Unbroken, Mahound has curst, 
 And spat at the dogs who know not Christ, 
 
 And hath dared them to their worst. 
 
 And, crouched in that ghastly dungeon, 
 
 Where newt and adder crawl. 
 She sees him, tortured, and crushed, and worn 
 
 By misery worse than all. 
 
 terrors ! in shapes, how ghastly. 
 
 You scare and affray her eyes ! 
 And hope, no fairer visions. 
 
 No sweeter dreams, supplies ? 
 
 Yes ; ever the first in glory. 
 
 In danger, saved through all, 
 Joy shows him, Christ's dear soldier, -1- 
 
 Not doomed to sink or fall.
 
 40 THE "WATCH OF THE CRUSADES. 
 
 And ever the deadly melee, 
 And burning wastes are trod, 
 
 Secure, by him she loveth. 
 Her -wan-ior, loved of God. 
 
 And ever, as on he battles 
 
 To where Christ's triumphs were, 
 
 Ilis thoughts, she knows, are of his Lord, 
 His Lord alone, and her. 
 
 Then sometimes, calmly sinking 
 In such sweet dreams to rest, 
 
 "With a yet, yet dearer vision 
 Her happier eyes are blest. 
 
 joy of joys ecstatic ! 
 
 A glad cry strikes her dumb 
 "With gladness, calling to her, 
 
 " Come down ! our lord has ccme ! " 
 
 Then, then, the glorious angels 
 That guard her, smile and know. 
 
 Heaven's blessedness at times is shown 
 To mortals yet below.
 
 41 
 
 QUEEN ELEAKOR'S VENGEANCE. 
 1180. 
 
 Queen Eleanor's is a deadly hate, 
 It dogs her foes down, keen as fate. 
 
 And woe to those who the dark Queen scorn : 
 Better far had they never heen born ! 
 
 Than the Poitevin Queen should have on them frowned, 
 They'd have better been tracked by a black sleuth-hound. 
 
 Be they ever so high who court her frown, 
 Her Aquitain hate will pull them down. 
 
 Be they ever so fair her love who cross. 
 Let them ' ware of deadly peril and loss. 
 
 Let them praise their name-saints, if, in the strife, 
 They lose aU else, and yet 'scape with life. 
 
 "Woe and woe to Lord Clifford's daughter ! 
 Eleanors fiercest hate has sought her. 
 
 Sought her fiercely and sought her long. 
 
 On the false king's leman to wreak her wrong. 
 
 A wrong not she wiU tamely endure, 
 That the Clifford's blood alone tan cure ;
 
 42 auEEN eleaxor's vengeance. 
 
 For she of Poitou viill heap on her worse 
 Than empty scold and womanish curse. 
 
 And the parching thirst of the South Queen's rage, 
 The howl or the steel shall alone assuage : 
 
 The draught from the bowl, or the stab from the steel, 
 That her own right hand shall give or shall deal ; 
 
 The howl fierce thrust on the trembling hand 
 Of the white fair thing that can hardly stand ; 
 
 The stab that's dealt through the horror flung 
 To her feet, while her curse in its ears is rung ; 
 
 These alone shall assuage her hate ; 
 One shall be his Rosamond's fate. 
 
 "Well had the King his treasure concealed , 
 
 Long was she sought through wood and through field. 
 
 Long was she sought through road and through way, 
 Ere that she fell the dark Queen's prey. 
 
 For gold, what cannot be bought with gold ? 
 To the South Queen's ears the secret's told. 
 
 Death laughs out in her bitter laugh ; 
 Vengeance shall not be glutted but half. 
 
 Now to her robe let his minion cling ! 
 Not hers the grasp of the dotiug King.
 
 QUEEN ELEANOR S VENGEANCE. 43 
 
 Xow let a voice hiss into her ear, 
 
 Not his honied -svords, but the frenzy of fear ! 
 
 'Nov.- let curses stay her breath 
 
 "With the anguish of sudden and certain death 
 
 Ho ! ho ! then, Woodstock holds the eyes 
 That Vitch a King of his smiles and sighs ! 
 
 A laggard is hate, if flits an hour 
 
 Ere Eleanor seeks the Clifford's bower; 
 
 For, warring in Aquitain, far away 
 
 Is he, to her hate, who had barred the way. 
 
 And God her soul from His good grace spurn. 
 If the Clifford have life when the Elng return. 
 
 Gold the clue from her guard has charmed ; 
 Gold has the minion's guard unarmed. 
 
 but the dark Queen's face was fixed 
 
 To the look of hell as the diaught she mixed ! 
 
 And but hell to her fierce eyes rose. 
 
 As from many a dagger the keenest she chose ! 
 
 Woe, woe, for the golden-haired. 
 For whom her King has so softly cared ! 
 
 Woe, woe, for the blue soft eyes "" 
 
 That, woe for them ! won a kingly prize !
 
 44 QUEEN Eleanor's vengeance. 
 
 woe for the cheek and the lip so red, 
 
 That shall whiten so soon to the hue of the dead ! 
 
 And woe, thrice woe, for the rounded form 
 That soon not a kiss of its King shall warm! 
 
 And woe, thrice woe, for the rose-sweet breath, 
 So soon to be still' d for ever by death ! 
 
 The Queen has left her secret room. 
 
 And horses are led out by page and groom ; 
 
 In the saddle, her men-at-arms, fierce and still, 
 Sit ready to do her dark, fierce will. 
 
 "Woe, woe, to green "Woodstock's rose, 
 
 If grasped by such rude, wild hands as those ! 
 
 Iron hands, and hearts that, in sooth. 
 
 As little know, as their poignards, of ruth ; 
 
 Men of Poitou and of Aquitain rnce. 
 Keen to read their Southern Queen's face : 
 
 Men that on Henry's self had trod 
 
 At a flash of her eye or a meaning nod ; 
 
 Bloodhounds fell, that she holds in the slip, 
 Loosed by her frown or the curl of her lip. 
 
 Eleanor mounts, and away and away 
 
 They ride thiuUo^ he gloom of the darkening day.
 
 QUEEN ELEAXOR'S VENGEANCE. 45 
 
 The day is lost in a gusty night, 
 
 Such tempest as suits her purpose aright. 
 
 And homestead and village, as by they sweep. 
 Feel a shudder of horror thrill through their sleep. 
 
 Hours have come and hours have gone, 
 But still that terrible hate rides on. 
 
 Hours have come and hours have past ; 
 Hushed "Woodstock's streets are reached at last. 
 
 Cool and fresh is the midnight breeze 
 That stirs green "Woodstock's sleeping trees ; 
 
 Yet little the raging Queen recks now. 
 That the misty midnight cools her brow ; 
 
 She hears not, she, the town's quick stir, 
 The casements opened to gaze on her. 
 
 Death, her thought is of death alone, 
 
 Of a white dead face and a last deep groan. 
 
 No, not to save broad England's crown, 
 
 Would she miss the joy with which she leaps down. 
 
 Adown she lights. Lord Christ ! may few 
 Of earth feel the hate that thrills her through ! 
 
 but it gladdens the heart of hell 
 
 To feel the fire of a rage so fell ! ""
 
 46 QUEEN Eleanor's vengeance. 
 
 It nears to one, and before the hour, 
 The grim Queen's at the Clifford's bower. 
 
 0, ere the morning has grown to two, 
 That hand has a fearful deed to do ! 
 
 And, ere the morning has passed to three, 
 Those eyes have a ghastly sight to see. 
 
 fearfulest deed ! and ghastliest sight ! 
 That best had been hidden in dreariest night ! 
 
 The guards the door of the bower undo ; 
 In her hand is the end of the maze's clue ; 
 
 With fast-set teeth and a tiger tread. 
 Swift and softly she tracks the thread. 
 
 A dread fUts with her across the grass, 
 And the laurels shiver to feel her pass. 
 
 The heart of the maze her stem feet reach, 
 
 And a low laugh 's laughed that is more than speech. 
 
 Dim before her rises the tower 
 
 That holds the sweetness of Woodstock's flower : 
 
 Eose, how Boon, with a pitiless scorn, 
 
 From its sweet young hold upon Life, to be torn ! 
 
 Rosamond stirs in her slumber deep ; 
 What is the terror that shakes her sleep ?
 
 QUEEN Eleanor's vengeance. 47 
 
 Rosamond starts from her ghastly dreams ; 
 "WTiat is the sound that to hear she seems ? 
 
 Is it the di-eamt-of terror that's there ? 
 Is it a foot on the creaking stair ? 
 
 Hark ! she stiffens up white in bed ; 
 Whom will it bring, that mounting tread ? 
 
 Well may the blood to her cold heart start ! 
 Who is it tears her curtains ajDart 'i 
 
 She tries to shriek, but her tongue is dumb ; 
 Woe ! woe ! the meeting, so feared, has come ! 
 
 " Mercy !" she reads that gaze aright, 
 
 Of the whelpless wolf or the hungered kite. 
 
 " Mercy ! " Christ ! in that fierce, quick breath. 
 Is panted the horror of sure, sharp death ! 
 
 Out she flings her upon the floor. 
 
 As the grim Queen closes the chamber's door. 
 
 Heaped on the trembling floor she lies, 
 TVTiite as the dead 'neath those dreadful eyes. 
 
 Eyes that are filled with the fire of hell, 
 As shiver and shudder her prey's throes tell. 
 
 As over her prey she stands and looks down. 
 
 On her who must play with a Queen for a crown.
 
 48 QUEEN Eleanor's vengeance. 
 
 But the game is played, and lost is the stake, 
 And the winner is here the forfeit to take. 
 
 Heaven and hell have heard her vow ; 
 Heaven and hell know its fell truth now. 
 
 What ! and is this the head that would rest 
 Its golden curls upon Henry's breast ! 
 
 What ! are these the fingers, slight as a girl's, 
 The fingers that wound them in Henry's curls ! 
 
 What ! these are the white, round arms, that could find 
 No form but a King's round which to wind ! 
 
 A King's ! and darker, and yet more grim, 
 Grows the fell Queen's look as she thinks of him. 
 
 A King's ! and dread are the words that meet 
 The aching ears at her ruthless feet. 
 
 Curse and scorn, that they quiver to hear. 
 With a half-dead heart and a sickening fear. 
 
 Curses that blast, and withering scorn ; 
 Jesu ! had she never been born ! 
 
 Jesu ! that the earth would break, 
 
 And straight the quick to the dead would take ! 
 
 " Up, foul minion ! your foul joy 's past ; 
 " Hate, and not love, is here at last.
 
 QUEEN ELEAXOlt's VENGEANCE. 49 
 
 " "What ! you must toy -n-ith a crowned king, 
 
 " With the hand that God saw set on this, this ring ! 
 
 " Up I swore I not that we should meet ? 
 " T7p ! ere I tread you beneath my feet. 
 
 " Mercy ? Xo, not in life nor death : 
 
 " The air is hell while it holds your breath. 
 
 " Mercy ? Yes, for body and soul, 
 
 " Such mercy as lurks iu this poniard and bowl. 
 
 " Well did you plot my mercy to earn ! 
 
 " Eise I How, minion, your prayers I spurn ! 
 
 " Thus I laugh at your vain despair ; 
 " Rise, ere I tear you up by the hair. 
 
 " Rise, and shudder ! I, Eleanor, I 
 " Hiss in your ears : Arise, and die ! " 
 
 Up she rises, a ghastly sight ; 
 
 but her lips are cold and white ! 
 
 but white is her ghastly cheek ! 
 
 And but what horror her fixed eyes speak ! 
 
 Vacant of sense her glassy stare 
 
 On the cup thrust out, and the keen knife bare. 
 
 Her stare, that seems not to understand -' 
 
 What glares from each stony, outstretched hand 
 
 D
 
 50 QUEEN ELEAXOU S TENGEANCE. 
 
 Her stare, tliat sees all as if it seemed, 
 As if but a feverish dream it dreamed. 
 
 Yet real is the steel and real the draught, 
 The steel to be felt, or the death to be quaffed. 
 
 Real the ghastly hush that she hears. 
 
 And the ghastly " Choose ! " that thrills through her ears. 
 
 Which shall she seize, and which refuse ? 
 For ever she hears that murderous " Choose ! " 
 
 " Choose, ere my dagger loose you to tell 
 " The tale of your cursed shame to hell ! " 
 
 Not the stab from her hands ! not a touch from them ! 
 Swift her fingers clutch on the gold cup's stem. 
 
 As if Kfe were hateful, at once she drains 
 The draught, till no fearful drop remains. 
 
 As if life were fled from, and death were sweet, 
 She drinks, and lies at the fierce Queen's feet. 
 
 And sharp and shrill is her one wild cry, 
 " God, but to see my boys ere I die ! 
 
 " Henry ! " and with that name, her breath 
 Flutters and stills to stirless death. 
 
 The deed is done, the deed of hell ; 
 
 "What the grim Queen feels what tongue may tell !
 
 QUEEN ELEANOR S VENGEANCE. gl 
 
 As she looks a loot at the staring clay, 
 And wordless and frowning turns away. 
 
 Yet again she turns and stoops her down, 
 And darker and feller yet grows her frown. 
 
 A fair long tress her dagger has shorn ; 
 That tress her page to the King has borne. 
 
 " A wifely gift to the Queen's Lord sent." 
 but the grim King strode his tent, 
 
 With a wounded lion's growl and glare, 
 
 As he ground his teeth o'er the pale tress there. 
 
 As through his set teeth there raged an oath, 
 And he plighted again, to the dead, his troth. 
 
 And an oath of vengeance he fiercely swore 
 To the white cold one he should see no more. 
 
 Well for you is it, darksome Queen, 
 
 The ocean rolls you and your Lord between ! 
 
 Else small his mercy, and short the shrift 
 
 Of her who her hand 'gainst the Clifford dared lift. 
 
 Yet better were that than your fearsome doom, 
 That gives you, Queen, to a living tomb ; 
 
 That gives your fierce life, day by day, 
 In a dungeon's darkness to chafe away.
 
 52 QUEEN Eleanor's vengeance. 
 
 To chafe and to rage, and to vainly tear 
 
 At the grate that bars you from light and air, 
 
 Your rage or your patience to him the same 
 To whom your token of vengeance came. 
 
 Till your hlood grow tame and your fierce heart feel 
 For pardon it well could grovel and kneel. 
 
 For the feel of the breeze and the warm free sim. 
 It could half wish its vengeful deed undone. 
 
 * » * * * 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 In Godstowe nunnery's shadowy gloom, 
 "Was " Rosa Mundi " carved on a tomb, 
 
 And the tomb's side white fair roses crept up. 
 Cunningly twined round a carven cup. 
 
 Prayed for with mass and with holy prayer. 
 Chant and hymn, the Clifford lay there. 
 
 Still and carven in fair white stone. 
 She lay in the quiet choir alone, 
 
 Till Lincoln's bishop, Hugh, passed that way, 
 And enter' d the holy choir to pray. 
 
 And seeing that tomb, more fair than all, 
 "With its lights of wax and its silken pall.
 
 QUEEN ELEANOB'S VENGEANCE. 63 
 
 And learning there Henry's light love lay, 
 Commanded straight she be borne away, 
 
 Holding her pomp the Church's disgrace. 
 Spuming her sin from its resting-place. 
 
 Now, Mary Mother, more mercy show. 
 Than living, or dead, she knew below ! 
 
 Now God, from her sotiI, assoil all sin. 
 And give her at last unto bliss to win ! 
 
 For what better bait can the Devil fling 
 
 For a woman's soul, than the love of a King ? 
 
 Heaven rest her soul, and shield us all. 
 And aid us to stand, and not to fall ! 
 
 And, Mai-y Mother, give us to rest 
 
 At last in bliss with the Saints so blest !
 
 64 
 
 IN WARWICK CASTLE. 
 1460. 
 
 AXE, tlue axe, rejoice ; 
 
 O thirsting block have cheer ; 
 
 1 hear a welcome voice ; 
 
 It tells your feast is near ; 
 Upon your scaffold board 
 
 Shall lie right royal food; 
 Of blood of knight and lord, 
 
 Your wine shaU be right good ; 
 The feast is heaped and choice ; 
 Red block, blue axe, rejoice. 
 
 thirsting sword, have joy; 
 
 Whet thee in tower and hall ; 
 From peace's dull annoy 
 
 Thou shalt have festival ; 
 Thou shalt have fierce glad dance. 
 
 Shrill song from fosse and field, 
 Rounds shared with helm and lance. 
 
 Songs clashed from mail and shield ; 
 sword, be keen to hear ; 
 Thy time of joy is near. 
 
 towers and sUent haUs, 
 
 Great Warwick's bowers give ear; 
 Llii'tb shall be in your walls ; 
 
 Gladness shall cast out fear ;
 
 BEFORE BOSWORTH FIELD. 55 
 
 The voice that throneth kings, 
 
 It comes, the Neville's voice; 
 Triumph and rule it brings ; 
 
 Vengeance it brings ; rejoice ; 
 mighty hold, take cheer, 
 Your hour of rule is near. 
 
 throne, that hath foul scorn 
 
 That on thy seat should sit 
 One, for the cloister, born. 
 
 But for a shaveling, fit, 
 Eejoice ; swift comes the hour, 
 
 "When thou shalt proudly bear, 
 Of kings, the noble flower, 
 
 Of York, the glorious heir ; 
 Joy, "Warwick brings to thee, 
 Edward, thy lord to be. 
 
 BEFORE BOSWORTH FIELD. 
 1484. 
 
 The winter it is here ; 
 
 In woods no small birds sing ; 
 The forest it is drear, 
 
 But t'will green again in spring; 
 The throstle sweet Mdll sing; 
 
 for summer we are fain, 
 For the bright suns that will bring 
 
 Our red, red rose again.
 
 56 BEFORE BOSWoRTH FIELD. 
 
 Round tower and turret sad 
 The storm-wind coldly blows, 
 
 But burgh and hall will glad 
 When leaves are here for snows. 
 
 And it's for merry ]\Iay 
 ' And swallows from the main ; 
 
 England will be gay 
 
 When the red rose comes again ! 
 
 There's grief in Clifford's towers ; 
 
 There's wail in Warwick's halls; 
 No voice in Percy's bowers 
 
 To feast and tourney calls ; 
 They 're far who should bear sway ; 
 
 They 're banished who should reign 
 But heads for all shall pay 
 
 When the red rose blooms again. 
 
 harp, my harp, so long 
 
 That dared not wake thy voice ; 
 Thy time is near for song ; 
 
 Thy hour comes to rejoice; 
 A whisper's in mine ear 
 
 That to tell to thee I'm fain ; 
 They come who'U free thy fear; 
 
 Our red rose comes again.
 
 01 
 
 THE MARTYRDOM OF RIDLEY AND LATIMER. 
 
 1555. 
 
 OUR God, be Thou our succour ! our God, be Thoii our rock, 
 
 Our sure defence, the staff and stay of Thine afflicted flock, 
 
 Thy flock that groan in terror of the evil of their days, 
 
 Thy flock that through their sins are doomed to walk through thorny waya ! 
 
 Who 'gainst the hate and wrath of men, save Thou, canst be our stay ? 
 
 "Weak is the flesh and faint the heart, be with us this day ! 
 
 The scorn and ill-repute of men are theirs who Thine would be ; 
 
 The dungeon and the rending rack would part us. Lord, from Thee ; 
 
 Lord, with tears of blood we weep ; our trembling cry goes up. 
 
 If it please Thee, 0, from our lips, remove this bitter cup ! 
 
 Have pity, Lord, upon Thine own, for all is fear and gloom, 
 
 And we who sang in joy Thy praise, faint at our coming doom. « 
 
 must Thy saints, so blest of late, li^ e but their woe to weep ! 
 
 Why, Shepherd, to the rending wolves, hast Thou thus left Thy sheep ! 
 
 Red are our sins, Lord, we know. To Thee our hearts are known. 
 
 Yet, afflict us not so sore ! have mercy on Thine own ! 
 
 Or, if it be Thy righteous M-ill, by man our blood be spilt, 
 
 strengthen us, in death, to say, " Lord, be it as Thou wilt! " 
 
 make us strong to bear Thy cross ! Thou, Father, only Thou 
 
 Canst lead us joyful through the fires of hell that gird us now ; 
 
 Canst bid us, filled with love of Thee, amid the torturing flame, 
 
 Forget all but to show to men the glory of Thy name ; 
 
 Shuddering we think of what our eyes have looked upon this morn, 
 
 Thy saintly ones. Thy holy two, brought forth with curse and scorn, 
 
 The stake, the chains, the faggots heaped around the holy twain, 
 
 Yet we remember too their faith triumphant over pain ; 
 
 If theirs our doom, give us. Lord, like them to play our parTs ; 
 
 Give us, like them, to know but Thee, even with our dying hearts !
 
 68 THE MARTYRDOM OF RIDLEY AND LATIMER. 
 
 With prayers and praise and joyful hymns, even with expiring breath 
 Bid us show forth our trust in Thee, Thine, Lord, in life and death ; 
 If it he ours to tread to Thee, with them, their fiery way, 
 gu-d us, Lord, to walk their path even as they walked to-day ! 
 
 Now woe unto thee, Bonner ; to thee, fell Gardiner, woe, 
 
 Through whom our Zion's temples in ashes are laid low ; 
 
 God judge thee, Pole, thou Devil's scourge ! God judge thee, bloody Queen, 
 
 "Whose tiger heart hath lighted up the torments we have seen ; 
 
 bitter change ! fall from bUss ! alas, one little year, 
 
 These twain were preaching to God's Church in honour, void of fear; 
 
 Then ruled our young Josiah, our Edward undefiled. 
 
 Then wide the Gospel's light streamed forth from round our sainted child. 
 
 Then shone the one pure perfect faith undimmed throughout the land. 
 
 That faith which now is hunted down, its teachers gagged and banned ; 
 
 That truth that only can be heard from saints' expiring breath, 
 
 Not preached in life, but witnessed to in tortures and in death. 
 
 Weep, England, tears of blood ! sad land, weep for the bitter hour 
 
 That here set Anti-Christ on high to raven and devour, 
 
 To heap damnation upon souls too weak to win through strife. 
 
 Not strong to soar through pain and death to palms and endless Kfe ; 
 
 Yet, ye powers of hell, let loose through all our ways, alas ! 
 
 To tempt and kill, ye devil's spawn of Jesuit, monk and mass, 
 
 Lo, look on these who died to-day ! see how God's saints defy 
 
 Tour snares and, in your toils beset, triumphant, joy to die ! 
 
 As lambs unto the slaughter, from the Tower, where they had lain. 
 
 They brought them to false judges here in Oxford to be slain, 
 
 To Weston and to Tresham, hot to earn the devil's wage. 
 
 To Smith, filled 'gainst the faithful with the renegade's fell rage, 
 
 To Cambridge's sleek Gallios whose bellies are their god. 
 
 To Oxford knaves with souls for sale to earn curst Bonner's nod ; 
 
 Eed-robed, as though their thirst for blood their Doctors' frocks had dyed, 
 
 Before St. Mary's altar, fierce they sat, in evil pride ;
 
 THE MARTYRDOM OF RIDLEY AND LATIMER. 59 
 
 There, like our blessed Lord, before tbese Pilates' judgment-seat, 
 
 Meek in the midst our saints ■were set, their evil rage to meet ; 
 
 Then might the faithful bless the Lord, to witness Ridley's cheer. 
 
 To hear him welcome death for Christ, with joy that cast out fear, 
 
 And, sight, too blest for weeping, though pitiful to tears, 
 
 We saw old father Latimer, bowed down with fourscore years, 
 
 "We heard his aged words cut through the Papists' wily toil, 
 
 "We saw him, strong with strength from God, their wrath and cunning foil,; 
 
 And, when they doomed him to the fire, " I joy," he cried, " to die ; 
 
 " I thank my God who's spared me thus His name to glorify." 
 
 misty autumn morning ! bright October day, 
 
 "WTiose fame exulting saints shall show till earth shall pass away, 
 
 with what hearts within us, we oped our heavy eyes 
 
 To look upon the day that brought our brethren's sacrifice ! 
 
 "With leaden feet, all clogged with woe, that might not heavier be, 
 
 "We trod the city's ways, thick-thronged the evil sight to see ; 
 
 Nor long we waited for our saints ; to where, upon the north. 
 
 The ditch is, against Baliol's gates, they brought the dear ones forth ; 
 
 They came, begirt with armed men, with bailiff, monk and mayor. 
 
 And, over all commanding, rode the fierce Lord "Williams there ; 
 
 In furred black gown, paced Eidley first, so garbed, you might have guessed, 
 
 From velvet cape and cap, he deemed this day well worth his best ; 
 
 Fii-m came he on with calm sweet cheer, as if from care released, 
 
 Or rather, with the face one wears who seeks his marriage-feast ; 
 
 Behind him, toiling on with staff, in frieze frock worn and old, 
 
 "With kerchiefed head and buttoned cap, to fend his age from cold, 
 
 On tottered grandsire Latimer, and well the mournful crowd 
 
 Marked how, unto his feeble feet, fell straight and white his shi-oud; 
 
 Beholding them, even feUest foes with sorrow sure were sad 
 
 To see the woeful plight of these who late such honour had. 
 
 Up to Boccardo's prison-bars, one look they looked to see 
 
 If there, to wave farewell to them, Cranmer agaze might be ;
 
 60 THE AKMADA. 
 
 Then back unto his aged mate, sweet words did Eidley say, 
 And he, with merry cheer, quoth, "Fast I'll follow as I may." 
 And now is every eye fixed fast and every murmur dumb, 
 As, through the guarded open space, on to their doom they come. 
 Yet whiter are the gazers round than they their way who take 
 To where the heaped-up faggots lie, to where is reared the stake. 
 
 THE AEMADA. 
 
 1588. 
 
 Attend, all ye who list to hear our noble England's praise : 
 I tell of the thrice famous deeds she wrought in ancient days, 
 When that great fleet invincible, against her bore, in vain. 
 The richest spoils of Mexico, the stoiitest hearts of Spain. 
 
 It was about the lovely close of a warm summer day, 
 There came a gallant merchant-ship full sail to Plymouth Bay; 
 Her crew hath seen Castile's black fleet, beyond Aurigny's isle 
 At earliest twilight, on the waves, lie heaving many a mile. 
 At sunrise she escaped their van, by God's especial grace; 
 And the tall Pinta, till the noon, had held her close in chase. 
 Forthwith a guard, at every gun, was placed along the wall ; 
 The beacon blazed upon the roof of Edgecombe's lofty hall ; 
 Many a light fishing bark put out, to pry along the coast ; 
 And with loose rein, and bloody spur, rode inland many a post. 
 
 "With his white hair, unbonnetted, the stout old sheriS' comes, 
 Behind him march the halberdiers, before bim sound the drums :
 
 THE AEMADA. 61 
 
 His yeomen, round the market cross, make clear an ample space, 
 
 For there behoves him to set up the standard of her grace ; 
 
 And haughtily the trumpets peal, and gaily dance the bells, 
 
 As slow upon the laboiiring wind the royal blazon swells. 
 
 Look how the lion of the sea Lifts up his ancient crown, 
 
 And underneath his deadly paw treads the gay lilies down ! 
 
 So stalked he when he turn'd to flight, on that famed Picard field, 
 
 Bohemia's plume, and Genoa's bow, and Caesar's eagle shield : 
 
 So glared he when, at Agincoiirt, in wrath he turned to bay, 
 
 Andcrush'd and torn, beneath his claws, the princely hunters lay. 
 
 Ho ! strike the flagstaff deep. Sir Knight : ho ! scatter flowers, fair maids : 
 
 Ho ! gunners, fire a loud salute : ho ! gallants, draw your blades : 
 
 Thou, sun, shine on her joyously ; ye breezes, waft her wide ; 
 
 Our glorious semper eadem, the banner of our pride. 
 
 The freshening breeze of eve unfmi'd that banner's massy fold, 
 The parting gleam of sunshine kiss'd that haughty scroll of gold: 
 Xight sank upon the dusky beach, and on the purple sea ; 
 Such night in England e'er had been, nor e'er again shall be. 
 From Eddystone to Berwick bounds, from Lynn to Milford bay. 
 That time of slumber was as bright and busy as the day ; 
 For swift to east, and swift to west, the ghastly war-flame spread. 
 High on St. Michael's Mount it shone, it shone on Beachy Head : 
 Far on the deep the Spaniard saw, along each southern shire. 
 Cape beyond cape, in endless range, those twinkling points of fire. 
 The fisher left his skiff to rock on Tamar's glittering waves. 
 The rugged miners poured to war, from Mentlip's sunless caves ; 
 O'er Longleat's towers, o'er Cranboume's oaks, the fiery herald flew. 
 He roused the shepherds of Stonehenge, the rangers of Beaulieu. 
 Right sharp and quick the bells all night rang out from Bristol toMTi ; 
 And, ere the day, three hundred horse had met on Clifton Down. 
 
 The sentinel on "WTiitehall gate look'd forth into the night. 
 And saw, o'erhanging Richmond HUl, the streak of blood-red light :
 
 62 THE ARMADA. 
 
 Then bugle's note, and cannon's roar, the deathlike silence broke, 
 • And with one start, and with one cry, the royal city woke ; 
 At once, on all her stately gates, arose the answering fires ; 
 At once the wUd alarum clash'd from all her reeling spires ; 
 From all the batteries of the Tower peal'd loud the voice of fear. 
 And all the thousand masts of Thames sent back a louder cheer : 
 And from the furthest wards was heard the rush of hurrying feet, 
 And the broad streams of pikes and flags rush'd down each roaring street : 
 And broader stiU became the blaze, and louder still the din. 
 As fast from every village round the horse came spurring in ; 
 And eastward straight, from wild Blackheath, the warlike errand went ; 
 And roused in many an ancient haU, the gallant squires of Kent : 
 Southward, from Surrey's pleasant hUls, flew those bright couriers forth ; 
 High on black Hampstead's swarthy moor, they started for the north; 
 And on, and on, without a pause, untired they bounded still ; 
 All night from tower to tower they sprang ; they sprang from hill to hill ; 
 Till the proud peak unfurl'd the flag o'er Darwin's rocky dales : 
 Till, like volcanoes, flared to heaven the stonny hills of Wales ; 
 TUl twelve fair counties saw the blaze on Malvern's lonely height; 
 Till stream' d in crimson, on the wind, the "Wrekin's crest of light; 
 Till, broad and fierce, the star came forth, on Ely's stately fane, 
 And tower and hamlet rose in arms, o'er all the boundless plain ; 
 Till Belvoir's lordly terraces the sign to Lincoln sent, 
 And Lincoln sped the message on, o'er the wide vale of Trent ; 
 Till Skiddaw saw the fire that burned on Gaunt' s embattled pile, 
 And the red glare on Skiddaw roused the burghers of Carlisle. 
 
 Macaulay. 
 
 That night in Plymouth harbour there were song, yo-ho and shout 
 As to sea, against the shoreward wind, Drake warped his war-ships out ; 
 Eound rang the creaking capstans and, as the anchors swung, 
 No words of fear, but merry cheer and jests were on each tongue,
 
 THE ARMADA. 63 
 
 And fast aboard the powder and heaps of shot were rowed, 
 
 And deep the beef-casks and the bread with rough sea-jokes were stowed 
 
 And many a tale of torture wrought by Rome and hell was told 
 
 As they hoisted high the stores on deck or swung them down the hold, 
 
 And as out swept ship on ship, at the windlass as they cheered. 
 
 They minded how in Cadiz bay they'd singed the Spaniard's beard ; 
 
 "With a will those stout arms seaward, the ships of England, strained ; 
 
 Before the break of Saturday, but few in port remained ; 
 
 Before the dawn of Saturday, before a sou'west breeze 
 
 Full sixty sail towards the foe were sailing o'er the seas; 
 
 Through mist and drizzling rain they drove and by noon that July day 
 
 Eastward before them, seven long miles, the Armada stretched away. 
 
 There rode the fleet Invincible that towards each English home 
 Bore the slaughterers of Antwerp's saints, the chains and racks of Rome; 
 "Woe to thy daughters, England, to thy babes and grey -haired, woe, 
 If Philip's mercy, Parma's ruth, thy stately towns shall know ! 
 "Woe for the hour that in his power, thy stately London, sees. 
 His power who hardened Alva's heart and loosed the swords of Guise ! 
 Each towering galleon is filled with hate that never tires 
 To wake the shrieks of tortured saints, to light the martyrs' fires ; 
 Remember how cursed Bonner Spain's work within thee wrought; 
 Let Cranmer's pile and Ridley's flames to-day be in thy thought ; 
 If faint this hour be thy stout heart, if thy arm smite in vain, 
 Worse than thy bloody Mary's days, shall be thy days again ; 
 Let the shrieks of reeking Paris, let Zutphen's moaning woe 
 Tell the doom the Jesuit dooms thee to, the fate thy land shall know : 
 With saint, and Pope-blessed standard each castled galleasse comes. 
 With the blare of Spanish trumpets and the roll of Romish drums ; 
 There swings the Pagan censer, there the mass's chant they raise, 
 And gloat the while o'er pile on pile in Smithfield soon to blaze ; 
 Shall the Lord not shield His people and wall His faithful round ! 
 Lord, for Thine own glory. Thy foes and ours confound !
 
 64 THE AEMADA. 
 
 Let the nations see tliis day once more Thy wonders wi-ought of old 
 For the people Thou hast chosen, for the faithful of Tliy fold ! 
 
 They came, as to a triumph, gilt and tapestried ; with boast 
 
 And vaunt they could but scatter us, they rode along the coast ; 
 
 In a huge and mighty crescent, dim through the mist, they loomed, 
 
 And they looked on England's pigmy craft as to destruction doomed ; 
 
 Goliaths, on they came to us ^^ath scoffs upon their tongue ; 
 
 Down from their lofty bulwarks, on us, their scorn they flung : 
 
 But like the blessed David, their mightiness we saw 
 
 With trust in God the Lord, our strength, and scarce a thought of awe ; 
 
 What though with hosts of Princes they laboured o'er the flood, 
 
 With many a famous Bastard of many a royal blood. 
 
 Though pike a ad lance from every land were there with cruel joy, 
 
 To bind our sovereign Queen in chains, our nobles to destroy ! 
 
 Amongst us there were those who had met them without fear 
 
 In breach and mine, on dyke and plain, with Norris and De Vere, 
 
 Who, over-matched, undaunted, had fought them far away 
 
 In the Minion and the Judith, in St. Jean d'Ulloa's bay, 
 
 Who many a laden carrack had lightened, spite of Spain, 
 
 Of bar, doubloon and crucifix, upon the Spanish Main, 
 
 Who but a year ago had put their mighty king to shame 
 
 And given in Cadiz harbour his hundred sail to flame, 
 
 Had blocked his royal Tagus and made his Santa Cruz, 
 
 I^epanto's Iron Marquis, their offered fight refuse ; 
 
 Through high and low, unquailing, the blood of England ran, 
 
 The fear that only feared its God but knew no fear of man ; 
 
 And they, so stout for Queen and God, by valiant ones were led 
 
 Who for faith and fame and plunder, in many a fight had bled ; 
 
 From the masts of the Ark Eoyal blew England's standard fair, 
 
 And with the Lord High Admiral, was dauntless Ealeigh there. 
 
 And in the Triumph, Frobisher came crowding to the fray, 
 
 As stout as when through seas of ice he sought for far Cathay ;
 
 THE AKMADA. 65 
 
 Aud, in the Victoiy, Ilawkins, safe from their perjured wiles 
 
 That strove his barks to capture amongst the "Western Isles, 
 
 And there was he who, ere his sails in Plymouth port were furled, 
 
 Had swept their Southern sea and cut a furrow round the world ; 
 
 "Well we knew the stout Revenge his mark amongst the first would make, 
 
 The stout Eevenge that led the van with Devon's famous Drake ; 
 
 And there the Golden Lion bore Sheffield on to fame, 
 
 And the "White Bear brought another of the Howard's famous name, 
 
 And Fenner in the Xonpareil and Fenton in the Rose 
 
 Came thronging with the foremost to seize their share of blows ; 
 
 "^'hat wonder if they feared not aught M^hen, crowding o'er the seas. 
 
 Came England's fearless sea-dogs there with captains such as these, 
 
 What marvel if, to triumph there, they thronged with fierce deHght, 
 
 If but with thought of victory they gathered to the fight ! 
 
 And hour on hour, in boat and sloop, came speeding from the shore, 
 In haste to play their valiant parts, unnumbered brave hearts more ; 
 The sons of famous fathers, they came with courage true 
 To prove them worthy of the blood from mighty sires they drew ; 
 From many an inland castle and hall and grange they came. 
 Afire they came to strike with all for Queen and land and fame ; 
 From every creek and Devon stream came squire and noble fortli 
 "With Oxford and with Hatton and the great Earls of the North ; 
 Aud many a soft-tongued courtier the gi-eat Queen's smiles forsook 
 And stole to us with "Willoughby, with Cecil and with Brooke ; 
 Theirs were no hearts for soft delights and quiet homes that day ; 
 Small love had those at parting who had counselled them to stay ; 
 "With hearts aflame for battle, they swarmed from out the coast, 
 "With merrj- hearts to dare with us the game they loved the most. 
 
 Shout, for the Lord hath triumphed ! sing praises to oxir God, *' 
 "Who hath put to scom the scorner and on the proud hath trod; 
 
 E
 
 C6 THE ARMADA. 
 
 To His name be the glory, the praise to Him alone 
 
 "Whose hand hath given the victory and triumph to His own ; 
 
 Let His servants sing His greatness ! let His faithful tell His praise 
 
 Who hath fought and conquered with us through the twelve all-famous days, 
 
 The twelve all-famous days of fight whose deeds shall aye be told 
 
 While our sons, their fathers' freedom, our sons their pure faith hold ; 
 
 Weak is our strength and faint our heart unless He make them strong ; 
 
 He giveth conquest to the right ; He smiteth down the wrong. 
 
 From Him the hearts of captains are stout for high emprize ; 
 
 From Him are boldness to the bold and wisdom to the wise ; 
 
 Where now are Philip's galleons! where are Spain's vaunted hosts ! 
 
 He gave them to us as a prey ; He dashed them on our coasts ; 
 
 They came to fetter and to slay, but as He gave to death 
 
 Assyria's swarming hosts of old, they melted in His breath ; 
 
 He blew ! His winds came forth for us ; for us His storms arose ; 
 
 For us the black rocks shattered them ; the billows whelmed our foes ; 
 
 Therefore to-day, London, to Him thy psalms are sung 
 
 And unto His great glory with wreaths thy homes are hung; 
 
 Hang, hang with pictured tapestries thy every gladsome street, 
 
 And be each shop and Hall and Mart to-day with garlands sweet ! 
 
 Well may the roar of triumph be thundered from thy Tower ! 
 
 Well may thy thousand steeples clash forth their joy this hour ! 
 
 Well in this hour of triumph each window may be green, 
 
 Each window filled with gazers to gaze upon our Queen, 
 
 Our Queen who comes in triumph, who rides in state to-day 
 
 Her offerings of thanksgivings before her Lord to lay ; 
 
 To-day in glad thanksgiving before His throne she falls ; 
 
 To-day she leads her people's praise to Him within St. Paul's ; 
 
 Well may the Strand and Cheap be lined with all the City's pride ! 
 
 Well, through its marshalled Guilds, arow her coimseHers may ride ! 
 
 And glad may be her nobles' hearts to wend through that array 
 
 Of all her liveried Companies so gay of garb to-day ; 
 
 Strew, strew, fair maids of London, with blossoms strew each street, 
 
 That shall glad to feel the stately tread of her cream-white coursers' feet,
 
 THE AKMADA. 67 
 
 And proudly blow ye trumpets, our triumph shrilly blow, 
 
 As, in her pillared chariot, our Lion-Queen shall go ; 
 
 Not hers a spirit, faint with fear, at martial blare to start ; 
 
 ilore than a King's great courage beats in her unquailing heart ; 
 
 She rides as through the shouting ranks of Tilbury she past 
 
 With words that stirred her soldiei's' bloods as with a trumpet blast, 
 
 When, grasping fierce her truncheon, with bold, unfearing eye, 
 
 She told her people that for God and them she'd dare to die. 
 
 That she spite of her woman's heart, their general, were there need, 
 
 To victory 'gainst the vaunting foe their conquering ranks would lead. 
 
 Not for such kingly ruler, Philip, is thy doom, 
 
 The fetter and the dungeon, the scaifold, axe and tomb : 
 
 By Monk and Jesuit hated, by the Stuart's rage abhorred, 
 
 God hath shielded her from plot and snare, from dagger and from sword ; 
 
 And now His hand hath lifted from her eyes the gloom of night. 
 
 And the morning of the future is bright before her sight ; 
 
 The starless gloom has lifted, the dread has passed away. 
 
 And for the fear and darkness, for her are joy and day ; 
 
 Heap up your bonfires, 'prentices ; pile log and fagot high ; 
 
 To-night, in every shouting ward, yoiu- fires shall light the sky ; 
 
 To-night, shall many a barrel redly blaze on sign and wall, 
 
 From the Barbican and Aldgate, to Southwark and Whitehall ; 
 
 Dress up your red-legged Cardinals, in mitre, stole and cope ; 
 
 Let them dance aljove the dancing flames on halters with the Pope ; 
 
 To-night, with jeer and scofif, let them roast before our gaze, 
 
 Till 'mid cheer and yell, in sparks, at last they fall amid the blaze ; 
 
 For well may London's casements be glad with lights to-night ; 
 
 No more the thought of Haarlem's fate her matrons' dreams shall fright. 
 
 No more her shuddering maidens shall pale in dread again. 
 
 At all the woe that were their doom, the prey of bloody Spain ; 
 
 Afar the baffled spoilers and their Famese curse the loss 
 
 Of the days they counted surely should see them safely cross ;, 
 
 Ho ! Parma, are thy companies still lingering on the shore ! 
 
 Where be the mighty victors that shall guard them safely o'er!
 
 68 THE ARMADA. 
 
 Are Dunkirk's transports ready? are thy Walloons afloat? 
 
 Are horse and horseman safe aboard of Nieuport's many a boat ! 
 
 We have heard of all thy labours, how toilsome thou hast been, 
 
 What stores thou hast of ordnance, of cask and of fascine ; 
 
 Art thovi still watched from Kleyenburg ! are Zealand's sea-dogs near! 
 
 Dar'st thou not yet to venture forth to waft thy bloodhounds here ! 
 
 Ho ! art thou looking westward, as thou didst look of late ! 
 
 Long, long, methinks, for the Golden Duke, to free thee, thou shalt wait ; 
 
 Methinks the Fleet Invincible thou wilt not gaze on soon, 
 
 Unless the waves, around thy feet, its scattered wrecks have strewn ; 
 
 Northward to cliff and boiling rock it reels by tempests driven, 
 
 It flies the wrath of man ; it feels the scourging wrath of heaven ; 
 
 For it the rocks of Norway, the cliffs of Scotland wait ; 
 
 Full few shall 'scape to Philip's ears to tell its fearful fate ; 
 
 Within the hushed Escurial, he waiteth to be told 
 
 That the tiger hath his prey, that the wolf is in the fold ; 
 
 Let him hear how God hath judged him; that he shall look in vain 
 
 For his thousands sent to conquer, for his nobles that are slain ; 
 
 That his toils and mighty treasures of years have only borne 
 
 For him the bitter harvest of foul defeat and scorn. 
 
 That the mighty fleet vrith vauntings he sent undoubting forth 
 
 Has heaped the shoals of Holland, the headlands of the North, 
 
 That many a flaunting standard that made its galleons gay, 
 
 Borne, streaming through our shouting streets, shall deck St Paul's to-day. 
 
 long shall be the sorrow, and wild the weeping mid 
 
 The sunny homes of Lisbon and the mansions of Madrid, 
 
 And when its doom of shame and death is told to distant ears. 
 
 Full many a dame of Italy will blind herself with tears ; 
 
 IIo ! tonsured monks ! Ho ! shavelings, that count your dull beads o'er. 
 
 Is not the Lord's hand heavy ! has He not smitten sore ! 
 
 Despite of curse, anathema, of Eomish ban and bull, 
 
 Look how the Lord with blessings hath filled His chosen full I 
 
 Where be your gods of wood and stone, the idols that ye paint ! 
 
 What shield against our conquering shot were chapel, cross, and saint !
 
 RUPERT IS out! 69 
 
 Hath he not judged betwixt us who crj- to Him alone 
 And ye who, like the heathen, bow down to senseless stone ! 
 Oh be our hearts made thankful His goodness to adore, 
 That, as this day He shielded us, He shield us evermore ! 
 
 RUPERT IS OUT ! 
 1642. 
 
 Rupert is out, Rupert is out ; 
 You know it by shrieks and by sobs miles about, 
 By the crowds, miles around, from his troopers that fly, 
 By the fires of fail- farms that are flushing the sky. 
 By the fierce looks of those whom, though spared in their lives, 
 He has left with spoiled homes, he has left with wronged wives ; 
 You may track his curst path, if you, shuddering, list, 
 By the gashes of those who have dared to resist, 
 By the corpse of the bullet-slain farmer whose eyes 
 From his threshold stare up, cries to God in His skies, 
 By the mother wild-wailing, the daughter with hair 
 Dishevelled, who hides, 'gainst the earth, her despair ; 
 You may know it by horror and death miles about ; 
 
 Rupert is out, Rupert is out. 
 
 Rupert's away, Rupert's away, 
 To spoil and to spare not, to fire and to slay ; 
 flee, ye M-ho can from his pitiless path 
 Whom the Lord for our sins has let loose in His wrath !
 
 THE MAKCII TO BRENTFORD OF THE LONDON TRAIN ED-TI AND S. 
 
 fair fields of England ! once happy homes 
 God's vengeance is on ye, wherever he comes ; 
 Our sins were of scarlet, deep-dyed, Lord, were they 
 When Thou gavest Thine own up to him for a prey ; 
 brimmed is Thy cup and bitter Thy wine 
 "We have drank at the hands of this fiend from the Ehine ; 
 heavy's Thy hand and biting' s Thy scourge ; 
 Must we yet suffer long our transgressions to purge ! 
 when shall hell hold him, that we, Lord, may say, 
 Eupert's away, Rupert's away. 
 
 THE MAECH TO BEENTFOED OF THE LONDON 
 TEAINED-BANDS. 
 
 1642. 
 
 Bestir thee, London ; slumber not ; keep watch and ward, good town. 
 Be wakeful, as at noontide, though the night is darkening down ; 
 In every home, snatch down the pike ; at every gate, set guard ; 
 And let your trained-bands muster quick, in every swarming ward ; 
 Mayor, Aldermen, and Sheriffs haste ; quick gather to the call ; 
 For never yet was counsel good more needed in Guildhall ; 
 Each messenger, hot spurring in, to-night brings tidings here 
 May well make stout hearts hot and bold, and faint ones cold with fear ; 
 For scouts that from the north come in, to our good Mayor, bring word 
 That but a bare score miles away, they've Eupert's trumpets heard, 
 And many a flier from his mai'ch, who here for refuge comes, 
 Has fled the swifter that he caught the roll of Charles's driuns ; 
 Hour after hour is speeding fast ; near come they and more near ; 
 "With day, if London stay them not, the Tyrant will be here.
 
 THE MARCH TO BRENTFORD OF THE LOXDON TRAINED-BANDS. 71 
 
 In counsel deep sit Alderman and Counsellor and Mayor ; 
 
 Stout hearts, I trow, and pious soiils and wise grey heads are there ; 
 
 Not light and worldly ones are they who sit around the board ; 
 
 But grave men who, by word and deed, still seek to serve the Lord ; 
 
 Xot gay of garb or worldly fair, whom locks and gew-gaws deck, 
 
 But sad- attired and sober-souled, of show, who little reck ; 
 
 And, as their garb, so is their speech ; not theirs are brawl or worse, 
 
 The lewd talk of the dicer, the courtier's gay-laughed curse ; 
 
 The weight is laid upon them of their dear souls' precious care. 
 
 Of the fear of him who watcheth to take them in his snare ; 
 
 Therefore they seek by watchfulness, spare speech and guarded thought, 
 
 By aid of Him they own their Lord, to act as He has taught. 
 
 Therefore, this hour, as evermore, no fear of man they know. 
 
 No dread of aught, save but of sin and their soul's ceaseless foe. 
 
 Out speaks the Mayor, a stately man with hair as white as snow. 
 
 But age is not in his stout words, nor in his eyes' keen glow, 
 
 " Let our trained-bands forth to meet them ; their van is here with day ; 
 
 "If London list not to be sacked, its sons their march must stay ; 
 
 " What though they come with sti'ong array, with trust in horse and sword, 
 
 " Our pikes their hosts shall scatter ; our faith is in the Lord ; 
 
 "As David, 'gainst the mighty one, went forth with sling and stone, 
 
 " Let our faithful hearts go forth to fight, strong in His strength alone, 
 
 ' ' And, even as He hath promised, to those to Him who pray, 
 
 " The Lord shall give them to our hands, to tread down and to slay ; 
 
 " Even as to the Amalakites of old, did Joshua do, 
 
 " So will we smite and spare them not and down their captains hew." 
 
 So speaks he and they hear his words as grateful to the Lord, 
 
 And a grim murmur of assent dUs round the council-board. 
 
 The chains are loosed from 'cross the street ; each western gate's flung wide ; 
 The torrent of stout London's pikes is streaming down Cheapside ; 
 By Paul's dark church, through Temple Bar, past Charing Cross they go ; 
 mes' full flood sweeps by the tide, with Thames' unceasing tlow ;
 
 72 THE MARCH TO BRENTFORD OF THE LONDON TRAINED-BANDS. 
 
 Through Kensington they sweep right on without or stay or rest ; 
 
 Towards Brentford on and ever on the trained hands hurry "West ; 
 
 On, " For the Houses and the Cause," " God with us," is their cry. 
 
 Hour after hour, unpausing still, their even ranks go by. 
 
 And ever as their bright pikes pass, stout Skippon's eye, before, 
 
 " Pray well, my lads ; fight well, my boys ! " he utters o'er and o'er ; 
 
 " Pray with a heart, fight with a heart, for all you hold most dear ! 
 
 " I will be with you in the fight, as I am with you here ; 
 
 " Think still you fight for God's own cause, for child and wife you fight! 
 
 " Pray heartily! fight heartily ! your God will bless the right." 
 
 Out, citizen ! out, prentice, go ! shall London sink in flame ? 
 
 Shall your dear wives and maidens know the wrong men dare not name ? 
 
 Shall Rupert's brutal sworders all your ways with horrors fill ? 
 
 Shall fierce and lewd ones crowd youj homes, to plunder, shame, and kill ? 
 
 Better, upon a bloody field, to conquer or to fall. 
 
 Than see your shrieking hearths the prey of the bullies of Whitehall ; 
 
 Better, in death, for stainless homes, lie stiff and stark and cold. 
 
 Than live your children's shrieks to hear, the meanings of your old; 
 
 Better, a thousand times, to lie in free and honoured graves. 
 
 Than, gagged by Strafi'ords and by Lauds, to breathe the breath of slaves ; 
 
 Bettei', on high, through martyrdom, to seek and serve the Lord, 
 
 Than know the woes, dealt to the saints, by Bishops and the sword ; 
 
 For Law, for God, for Bight, for Truth, The Houses and the "Word, 
 
 Forth in the might of prayer and praise ! the Lord, your cry, hath heard. 
 
 Out, through the drear October morn, slow brightening on to grey ; 
 Out, through the noon's dim brightness, on, through the dark close of day ; 
 "With steps, as firm as their stout hearts, sweep by their flashing files ; 
 Towards the foe they stoutly go, with hummed hymns and grim smiles ; 
 By bamcades, to bar the streets, should there the fight be fought, 
 By fort and trench, where tender hands, women's and babes' have wrought. 
 By farms, sad in the autumn sun, where trembling weak ones stand, 
 Listening in fear for Eupert's horse, the scourges of our land,
 
 MAESTOX MOOR. 73 
 
 Through villages, whose fiill-thronged streets are filled with fearful prayer 
 For them and the Good Cause for which they go the foe to dare, 
 "With the fierce blare of trumpets, the thunder-roll of drums, 
 Let Essex hear how to his aid, the might of London comes ; 
 Never, when faith and freedom called, was the good City slack ; 
 Never, when wrong was to be fought, held the good City back ; 
 To-day, once more ranked for the right, its foes its strength shall see, 
 And, from their face, the Tyrant foiled, with all his hosts shall flee. 
 
 MARSTON MOOE. 
 1644. 
 
 Hot Eupert came spurring to Marston Moor ; 
 
 Praise we the Lord ! 
 Came spuiTing hard with thousands a score ; 
 
 Praise we the Lord ! 
 Beleageured York, that we lay before, 
 
 He knew would be ours ere a week was o'er, 
 So to scatter our hosts he fiercely swore. 
 
 To the Lord our God be glory ! 
 
 To Newcastle's succour he swore to come ; 
 
 Praise we the Lord ! 
 i\jid at morning we heard liis march's hum ; 
 
 Praise we the Lord ! 
 And with blare of trumpet and roll of drum. 
 Into York, in their pride, did the scomers come ; 
 But to-night are the cursing lips not dumb ? ^ 
 
 To the Lord our God be glory !
 
 74 MARSTOX MOOR. 
 
 God gave them to drink of pride, vre knew ; 
 
 Praise we the Lord ! 
 That. His saints His wrath on their hosts might do ; 
 
 Praise we the Lord ! 
 He hade us flee, that they might pursue, 
 So, from trench and leaguer, straight off we drew, 
 But we halted on Marston Moor anew ; 
 
 To the Lord our God be glory ! 
 
 There, hiding pursuit, stood our long array, 
 
 Praise we the Lord ! 
 While slow hours came and passed away ; 
 
 Praise we the Lord ! 
 " They will not come to the strife to-day," 
 "We said, and southwards our march then lay, 
 But the Lord had doomed them that hour oiir prey ; 
 
 To the Lord our God be glory ! 
 
 But Leslie's regiments had left the ground, 
 
 Praise we the Lord ! 
 When the fierce Prince bade his trumpets sound ; 
 
 Praise we the Lord ! 
 Then M'as spuning and running and fronts faced round. 
 Upon us they came, with the burst and sound 
 Of tempests, but ready His own they found ; 
 
 To the Lord our God be glory ! 
 
 Then the shot of their guns through our stilled ranks tore ; 
 
 Praise we the Lord ! 
 Then a pause and a hash fell on the war ; 
 
 Praise we the Lord ! 
 Then their squadi'ons thickened, and down once more 
 Came Rupert and Hell with a rush and a roar, 
 More fierce and fell than they came before ; 
 To the Lord our God be glory !
 
 MAESTON MOOR. /O 
 
 With Leslie and Fairfax the saints were few ; 
 
 Praise we the Lord ! 
 Not theirs the hearts that our God well knew ; 
 
 Praise we the Lord ! 
 Vessels uncleansed, what conld they do? 
 The godless have ridden them through and through ; 
 The accursed slay and slay and pursue ; 
 To the Lord our God be glory ! 
 
 Not so, Lord, was it with thine own ; 
 
 Praise we the Lord ! 
 To us were Thy truth and mercy shown ; 
 
 Praise we the Lord ! 
 Through our closed-up ranks were our trumpets blown ; 
 Then no shout, but a deep psalm rose alone, 
 And we knew that our God would His might make known. 
 To His Holy Name be glory ! 
 
 And Cromwell, His servant, spoke the word ; 
 
 Praise we the Lord ! 
 " On ! smite for the Lord ! spare not ! " we heard ; 
 
 Praise we the Lord ! 
 Hotly our spu-its within us stirred ; 
 Eeins were loosened and flanks were spurred, 
 And the heathen went down before God and His word. 
 To His name alone be the glory ! 
 
 Lo, the bow of the Lord was stnmg this day ; 
 
 Praise we the Lord ! 
 And the arm of our God was strong to slay ; 
 
 Praise we the Lord ! 
 He gave us the proud ones for a prey ; 
 He chased the mighty from out our way ; .^ 
 
 He gave us the high ones, low, to lay. 
 To the Lord alone be the glory !
 
 76 mahston moor. 
 
 "Where are ye, ye noble and ye proud ? 
 
 Praise we the Lord ! 
 Where are ye who cried 'gainst His saints aloud ? 
 
 Praise we the Lord ! 
 The great of the earth in death are howed ; 
 They who vaunted theii- strength His breath has cowed ; 
 Bloody they He, where the kite screams loud. 
 To the Lord our God be glory ! 
 
 Lo, the Lord our helper, hath heard our cries ; 
 
 Praise we the Lord ! 
 He hath raised the foolish and shamed the wise ; 
 
 Praise we the Lord ! 
 In Him, our rock and our sure hope lies ; 
 To Him shall the cry of His servants rise ; 
 "Woe to them who His chosen dare despise ! 
 To the Lord our God be glory ! 
 
 Ho ! Baal-priests, did we cry in vain ? 
 
 Praise we the Lord ! 
 He shall break ye, ye sons of Dagon, again ; 
 
 Praise we the Lord! 
 He shall winnow the chaff from the priceless grain ; 
 He shall skim the pot till no di'oss remain ; 
 And the Lord our God and His saints shall reign ! 
 To the Lord alone be glory !
 
 CORrOHAL JOHX, 
 HIS soldiers' o-w^ name for the DrKE OF Marlborovgh, 
 
 1711. 
 
 Do'nt talk of Schomberg and such to me ; 
 
 Noll' and King "William they might be queer 
 To deal -w'ith, but he'd have beat them all three, 
 
 Lord ! as easy as I'm taking off this beer ; 
 All along I -was -srith him, and I should kno-sv, 
 
 And I tell you, my boys, the sun never shone 
 On one that has led a charge here below 
 
 That was fit to be named with Corporal John. 
 Oh Corporal John always fought to beat ; 
 
 He was the one you could reckon upon ; 
 There was glory and plunder but never retreat 
 
 For all who fought under Corporal John. 
 
 At ilaestricht's siege I saw him first ; 
 
 Mynheer fought well and 'twas hard to win ; 
 Monsieur had stormed, but he'd got the worst ; 
 
 He'd tried right hard, but he couldn't get in ; 
 But Corporal John, he up, with us, there, 
 
 And our flag, the breach, ho planted upon ; 
 A mine they sprung, but what did he care ? 
 
 He budged not a foot, did Corporal John. 
 Oh he was one that always would win 
 
 "Whatever it was he ventured upon ; 
 Dutchmen or French, didn't matter a pin ; 
 
 He always beat aU, did Corporal John.
 
 78 CORPORAL JOHN. 
 
 Next with the Frenchmen the game we played, 
 
 And now 'twas our Corporal held command, 
 And with Duke and Marshal rare sport he made ; 
 
 He played the devil with Louis the Grand j 
 Burgundy vapoured and TaUard swore ; 
 
 Boufflers gave us a distant look ; 
 He gave us a look, but he didn't do more. 
 
 So our Corporal won, and Liege we took. 
 Oh Corporal John always fought to beat ; 
 
 He was the one you could reckon upon ; 
 There was glory and plunder, but never retreat 
 
 For all who fought under Coi-poral John. 
 
 Bonn, Guelders and Huy, they fell next year, 
 
 But, of these, our Corporal didn't think much ; 
 He longed to fight ; Villeroi he got near. 
 
 But they wouldn't let him, those sleepy Dutch ; 
 Our famousest fight came next, but fii-st. 
 
 Over the Schellenberg's heights we stormed, 
 Into Bavaria fierce we burst 
 
 And the cursing boors with theii- roofs' flames warmed. 
 Oh Corporal John always fought to beat ; 
 
 He was the one you could reckon upon ; 
 There was glory and plunder, but never retreat, 
 
 For all who fought under Corporal John. 
 
 August the thirteenth, mark it well ! 
 
 That was our Corporal's grandest day, 
 "When through marsh and stream and the fire of hell, 
 
 Through the Frenchmen's centre we burst our way. 
 It took us, to do it, from noon to night, 
 
 But it was worth doing and well 'twas done ; 
 Thirty thousand it cost them, that Blenheim fight, 
 
 And Tallard himself and many a gun.
 
 CORPORAL JOHN. 70 
 
 Oil Corporal John always fought to beat ; 
 
 He was the one you could reckon upon ; 
 There was glory and plunder, but never retreat 
 
 For all who fought under Corporal John. 
 
 Villeroi next from Liege we scared ; 
 
 lie hankered to have it : we couldn't consent ; 
 "We offered him fight ; for his bones he cared ; 
 
 Our Corporal came, and the Marshal went ; 
 Villeroi ditched and Villeroi dug, 
 
 But one night, in the fog, his ditches we crossed, 
 Behind fort and rampart ho thought himself snug, 
 
 But we thundered in and his lines he lost. 
 Oh Corporal John always fought to beat ; 
 
 He was the one you could reckon upon ; 
 There was glory and plunder, but never retreat 
 
 For all who fought under Corporal John. 
 
 Then May, good luck and RamiHes, brought, 
 
 At Ottomond's tomb, by the red Mehaigne ; 
 To slaughter our Corporal, Villeroi thought, 
 
 But the French and their Marshal we threshed again ; 
 Eighty standards and every gun 
 
 Our Corporal took that glorious day. 
 And, with it, the whole of Brabant, we won, 
 
 And Louis, from Flanders, he slunk away. 
 Oh Corporal John always fought to beat ; 
 
 He was the one j'ou could reckon upon ; 
 There was glory and plunder, but never retreat 
 
 For all who fought under Corporal John. 
 
 Next year wo did nothing : then came July 
 
 "When they played us three Dukes and we trumped each card ; 
 To see Vendome and his Princelings fly 
 
 Was pleasant, I swear, at Oudenarde
 
 80 OLD BEN350W. 
 
 Now came an Autumn of treneli and storm ; 
 
 Lille was strong, and the Frencli fought well ; 
 Three months it took and the work was warm, 
 
 In mine and breach, before that it fell. 
 Oh Corporal John always fought to beat ; 
 
 He was the one you could reckon xipon ; 
 There was glory and plunder, but never retreat 
 
 For all who fought under Corporal John. 
 
 At last came our Corporal's bloodiest day ; 
 
 That was his latest and fiercest fight, 
 When blood ran in rivers at Malplaquet, 
 
 In Tasniere's wood and on Bossou's height. 
 Of course, we know, battles, they must be fought ; 
 
 So, for all that comes with them, they're fools who care 
 Yet, pah ! even now how it sickens my thought 
 
 To think of the slaughter that went on there ! 
 Ah Corporal John always fought to beat ; 
 
 He was the one you could reckon upon ; 
 There was glory and plunder, but never retreat 
 
 For all who fought under Coi-poral John. 
 
 OLD BENBOW. 
 1702. 
 
 Boys, I'll give you a song, about one that's gone long. 
 One that all true good salts should know ; 
 
 For no braver a one ever stood to a gun, 
 Than my hero, old bold Benbow.
 
 OLD BENBOW. 81 
 
 Though many a name has a better-known fame, 
 
 I think 'tis a shame 'tis so ! 
 So fill the can, men, and I'll sing to you then. 
 
 The deeds of old bold Benbow. 
 
 A clipper was Drake, and a devil was Blake ; 
 
 Stout Duncan, Mynheer knew well ; 
 Of Eodney and Hawke, youi- Frenchmen don't talk, 
 
 And of Howe's deeds we're proud to tell. 
 Of Cochrane the bold, you've often been told, 
 
 Of Jervis's pluck, all know ; 
 But Xelson himself should be laid on the shelf, 
 
 As soon as old bold Benbow. 
 
 He couldn't boast birth, but you'll see he was worth 
 
 A score of the dons who could. 
 Fine fair-weather men, they were nowhere when Beu 
 
 Alone through the Frenchmen stood. 
 They may make a fine fuss of their high blood to us, 
 
 But we know that it's often so 
 That our boldest have past from before the mast 
 
 To glory, like old Benbow. 
 
 He was left in the lurch ; he was out in search 
 
 Of Du Casse, whom he long had sought ; 
 Through the "West Indy Isles he had chased them for miles 
 
 And the skulkers at last he'd caught. 
 His turn, it was come : they were big ones, some, 
 
 Ten saU, and, says he, " "We'll show 
 Mounseer the way to Spithead to-day ; 
 
 "Won't we, lads?" says old bold Benbow. 
 
 So he flung out the sign to bear down on their line. 
 
 But we'd only six sail, d'3-ou see ; - 
 
 And our captains were nobs, and hot work such fine snobs 
 Thought, with them, wouldn't quite agree ; 
 
 F
 
 82 OLD BENBOW. 
 
 They funked ; when they found he'd fight, they M-ore round; 
 
 How he swore when he saw them go ! 
 " But we don't go, my men, though we're but one to ten ; 
 
 " No, we'll fight them," said bold Benbow. 
 
 So he left all behind, and before the wind, 
 
 B,ight into the ten he went ; 
 Then one Captain took shame, and after him came ; 
 
 Eeal work, men, the old dog meant. 
 At their Admiral's side, hard to board he tried ; 
 
 At a first-rate he then let go. 
 And no more heard that day of her ; 'twas his way ; 
 
 So he served them, did old Benbow. 
 
 The work was too warm to last long ; one arm 
 
 Was gone ; a shot tore his head ; 
 A cannon-ball then took his right leg, " My men, 
 
 Bring a cradle on deck !" he said; 
 "While life was in him, and his ship would but swim, 
 
 He scomed, lads, to go below. 
 " If I die, boys," says he, " never mind, d'you see ; 
 
 " Fight it out !" says our bold Benbow. 
 
 To his four ships in sight, he still signalled on, " fight," 
 
 But they were'nt of the fighting stufl^; 
 So the}' left Ben alone to swear and to groan, 
 
 Till Mounseer found they'd had enough. 
 And so struck was he with old Ben, d'you see, 
 
 That a letter he sent ; 'twas so ; 
 " Had your Captains but fought as the cursed cowards ought 
 
 You'd have took me, Mounseer Benbow. 
 
 " You'll hang them I hope ; they deserve well the rope." 
 
 And Du Casse's hint wasn't forgot ; 
 He thought 'twas but right ; so in all the fleet's sight, 
 
 On his deck they were tried and shot.
 
 CFTON COURT. 83 
 
 " IVe but one leg; by heaven, but," says be, "I'd have given 
 
 That to save us this shame, I knoM-." 
 Ob, he'd all Xelson's pluck ; though he had'nt his luck ; 
 
 So here's, glory to old Benbow. 
 
 WeU, old walls of oak have become just a joke ; 
 
 And in tea-kettles we're to fight; 
 It seems a queer dream, all this iron and steam, 
 
 But, I daresay, my lads, it's right. 
 But -w-hether we float in ship or in boat. 
 
 In iron or oak, we know, 
 For old England's right, we've hearts that will fight. 
 
 As of old did the brave Benbow. 
 
 UFTON COURT. 
 
 Dive, dive, swallow, dart and dive! 
 
 Your joy is changeless, but ours, how short ! 
 So whispers this long-lost home to me. 
 
 My boyhood's dwelling of Ufton Court. 
 
 weedy terrace ! silent walks ! 
 
 echoing porch I waters gxeen ! 
 For forty years where the palm-tree waves, 
 
 Not such have my dreams of Ufton been ! 
 
 Not so I saw you in that old time 
 
 When love, it struggled, but pride, it won ; 
 
 When, choked with passion, I left you last, 
 For the march and camp 'neath an Indian sun.
 
 84 UFTON COURT. 
 
 Not SO I saw you, when on our line 
 The Pindarees' wild horse came down ; 
 
 Not so, 'mid the yell of the roaring breach, 
 
 When we storm' d red Bhurtpore's cloven town. 
 
 No, all unchanged, in those Eastern dreams, 
 
 Tour fountain leap'd, and your broad elms swung. 
 
 And with one soft laugh, that ever I heard, 
 With gladness and music, your chambers rung. 
 
 The oak is green, and the linnet sings 
 
 As sweet a song as ever it sung ; 
 But where is the voice that warbled here 
 
 A sweeter music when I was young ? 
 
 Soft falls the sunlight as then it fell. 
 
 On gable, and casement, and garden-wall ; 
 
 But where is she, to my boyish heart 
 Who made the gladness of Ufton Hall ? 
 
 " Or yon or I should go, " they said, 
 " Or you be homeless, or I depart. " 
 
 Strange lands they thrust between our love. 
 But never they thrust us heart from heart ! 
 
 A differing faith our fathers held ; 
 
 A differing faith we from them drew ; 
 My curse be on the ancient jars 
 
 That help'd to part me, love, from you 
 
 My curse be on the bigot hate 
 
 That bann'd thy rites, ancient Hall, 
 
 And hunted forth thy outlaw' d priests 
 From passaged roof and hollow' d waU !
 
 UFTON COtTvT. 85 
 
 " A boyish passion, a girlish, love, 
 
 " Let other faces our fancies fill. " 
 Little they thought would my hair he ■white. 
 
 And her smile in my heait be lonely still. 
 
 For forty Springs have your thorn-trees bloom' d. 
 
 For forty Autumns your oaks been gold. 
 Yet the sight of your rising chimneys shook 
 
 My blood, as it thiUl'd its throbs of old. 
 
 Yet ah ! how little, as children here, 
 
 When these same garden-walks we paced, 
 We thought that the love wo then scarce knew, 
 
 They fain would have from our hearts effaced. 
 
 Effaced I Our names on the beech then cut. 
 
 The beech with years may at last resign, 
 But never a change my love could know. 
 
 And never a change could come to thine. 
 
 Ah, well I mind me of that sweet hour 
 
 When conscious love to your eyes first came ; 
 
 No, never I knew theii- depths to leave, 
 Or shown or hidden, till death the same. 
 
 hazel eyes, 'mid your soft brown curls. 
 
 Fain, fain had hidden them, land and sea ! 
 But ever they lived before my thought. 
 
 And ever they look'd their love to me. 
 
 For ever they gazed with that parting look 
 That sware a love that must endure, " 
 
 The love of the heiress of Ufton Court 
 For me, her cousin, scorn' d and poor.
 
 86 nelson's bridge. 
 
 Yet never a breath of that sweet love 
 Or word or letter to me might bear ; 
 
 Too keen was that mother's cold, proud watch, 
 But, utter'd or not, that love was there. 
 
 Ay, long they pray' d her to wed the Earl, 
 And long they scoif'd at her idle gloom ; 
 
 But changeless stole she awaj- from youth, 
 Stole she unto her early tomb. 
 
 And therefore, well, to my aged thoughts, 
 It seems that, heirless, to stranger hands, 
 
 From those who wither' d our joy to grief. 
 Should pass, old Court, thy Hall and lands. 
 
 And now, at length, that I look once more. 
 Old home, on thee, decay thy fate. 
 
 On thee, I say, let the curse work on, 
 Of the hearts thy pride made desolate. 
 
 NELSON'S BRIDGE. 
 1797. 
 
 Of all the bridges ever used, you'U own with one consent, 
 
 The noblest was the glorious one our Nelson did invent, 
 
 The bridge he trod to glory, when, on St. Vincent's day. 
 
 Together the San Nicolas and the huge San Josef lay. 
 
 Alongside the San Nicolas, our Nelson trod his deck. 
 
 But mastless, and without her wheel, the Captain lay a wreck. 
 
 Ringed roimd by five three-deckers, she had fought through all the fight ; 
 
 And now, a log upon the waves, she lay, a glorious sight.
 
 THE FALSE ALAEM. 
 
 All crippled, but still full of fight, for still licr broadsides roared, 
 Still death and wounds, fear and defeat into the Don she poured ; 
 Yet there she fought, without a sail, without a shroud or rope ; 
 To get at the San Josef, it seemed beyond a hope ; 
 Out then our Admiral spoke, and well his words oui- blood could stir, 
 " In, boarders, to their seventy-four! we'll make a bridge of her." 
 
 Then one fierce cheer that, victory, meant, across the battle rang ; 
 
 In to the Spaniards' mizen chains, in swarms our boarders sprang ; 
 
 Through theii- stem state-room windows, with shout and yell we crashed, 
 
 And, through their cabin, to their deck, with Nelson, on we dashed ; 
 
 "With slash and thrust, all clear right soon, from stem to stem, we swept ; 
 
 Then boys, for their three-decker, and up her sides we leapt ; 
 
 It seemed, my lads, but minutes, and all was ours aboard, 
 
 And Xelson, on her quarter-deck, stood -with her Admii-al's sword, 
 
 And, by the light within his eyes, it needed none to tell. 
 
 That, to his thinking, as to ours, his bridge had answered well ; 
 
 Now ours be peace, and never more may such deeds needful be, 
 
 But, if they are wanted, mind me well, where'er you sail the sea, 
 
 If, one to two, you're matched with foes, be sure no chance you lose, 
 
 To try again the glorious bridge our Nelson used to use. 
 
 THE FALSE ALARM. 
 1805. 
 
 Oh they lit the fire on Home Castle, 
 And, men, j'ou can understand 
 
 IIow, from hill to hill and heart to heart. 
 The flame leapt through the land.
 
 SS THE FALSE ALARM. 
 
 They lit the fire on Home Castle, 
 And all the Border through, 
 
 In town and vale, on moor and hill, 
 Full shrill the bugles blew. 
 
 For the Frenchmen lay around Boulogne ; 
 
 We heard their gathering hum. 
 And we watched and waited for the day, 
 
 Theii" vaunting hosts would come. 
 
 As a hundred beacons flared that night, 
 There were arming, stir and din, 
 
 And fast, from far, to port and shore, 
 The Border gathered in. 
 
 On fifty cliffs the flame leapt up, 
 
 And all the Border-side, 
 "With fiery hearts and bloody spurs, 
 
 Towards the beacons ride. 
 
 Oh Roxburghshire rose well that day. 
 Nor Berwick spared its breath. 
 
 Nor Selkii-k di-ew rein for thirty miles 
 TILL they rode into Dalkeith. 
 
 Far west is bonny Liddesdale, 
 But no time her troopers lost ; 
 
 By noon, full forty miles away, 
 Each man was at his post. 
 
 And Kelso heard the Teviot men 
 Play, spurring towards the sea, 
 
 " Oh, my name it is little Jock Elliot, boys, 
 And who dare meddle with me ? "
 
 TRAFALGAR. 89 
 
 The widow' sent her only son, 
 
 Nor at home would have him bide, 
 
 And the new-wed wife sped her husband off, 
 That night from her loviug side. 
 
 Oh, had the Frenchmen come that day. 
 They'd have found the Border true 
 
 To her old renown, and felt full well, 
 What Scots can dare and do. 
 
 ^\jid if the foe should come to-day. 
 As at times they dare to threat. 
 
 They'll find the fire that rose that night 
 In our hearts is bm-ning yet. 
 
 They'll find our Eifles, England through. 
 
 As quick to rise and aim 
 As the Border was that wintry night, 
 
 That night of " the False Alarm." 
 
 TEAFALGAR. 
 
 1805. 
 
 North-west the M-ind was blowing. 
 
 Our good shii)s running free ; 
 Seven leagues lay Cape Trafalgar 
 
 Away upon our lee ; 
 ' Twas then, as broke the morning. 
 
 The Frenchmen we descried. 
 East away, there they lay, 
 
 That day that Nelson died.
 
 90 TRAFALGAR. 
 
 That was a sight to see, boys, 
 
 On -whicli t'lat moraing shone ! 
 We counted three-and-thirty, 
 
 Mounseer and stately Don ; 
 And plain their great three-deckers 
 
 Amongst them we descried, 
 «' Safe, " we said, " for Spithead, " 
 
 That day that Nelson died. 
 
 Then Nelson spoke to Hardy, 
 
 Upon his face the smile. 
 The very look he wore when 
 
 "We beat them at the Nile ! 
 " We must have twenty. Hardy, " 
 
 ' Twas thus the hero cried ; 
 And we had twenty, lad, 
 
 That day that Nelson died ! 
 
 Up went his latest signal ; 
 
 Ay, well, my boj's, he knew 
 That not a man among us 
 
 But would his duty do ! 
 And as the signal flew, boys. 
 
 With shouts each crew replied ; 
 How we cheered as we neared 
 
 The foe, when Nelson died ! 
 
 We led the weather column. 
 
 But Collingwood, ahead, 
 A mile from all, the lee line 
 
 Right through the Frenchmen led ; 
 "And what would Nelson give to 
 
 Be here with us ! " he cried, 
 As he bore through their roar, 
 
 That day that Nelson died.
 
 TRAFALGAR, 
 
 "Well, on, the " Victory " stood, boys, 
 
 "Willi every sail full spread. 
 And as we neared them slowly, 
 
 There was but little said ; 
 There were thoughts of home amongst us. 
 
 And as their line we eyed. 
 Here and there, perhaps, a prayer, 
 
 That day that Nelson died. 
 
 A gun, the " Bucentaure" first 
 
 Began with us the game ; 
 Another, then their broadsides 
 
 From all sides through us came ? 
 With men fast falling round us, 
 
 "While not a gim replied. 
 With sails rent, on we went, 
 
 That day that Nelson died. 
 
 " Steer for their Admiral's flag, boys !" 
 
 But where it flew none knew ; 
 " Then make for that four-decker," 
 
 Said Nelson, " men, she'll do I" 
 So, at their "Trinidada," 
 
 To get we straightway tried, 
 As we broke through their smoke. 
 
 That day that iS elson died. 
 
 'Twas where they clustered thickest 
 
 That through their line M-e broke. 
 And to their " Bucentaure " first 
 
 Our thundering broadside spoke. 
 We shaved her ; as our shot, boys. 
 
 Crashed through her shattered side ; 
 She could feel how to heel, 
 
 That day that Nelson died.
 
 92 TRAFALGAR. 
 
 Into the Dons' four-decker 
 
 Our larboard broadsides pour, 
 Though all vre well could spare her 
 
 Went to the " Bucentaure." 
 Locked to another Frenchman, 
 
 Our starboard fire we plied, 
 Gun to gun till we won, 
 
 That day that Nelson died. 
 
 " Redoutable" they called her ; 
 
 A curse upon her name ! 
 'Twas from her tops, the bullet 
 
 That killed our hero came, 
 As from" the deck, with Hardy, 
 
 The bloody fight he eyed, 
 And could hear cheer on cheer, 
 
 As they struck, that day he died. 
 
 " They've done forme at last, fiiend ! " 
 
 'Twas thus they heard him say, 
 " But I die as I would die, boys, 
 
 " Upon this glorious day ; 
 " I've done my duty. Hardy ! " 
 
 He cried, and still he cried, 
 As below, sad and slow, 
 
 "We bore him, as he died. 
 
 On wounded and on dying 
 
 The cockpit's lamp shone dim ; 
 But many a groan we heard, lads. 
 
 Less for themselves than him : 
 And many a one among them, 
 
 Had given, and scarcely sighed, 
 A limb to save him 
 
 Who there in glory died.
 
 THE DEEDS OF -WELLIXGTOX. 93 
 
 As slowly life ebbed from him, 
 
 His thoughts were still the same ; 
 " How many have we now, boys ?" 
 
 StUl fainter and fainter came. 
 As ship on ship struck to us. 
 
 His glazing eyes with pride, 
 As it seemed, flashed and gleamed, 
 
 As he knew he conquering died. 
 
 "We beat them, how, you know, boys. 
 
 Yet many an eye was dim, 
 And when we talked of triumph, 
 
 "We only thought of him. 
 And still, though fifty years, boys, 
 
 Have gone, who, without pride, 
 Names his name, tells his fame, 
 
 Who at Trafalgar died ! 
 
 THE DEEDS OF WELLINGTON. 
 
 18.52, 
 
 Ay, many a year I followed him 
 Whose course of glory's run; 
 Draw round me, friends, I'll tell you where 
 
 I fought with Wellington. 
 
 For I was one who served with him 
 Through all his fields in Spain ; 
 
 Ah, friends, his like we ne'er have seen, 
 Nor yet shall see again !
 
 94 THE DEEDS OF WELLINGTON. 
 
 And well may England honour him ! 
 
 Till all earth's days are done, 
 The world shall hear the deeds he did, 
 
 The deeds of Wellington. 
 
 From India first we heard his fame ; 
 
 I was not with him there, 
 But how he beat them at Assaye, 
 
 Old soldiers can declare. 
 Of his wild dash at Dooudiah's horse 
 
 I've often heard them tell ; 
 Where there was iighting to be done. 
 Be sure he did it well. 
 
 Oh, well may England honour him ! 
 
 Till all earth's days are done. 
 The world shall hear the deeds he did, 
 The deeds of Wellington. 
 
 'Tis nearly fifty years since then. 
 
 Yet well I mind the day 
 When our first march we made with him 
 
 To where the Frenchmen lay ; 
 Upon the heights of Eoli^a, 
 
 Laborde fought long and well ; 
 We beat him ; how we beat Junot, 
 Vimiera's field can tell. 
 Oh, well may England honour him ! 
 
 TiU all earth's days are done. 
 The world shall hear the deeds he did, 
 The deeds of Wellington. 
 
 They lost; we won, and that was all ; 
 
 Pshaw ! blunderers crossed our way ; 
 Sir Hugh, Sir Harry saved Junot, 
 
 And flung that work away.
 
 THE DEEDS OF TV'ELLIXGTOX. 9'J 
 
 But soon our General led us on, 
 Unchecked bj- such as these, 
 And then we chased their eagles back 
 Across the Pyrenees. 
 
 Oh, well may England honour him ! 
 
 Till all earth's days are done, 
 The world shall hear the deeds he did, 
 The deeds of ^Yellington. 
 
 Behind the Douro, Soult lay — safe ? 
 
 Why, in his face, 'twas forced ! 
 " Ha ! Ha ! " he laughed, and watched us come. 
 
 And while he laughed, we crossed ; 
 "We saw their backs ; and that same year, 
 
 At Talavera, plain 
 "We showed their Victor that we came 
 To see their backs again. 
 
 Oh, well may England honour him ! 
 
 Till all earth's days are done, 
 The world shall hear the deeds he did. 
 The deeds of "Wellington. 
 
 Retreat came next. "Vi''hat ? did we fly ? 
 
 No ! On Busaco's height 
 "We turned, and taught Massena there 
 
 "We little thought of flight ; 
 A month at Torres Yedras' lines 
 
 "We let the Marshal Ue, 
 He chafed and iuinod, and then, at last, 
 He learned what 'twas to fly. 
 
 Oh, well may England honour him ! 
 
 Till all earth's days arc done. 
 The world shall hear the deeds he did. 
 The deeds of WeUington.
 
 96 THE DEEDS OF -n^ELLINGTOX. 
 
 They foiled us once at Badajos ; 
 
 Good Lord ! that work was warm ! 
 It makes one white, to think of, now, 
 
 The night we tried to storm. 
 But its time came ; in that curs' d breach, 
 By Heaven! the French fought well, 
 But on through blood and fire we went ; 
 In yells and shrieks, it fell. 
 
 Oh, well may England honour him! 
 
 Till all earth's days are done, 
 The world shall hear the deeds he did. 
 The deeds of Wellington. 
 
 I swear it warms my blood again. 
 
 Although my hair is grey. 
 To think of how we beat Marmont 
 
 On Salamanca's day ; 
 And 'twas a sight to see, my friends, 
 
 "When our great captain, 'mid 
 The rescued city's tears and shouts. 
 Bode into freed Madrid. 
 
 Oh, well may England honour him ! 
 
 Till all earth's days are done. 
 The world shall tell the deeds he did, 
 The deeds of "Wellington. 
 
 Somehow, at Burgos we were checked ; 
 
 At times the greatest are ; 
 One failure he could well afford ; 
 
 'Twas there I got this scar. 
 A winter more, and then for France 
 
 We marched ; he knew it well, 
 And, rising in his stirrups, cried, 
 
 " To Portugal, fareweU. "
 
 THE DEEDS OF •WELLINGTON, 
 
 Oh, well may England honour him ! 
 
 Till all earth's days are done, 
 The world shall tell the deeds he did, 
 
 The deeds of Wellington. 
 
 For France ! for France ! but, hold, good sii's. 
 
 King Joseph stopjDed us here ; 
 "Well, red Yittoria swept our path, 
 
 And left the roadway clear. 
 And, long before November passed, 
 "We rolled back Soult's advance, 
 "We poured through St. Sebastian's breach, 
 And trod the soil of France. 
 
 Oh, well may England honour him ! 
 
 Till all earth's days are done, 
 The world shall tell the deeds he did. 
 The deeds of "\^^ellington. 
 
 "Wc won Toulouse, and, winning that, 
 
 We heard that all was won ; 
 Seven weary years of war were gone ; 
 
 Our work and his was done. 
 "We little thought he yet M^ould meet 
 
 A greater than he'd met; 
 "We never dreamed he had to win 
 His sternest victory yet. 
 
 Oh, well may England honour him ! 
 
 Till all earth's days are done. 
 The world shall hear the deeds he did, 
 The deeds of "Wellington. 
 
 But so it was ; a year passed by, 
 
 And, passing, proved it true ; 
 And I was with him once again 
 
 At far-famed "Waterloo.
 
 gg THE DEEDS OF ^VELLINGTON. 
 
 And I, I teard his " At them, men !" 
 
 When the Old Guard seemed to yield ; 
 I shared in that last charge that swept 
 The French from his last field. 
 
 Oh, well may England honour him ! 
 
 Till all earth's days are done, 
 The world shall hear the deeds he did, 
 The deeds of Wellington. 
 
 And so they say that he was one 
 
 Not made for love hut fear, 
 A cold, stern man who stood alone : 
 
 AU this I smile to hear. 
 Ask those who fought through that great war. 
 
 Bled, conquered, by his side. 
 And who'll not name his name with love. 
 And speak of him with pride ? 
 
 Oh, well may England honour him ! 
 
 TiU all earth's days are done. 
 The world shall hear the deeds he did, 
 The deeds of Wellington. 
 
 I name his name to honour it ; 
 
 In glory let him rest ; 
 More than all other things I prize 
 
 This medal at my breast. 
 Why, friends? Because it teUs that I 
 
 Some honour bore away. 
 With him whom, with a people's grief, 
 St. Paul's receives to-day. 
 
 Oh, well may England honour him 1 
 
 Till all earth's days are done, 
 The world shall hear the deeds he did, 
 The deeds of Wellington.
 
 99 
 
 THE DEATH-MAECH OF ^YELLIXGTOX. 
 
 1852. 
 
 o 
 
 " "Whom bear you thus with heavy tread, 
 
 " "With arms rcTersed, and brows deprest?" 
 " Comrade, we bear the mighty dead 
 
 " In glory to his place of rest. 
 " A nation throngs the city's ways, 
 
 " In grief for him whose race is run ; 
 " On, in dark state, beneath their gaze, 
 " Comrade, we bear great "Wellington." 
 March, slowly march. Hark ! in the hush, I hear 
 Assaye's hurrah, and Badajos's cheer. 
 
 Yes, o'er him let the trumpet wail. 
 
 And round him roll your muffled drums ; 
 In this last hour, who now shall fail 
 In open grief for him who comes ?, 
 Its solemn swell the Dead March pour, 
 
 In grief for him whose deeds are done ; 
 Grief, let the mighty cannon roar, 
 As on we bear great "W'ellington. 
 March, silent march. Hark ! in the hush, I hear 
 Vittoria's shout, and Salamanca's cheer. 
 
 On, bear him on to where they sleep, 
 
 Our greatest, whom we name with pride ; 
 
 Lay him by !Moore, in slumber deep ; 
 Lay him by Abercrombio's side.
 
 100 COSSACK, WE WILL NEVER BE. 
 
 Nay, place Mm by the only one 
 
 "Who fixed, with him, red Victory's smile ; 
 Room for the dead, by him who won 
 For us Trafalgar and the Nile ; 
 On, bear him on. Hark! in the hush, I hear 
 Toulouse's charge and St. Sebastian's cheer. 
 
 Throw wide the doors ; dust unto dust ; 
 
 O'er him the yawoiing marble close ; 
 Give him to death with trembling trust, 
 
 Calm in his last stern cold repose. 
 In reverent silence, in the gloom 
 
 Brooding beneath the mighty dome. 
 Conqueror, to share the conquered' s doom. 
 
 Leave him to fame in his last home. 
 March, comrades, march. Hark ! in the hush, I hear 
 Quatre Bras' hurrah, and "Waterloo's fierce cheer. 
 
 COSSACK WE WILL NEVEE BE. 
 
 " 111 fifty years Europe will be Republican or Cossack." 
 
 Napoi£ON Bonaparte. 
 
 1853. 
 
 Hark ! I hear a warning voice ; 
 
 St. Helena sends it forth : 
 " Fated Europe, make thy choice, 
 
 Chains or freedom — West or North 
 Choose ; ere fifty years are by,' 
 
 Europe shall be wholly free, 
 Or in fetters doomed to He, 
 
 Cossack, Europe, thou shalt be."
 
 COSSACK, vri: will never be. 101 
 
 So that stern Toice of the past 
 
 Spoke fiill thii-ty years ago ; 
 Still it speaks, and, roused at last, 
 
 "Well its meaning no-w wc know ; 
 Yes, Ave hear it, and reply, 
 
 AU our danger now we see ; 
 Free we'll live, and free we '11 die ; 
 
 Cossack, we will never he. 
 
 Long, too long, with coward fears. 
 
 Have we made the despot strong, 
 "While through nations' blood and tears. 
 
 On he marched from wrong to wrong ; 
 Bolder — year by year, more nigh, 
 
 All our danger now we see ; 
 Free we '11 Hve, and free we 'U die ; 
 
 Cossack, we will never he. 
 
 Boldly Poland fought our fight ; 
 
 Poland had our hopes and fears ; 
 Hungary stood for Europe's right ; 
 
 Europe helped her hut with tears : 
 Shall we now stand trembling by ? 
 
 No — our danger now we see ; 
 Free we'll Hve, and free we'll die ; 
 
 Cossack, we will never be. 
 
 More than wishes — Europe's swords, 
 Turkey needs to foil the Czar ; 
 
 Soon or late, we front his hordes, 
 Forced to fling them hack with war ;
 
 102 HARK ! THE WOLVES ARE ON THE TRACK. 
 
 Strike, and "freedom" be our cry; 
 
 All our danger now we see ; 
 Free we '11 live, and free we '11 die ; 
 
 Cossack, we will never be. 
 
 HAEK ! THE "SVOLVES AEE OX THE TRACK. 
 
 1853. 
 
 From Siberia's frozen wastes, 
 Fast from Finland, rank on rank, 
 Towards the Danube's gory bank, 
 Hot for blood each myriad bastes. 
 
 Hark ! the wolves are on the track. 
 Up, brave hunters, beat them back. 
 
 From the pastures of the Don, 
 Grassy plain and desert steppe, 
 Horde on horde, they southward sweep ; 
 Tramp on tramp, they hasten on. 
 
 Hark ! the wolves are on the track. 
 Up, brave hunters, beat them back. 
 
 Frigid Lap and fiery Sclave, 
 Lett and Russian pour to war ; 
 Poland sends her thousands far, 
 
 In the South to find their grave.
 
 HARK. ! THE 'SVOLVES ARE OX THE TRACK.. IOC 
 
 Ilark ! the wolves are on tlie track. 
 Up, brave hunters, beat them back. 
 
 South, the savage Bashkir rides ; 
 South, the Cahuuck takes his way ; 
 Fast, his bloody thirst to slay, 
 South, the wandering Tartar guides. 
 
 Hark ! the wolves are on the track. 
 Up, brave hunters, beat them back. 
 
 From the White Sea's icy shore 
 To the Caspian's lonely coasts. 
 Not a land, but swells their hosts. 
 Swells the tribes that swarm to war. 
 
 Hark ! the wolves are on the track. 
 Up, brave hunters, beat them back. 
 
 Hear you not the Cossacks' tread ? 
 See their countless lances flash ! 
 South, the Ukraine's shepherds dash 
 Field and march to heap with dead. 
 
 Hark ! the wolves are on the track. 
 Up, brave hunters, beat them back. 
 
 Fast their millions hear the call ; 
 Fast they muster ; but the prey. 
 Grim and gory, stands at baj', 
 Stands to fight and not to fall. 
 
 Hark ! the wolves are on the track! 
 Up, brave hunters, beat them back.
 
 104 BALACLAVA. 
 
 Let the earth-god of the North 
 Wisely gather back his might ; 
 Lo ! the West defends the right ! 
 Not to conquer comes he forth. 
 
 Hark ! the wolves are on the track. 
 Up, brave hunters, bpat them back. 
 
 BALACLAVA. 
 
 October 2oth, 1854. 
 
 Balaclava, Balaclava, 
 
 Far thy still and grassy plain 
 Thick is strewn with England's bravest, 
 
 High is heaped with England's slain ; 
 Shot and shell have done their work weU ; 
 
 They shall never charge again. 
 Balaclava, Balaclava, 
 
 O'er thy still and grassy plain. 
 
 Balaclava, Balaclava, 
 
 Fast the foes, across thy plain. 
 Foot and horse, and battery hurried, 
 
 From our hold thy port to gain ; 
 On they pressed, they thought to triumph. 
 
 On their squadrons pressed in vain. 
 Balaclava, Balaclava, 
 
 Pressed to death across thy plain.
 
 BALACLAVA. 105 
 
 On that bright October morning, 
 
 From thy hills across thy plain, 
 Fast we saw their squadrons pom-ing. 
 
 Saw the scared Turk fly in vain, 
 Shelter from the savage Cossack, 
 
 Flying towards our ranks to gain, 
 Balaclava, Balaclava, 
 
 Falling fast along thy plain. 
 
 From thy mountain gorges pouring. 
 
 Pouring onward o'er thy plain, 
 Forward swept ihe Russian squadrons. 
 
 On th eir horsemen swept in vain ; 
 In their forward path, the Campbell 
 
 Stretched his Scots, and piled theii* slain, 
 Balaclava, Balaclava, 
 
 Piled them thick upon thy plain. 
 
 From thy mountain gorges pouring. 
 
 Pouring onward o'er thy plain, 
 For-ward swept their squares of horsemen, 
 
 On, their horsemen swept in vain ; 
 Scot and Enniskillen met them. 
 
 Hot their sheltering guns to gain, 
 Balaclava, Balaclava, 
 
 Fast they fled across thy plain. 
 
 Then it was, when victory crowned us, 
 
 Madness made that victory vain ; 
 Curses on the lordly blindness 
 
 Then, that launched us to be slain ! 
 Curses on the idiot blindness 
 
 Then, that bade us charge in vain, 
 Balaclava, Balaclava, 
 
 Charge to death across thy plain !
 
 lOtt BALACLAVA. 
 
 " Forward!" was the fatal order; 
 
 " Charge ! the captured guns regain !" 
 Not a man but knew that order 
 
 Madly sent him to be slain ; 
 Not a man but knew that surely 
 
 On he went a grave to gain, 
 Balaclava, Balaclava, 
 
 Flung to deatli across thy plain. 
 
 Yet though death lay sure before us. 
 
 Death lay surely there in vain ; 
 Not a man a moment lingered ; 
 
 None in that dread charge drew rein. 
 Teeth we clenched, and brows we knitted, 
 
 Strung our nerves to fierce disdain, 
 Balaclava, Balaclava, 
 
 Scorn of death upon thy plain. 
 
 Then swept o'er us, then swept through us, 
 
 Grape and shell, and, lane on lane. 
 Tore the shattering round-shot through us. 
 
 Certain of a mark so plain ; 
 Fire to left, to right was hell-fire ; 
 
 On, the guns we charged to gain, 
 Balaclava, Balaclava, 
 
 Swept us down upon thy plain. 
 
 What could stay us ? Who amongst U3 
 Thought to turn, as o'er thy plain. 
 
 Reaped in that dread hour by hundreds, 
 Down we went 'neath that fierce rain ? 
 
 What could turn us ? what could stay us ; 
 Vain their fire, their squadrons vain ; 
 Balaclava, Balaclava, 
 
 Through them, rode we o'er thy plain.
 
 BALACLAVA. 107 
 
 Down before us go their horsemen ; 
 
 On, the sought-for guns we gain ; 
 Lanced or sabred fall their gunners, 
 
 But their guns we win in rain ; 
 Few shall turn ; an army fronts us ; 
 
 Who shall life and safety gain, 
 Balaclava, Balaclava, 
 
 Charging hack across thy plain ? 
 
 What could stay us ? backward charging, 
 
 Heeling through that iron rain. 
 Fiercely through their horsemen rode we, 
 
 Through their fierce fire rode again ; 
 Few we rode ; how few ! and fewer, 
 
 Gashed and grim, at last di-ew rein, 
 Balaclava, Balaclava, 
 
 From that death-ride o'er thy plain. 
 
 Balaclava, Balaclava, 
 
 Far thy red and reeking plain 
 Thick is strewn with England's bravest, 
 
 High is heaped with England's slain ; 
 Shot and shell have done their work well ; 
 
 Never may such hearts again, 
 Balaclava, Balaclava, 
 
 Eide such death-ride o'er thy plain !
 
 108 
 
 IXKERMANN. 
 
 November oth, 1854. 
 
 When we went up the hills of the Alma, 
 
 Through their hell-fire of shell and of shot, 
 We did a good day's work that morning, 
 And, boys, a good drubbing they got ; 
 But though they'll remember September, 
 
 They'll think of it, lads, but as play 
 To the work of this fifth of November, 
 And the drubbing they got, lads, to-day. 
 
 Then a sigh for all those who are gone, boys, 
 
 But fill up, all you who remain ; 
 We'll drink, " May they come soon again, boys, 
 That soon we may drub them again !" 
 
 Wet and weary we dragged from the trenches. 
 
 And dark lay the camp, boys, and still ; 
 Thick as night lay the mist in the valley, 
 
 And thickly it clung to the hill ; 
 But little we thought what 'twas hiding 
 As we turned into slumber, how deep ! 
 And little we knew what the roar meant 
 That startled us soon, lads, from sleep ! 
 
 Give a sigh to all those who are gone, boys. 
 
 But fill up, all you who remain ; 
 We'll drink, " May they come soon again, boys. 
 That soon we may drub them again !" 
 
 Below they had mustered their thousands ; 
 
 The night and the fog hid them well ; 
 Before we could see, they were on us 
 
 With shot and with thrust and with yell ;
 
 INKERMAKN. lOi) 
 
 They swept back our pickets, and yelling, 
 
 Eight up straight upon us they come ; 
 Fifty thousand they come to our seven, 
 Mad-drunk -with religion and rum. 
 
 Give a sigh to all those who are gone, hoys, 
 
 But fill up, all you who remain ; 
 We'll drink, " May they soon come again, boys, 
 That soon we may drub them again!" 
 
 Little time, lads, they gave us for formrag ; 
 
 " Eight forward— quick step," was the word ; 
 And ere well awake, we were at it 
 
 "With Minie, and bayonet, and sword ; 
 Up they come ; up the hill press their masses ; 
 
 "With shouts and with volleys we close. 
 Hacking on — thrusting on, though we barely 
 Could tell, through the fog, who were foes. 
 Give a sigh to all those who are gone, boys, 
 
 But fill up, all you who remain ; 
 "We'll diink, " May they come soon again, boys. 
 That soon we may drub them again !" 
 
 We were but a handful to them, boys, 
 But not a heart 'mongst us all sank, 
 As we dashed at their grey-coated columns 
 
 That swept round us front, lads, and flank ; 
 If they could not well see us, I swear, men. 
 
 Our ranks they could hear well and feel. 
 As we swept them down, volley by volley, 
 And gave them their fill of the steel. 
 
 Give a sigh to all those who are gone, boys, 
 
 But fill up, all you who remain ; 
 "We'll drink, " May they come soon again, -boys, 
 That soon we may drub them again !"
 
 110 INKERMANN. 
 
 But tougli vrork it was you may know, lads ; 
 Driven down, still they swarmed up again ; 
 For hours they came on still and on, lads, 
 
 Though we heaped up the hill with their slain ; 
 'Twas a hell upon earth there that morning, 
 
 With oaths, and with yells, and with groans, 
 As we fought till our last charge was gone, boys. 
 And then with clubbed rifles and stones. 
 Give a sigh to all those who are gone, boys, 
 
 But fill up, all you who remain ; 
 We'll drink, " May they come soon again, boys. 
 That soon we may drub them again!" 
 
 'Twas a sight to shake stout hearts, I tell you. 
 
 Their rush on our unarmed redoubt ; 
 Six times there they fought their way in, boys ; 
 
 Six times there we tumbled them out ; 
 But what could we do 'gainst their numbers ? 
 
 Surrounded and falling, how fast ! 
 Overpowered, worn out, but stUl fighting, 
 Forced back there, we gave ground at last ; 
 Give a sigh to all those who are gone, boys, 
 
 But fill up, all you who remain ; 
 We'll diink, " May they come soon again, boys, 
 That soon we may drub them again !" 
 
 Back, foot by foot, fighting, they bore us, 
 
 And half, all was over, we feared. 
 When the cry rose, " the French, the French come, bo}-;', 
 
 " The Eed-caps" then, God ! how we cheered ! 
 And on at a run came their Zouaves ; 
 
 A shout, and on with them we go ; 
 The Russians are flung from the hill-top ; 
 
 The day is our own, well we know ;
 
 THE TRICOLOR. 1 1 1 
 
 Give a sigh to all ttose who are gone, hoys, 
 
 But fill up, all you who reiuaiu ; 
 "We'll drink, " May they come soon again, hoys, 
 
 That soon we may druh them again !" 
 
 But that day was a day to remember ; 
 
 And all who came safe thi-ough that strife, 
 "Well that night might thank heaven that watched o'er them 
 
 And brought them safe through it with life ; 
 Yes, we weU might thank heaven that night, lads, 
 
 As on that red hill-top wo stood, 
 That, safe there, the day was our own, boys, 
 
 Though bought, lads, with England's best blood ! 
 Give a sigh to all those who are gone, boys, 
 
 But fill up, all you who remain ; 
 "We'll drink, "May they come soon again, boys. 
 That soon we may drub them again !" 
 
 THE TRICOLOR. 
 
 A CRY FOR EUROPEAN FREEDOM. 
 
 1855. 
 
 When will the nations be up once more, 
 "With a shout that shall ring from shore to shore. 
 And Europe's despots go down before 
 The flaunt of our flag— the Tricolor ? 
 Palsied and hagridden Europe seems, 
 Tranced and tortured in evU dreams, 
 But hard she breathes and turns her o'er; 
 Lot her wake to the flap of the Tricolor !
 
 112 THE TRICOLOR. 
 
 The render of chains — the Tricolor, 
 The planter of rights— the Tricolor, 
 Oh that the people's ranks once more 
 Were flaunting onward the Tricolor ! 
 
 Frenchmen, gi-ound 'neath a despot's heel, 
 "When will you turn on the girdling steel ? 
 Paris, will it be long before 
 St. Antoine's up for the Tricolor ? 
 Mutterers by the thrice-freed Seine, 
 When will your barricades rise again ? 
 When will your Marseillaise once more 
 Be thundered out 'neath the Tricolor ? 
 'Eighty-nine's' flag^the Tricolor, 
 ' Thirty's' banner — the Tricolor, 
 When win ' Forty-eight's' ranks once more, 
 Conquer a crown 'neath the Tricolor ? 
 
 Shall not Naples' Bourbon hear 
 A shout that shall smite him white with fear ? 
 Shall not Sicily strike once more. 
 Armed and ranked, for the Tricolor ? 
 Freedom yet shall make her home 
 In a proud Milan, and a priestless Rome, 
 And Florence shall yet take heart once more 
 For her old free life, 'neath the Tricolor. 
 Mazzini's banner — the Tricolor, 
 Garibaldi's colours — the Tricolor, 
 The South' s republics shall live once more, 
 Chainless again 'neath the Tricolor. 
 
 How long win Cliquot befool and lie ; 
 Nor fear that his Berhners' hour is nigh ?
 
 THE TRICOLOR. 113 
 
 Brandenburgh oaths -n-ill serve no more. 
 When Prussia takes to the Tricolor. 
 For another March will the dotard wait ? 
 For the vengeance that's due for ' Forty-eight ?' 
 To Potsdam shall he not fly once more, 
 Hunted forth by the Tricolor ? 
 
 The righter of wrongs — the Tricolor, 
 
 The smiter of thrones — the Tricolor, 
 
 Let Potsdam's pedant grow wise before 
 
 His Prussians take to the Tricolor ! 
 
 Darkly St. Stephen's tower looks down 
 On lowering brows in Vienna's town. 
 On lips that mutter yet more and more 
 Of days that shall come Mith the Tricolor. 
 Austrians, when will the glad time come 
 "NVhen German thoughts must no more be dumb, 
 "When Hapsburg and Croat will fly before 
 The shouts that herald the Tricolor ? 
 
 Bohemia's dream — the Tricolor, 
 
 Proud Hungary's hope — the Tricolor, 
 
 Lombardy's heart is strong once more, 
 
 As she flushes and thinks of the Tricolor. 
 
 Gagged and fettered by cowl and crown, 
 Hungary crouches, Cossacked down : 
 Pesth, how long will it be before 
 Your walls shall fling out the Tricolor ? 
 Kossuth watches and waits afar ; 
 In the leash are Honved and tierce hussar ; 
 Gujon, the Austrian squares, once more ^ 
 
 Will thunder through, with the Tricolor. 
 u
 
 114 
 
 THE TRICOLOR. 
 
 The Magyar's thought— the Tricolor, 
 The Ilapsburg's terror— the Tricolor, 
 When will Klapka's hussars once more 
 Spur to the charge for the Tricolor ? 
 
 That order reigns that trod down souls 
 When Diebitsfh butchered Grokow's Poles; 
 Shall not that order be rent once more 
 When Warsaw raises the Tricolor ? 
 Poland, how we hunger to hear 
 Your thunder-tramp and your lancers' cheer, 
 When the snow-white eagle streams once more 
 To the charge, by the side of the Tricolor ! 
 Kosciusko's standard— the Tricolor, 
 Dombrowski's banner— the Tricolor, 
 Oh that your pennons were launched once more 
 On the Russian squares, for the Tricolor ! 
 
 Northward, each despot looks afar 
 For the help of each tyrant's prop— the Czar, 
 But westward the Cossack spurs no more 
 Again to trample the Tricolor. 
 For at home for him the Western swords 
 Have carved out work for his swarming hordes, 
 And copquering Europe shakes no more 
 At the frowns of the foe of the Tricolor. 
 Alma's colours — the Tricolor, 
 The Tchernaya's flag— the Tricolor, 
 Calmuck and Tartar have learned once more 
 To fly from the flap of the Tricolor. 
 
 In each despot's halls is a nameless dread, 
 A haunting terror at hoard and bed ;
 
 OUR GUARDS. 115 
 
 Tyrants listen from shore to shore, 
 
 For the cry that shall come with the Tricolor. 
 
 The nations gagged, and blinded, and bound, 
 
 Harken too for the stormy sound, 
 
 The sound that to rend and to loose once more, 
 
 Shall ccnquering come with the Tricolor. 
 Freer of thought — the Tricolor, 
 Looser of lips — the Tricolor, 
 Souls and tongues shall be fettered no more 
 When thrones go down 'ueath the Tricolor. 
 
 OUR GUAEDS. 
 
 "Whose tramp comes sounding to us 
 
 From all our fields of glory ? 
 Whose cheers are ringing through us 
 
 From all our martial story ? 
 'Tis our Guards' tramp, onward ever, 
 
 Nor steel nor cannon heeding; 
 'Tis our Guards' cheer, silent never. 
 
 When, their cheers, their land is needing ; 
 Through the fiercest hours of battle, 
 
 Flames the lightning of their swords. 
 Rolls their rifles' volleying rattle, 
 
 As, to victory, go the Guards. 
 
 From !^^arlborough's fields of glory. 
 Their flags renown are bearing ; 
 
 Of Wellington's great story. 
 
 The fame, those flags are sharing ;
 
 116 OUR GUARDS. 
 
 banners, fiercely streaming, 
 
 Tour shot -rent tatters under. 
 How oft their bayonets' gleaming 
 
 Has crushed the battle's thunder ! 
 The centuries, onward ranging. 
 
 Still conquering find their swords ; 
 "Whatever else is changing. 
 
 Unchanged are stiU the Guards. 
 
 Up, through the dread breach, pouring. 
 
 Gay, in the shell-swept trenches. 
 On, through the batteries' roaring, 
 
 Our English Guard ne'er blenches ; 
 Not theirs the hearts to shame us ; 
 
 The fields their fathers vaunted, 
 To-day, with fields as famous. 
 
 They match with ranks undaunted ; 
 If Victory eyer doubt, boys, 
 
 Above the game of swords. 
 She's ours, when rings the shout, boys, 
 
 " Make room there for the Guards."
 
 117 
 
 OUE GREAT EXGLAXD OYER THE WATER. 
 
 1868. 
 
 Two nations ? pshaw ! nonsense ! two peoples ? we're one, 
 
 By our subject the sea tied together ; 
 Through all time, through the future, beneath every sun, 
 
 Storm and sunshine, united, we'll weather ; 
 The greatness of each shall be gladness to both ; 
 
 One, our language, our glory, our freedom ; 
 If any would part us, for one, I'll be loath 
 
 To own either England could breed 'em ; 
 So, glory to her who our glory shall be, 
 
 Our motherland's mightiest daughter ! 
 Every ill may she shun ! every good may she see, 
 
 Our great England over the water. 
 
 They say, we grow weaker, more tame than of old, 
 
 You and I, you know, don't quite conceive it ; 
 We're not to take in all the nonsense we're told, 
 
 Whoever may will to believe it ; 
 But if ever, as 'twill not, the croak could come true, 
 
 Though, like good wine, the older we're stronger. 
 In the youth of the West, wc our youth shall renew, 
 
 The mightier as we live the longer. 
 Then here's might to her, in whose might ours re-lives. 
 
 Our freedom, that we here have taught her! 
 What a future of greatness to us, boys, she gives, - 
 
 Our grand England over the water !
 
 118 GOD BLESS THE DEAR OLD LAND. 
 
 "What, if we've had squabbles ! the nearest in blood 
 
 Show, by tiffs, best their love for eauh other; 
 But they're fools who on such things are given to brood. 
 
 And let coldness divide child and mother ; 
 The quarrels of kinsmen should, love, but renew, 
 
 By the contrast but make it the clearer ; 
 So, if we've our tiffs, may they be far and few, 
 
 Let them make each to each but the dearer ! 
 Happier, mightier, wiser, each age, may both be, 
 
 Old England, and this her dear daughter ; 
 Hand in hand, may they on, England this side the sea 
 
 And our great England over the water. 
 
 GOD BLESS THE DEAR OLD LAXD. 
 
 A SONG FOR AUSTRALIA. 
 
 1865. 
 
 A THOUSAND leagues below the line, 'neath southern stars and skies, 
 'Mid alien seas, the land that's ours, our own new England lies ; 
 From Noi'th to South, six thousand miles heave white with ocean foam 
 Between the old dear land we've left and this our new-found home ; 
 Yet what though oceans roll between, though here this hour we str nd ! 
 Our hearts, thank God ! are English still ; God bless the dear old land ! 
 " To England !" men, a bumper brim ; up, brothers, glass in hand ; 
 " England !" I give you, " England !" boys ; " God bless the dear old land." 
 
 To some we see around us here, it may be, she was stern ; 
 
 It may be, in her far-off fields they scarce their bread could earn ;
 
 GOU BLESS THE DEAK OLD LAXD. 119 
 
 But though we thought our mother hard, we know now she was wise 
 
 To drive us out to this new land that every need supplies ; 
 
 "We left her side with heavy heai-ts ; we hardly thoiight that then 
 
 VTc left her, soon with honest work to make us happy men ; 
 
 Then to her name a bumper brim ; up, brothers, glass in hand ; 
 
 " Our motherland 1" here's "England" boys! " God bless the dear old laud." 
 
 And what though far she's sent us from her side ! we love her yet ; 
 
 Her love we think of more and more ; her coldness we forget ; 
 
 As northwards faint her dim cliffs died, how clung our eyes to her ! 
 
 Each league that thrust iis farther off, the more her sons we were ; 
 
 And now our new land's dear to us, dear as it is, we own 
 
 Yet dearer still is the old land, our native land alone ; 
 
 Then to her name a bumper brim ; up, brothers, glass in hand ; 
 
 " Our native land !" here's "England!" boys; " God bless the dear old laud." 
 
 It may be she would call us back, back to her side again, 
 And bid us bring the wealth to her we've won beyond the main ; 
 Sweet it M'ould be her fields to see ; but, dear to me and you, 
 Although the far old home may be, dear too we'll make the new ; 
 True to the land we're treading, bo5's, that's now our own, mc'11 be, 
 Howe'er our hearts may yearn to her, our mother o'er the sea ; 
 We've love for both ; we're proud of both; but up, men, glass in hand : 
 Hero's " England — she that gave us birth ! God bless the dear old laud." 
 
 what a greatness she make ours ! her past is all our own, 
 
 And such a past as she can boast, and, brothers, she alone ; 
 
 Her mighty ones the night of time triumphant shining throxigh, 
 
 Of them our sons shall proudly say, " They were our fathers too;" 
 
 For us her living glory shines that has through ages .shone ; 
 
 Let's match it with a kindred blaze, through ages to live onj 
 
 Thank God ! her great free tongue is ours ; up, brothers, gla s in hand ; 
 
 Ilere's " England, freedom's boast and ours ! God bless the dear old land."
 
 120 THE RAISING OF THE FLAG AT FORT SL'MTER. 
 
 For us, from priests and kings she -n-on rights of sueh priceless worth 
 
 As make the races from her sprung, the freemen of the earth ; 
 
 Free faith, free thought, free speech, free laws, she won through hitter strife. 
 
 That we might breathe unfettered air and live unshackled life ; 
 
 Her freedom, boys, thank God! is ours, and little need she fear, 
 
 That we'll allow a right she's given to die or wither here ; 
 
 Free-born, to her who made us free, up, brothers, glass in hand ; 
 
 " Hope of the free," here's "England!" boys; " God bless the dear old land." 
 
 They say that dangers cloud her way, that despots lour and threat ; 
 What matters that r her mighty arm can smite and conquer yet ; 
 Let Europe's tyrants all combine, she'll meet them with a smile ; 
 Hers are Trafalgar's broadsides still, the hearts that won the Nile; 
 We are but young; we're growing fast ; but with what loving pride. 
 In danger's hour, to front the storm, we'll range us at her side ; 
 We'll pay the debt we owe her then ; up, brothers, glass in hand ; 
 " May God confound her enemies ! God bless the dear old land." 
 
 THE EAISING OF THE FLAG AT FOET SUMTER, 
 Apkil 12, 1865. 
 
 Now God be praised, ye peoples— yes, your glad Te Deums raise ; 
 To God, our God, be glory still, be thankfulness and praise ! 
 He who fought for us at Naseby and in Worcester's bloody fray, 
 His right arm shields and succours us, and strikes with us to-day ; 
 He hath chastened us and scourged us sore with misery and defeat ; 
 Through bitter ways that tried our souls He has led our toiling feet; 
 Because we bore so long with sin and loved the unclean thing. 
 He has given the agony of years our hearts with tears to wring ; 
 Because to Moloch we bowed down, and ourselves to Mammon sold, 
 With sacrifice of blood and sin, for the South's accursed gold»
 
 THE RAISING OF THE FLAG AT FORT SUMTER. 121 
 
 He hath tried us in the furnace, He hath skimmed the vileness off, 
 
 He hath made us to our gibing foes a mockery and a scoff, 
 
 Till they said, " He hath forsaken them ; His servants are our prey." 
 
 But the Lord our God hath heard our cry ; He hath struck with us to-day. 
 
 Oh, how the heathen triumphed ! how our foes dared to rejoice ! 
 
 There were prophecies on every tongue, and taunts in every voice : 
 
 They said, " Let us arise and slay ; were not these freemen born. 
 
 Like our bondsmen that they'd have free, for our scourgings and our scorn ?" 
 
 But they who came to scourge and slay, our God gave them to meet, 
 
 For glory, shame — for victory, rout — for triumph, sure defeat. 
 
 And they who came to bind, are bound — are slain, who came to slay ; 
 
 He has turned, in. mercy, from His own, the vaunters' wrath away. 
 
 To Him be glory. Him alone — oiir shield, our wall, our rock, 
 
 Our great salvation, and our stay in the battle's fiery shock. 
 
 "WTiere be they now who called on Him, false priests, who mocked His name. 
 
 Who, Baal-prophets, called on Him to scorch us in His flame ! 
 
 Like flax within the furnace, like to stubble in the fire. 
 
 Like crackling briers, by us, the Lord consumed them in His ire. 
 
 It was upon an April morn, four fearful years ago. 
 
 That first the vaunting Southerners the Stars and Stripes hauled low ; 
 
 That Charlestown crowded all the wharves of her rebellious town. 
 
 Her cheering roofs and peopled spires, while the old flag went down ; 
 
 Her heart was brimmed with haughty pride, her lips with scoffs, that morn ; 
 
 We freemen were her laughs, her jests, her jibes, her jeers, her scorn; 
 
 "We were but spaniels, made to crouch when she but oped her lip, 
 
 Too happj', in her mercy, if we 'scaped the brand and whip. 
 
 "Whom God has doomed He maddens first ; she had no doubts or fears, 
 
 She looked not forward to this day through misery, blood, and tears. 
 
 She thought not that the cup for us she filled should be her cup ; 
 
 That to the bitter dregs this hour her lips should drink it up.4 
 
 The flag that fluttered down that day, to-day on Sumter waves ; 
 
 Her cannon roar to welcome it across her children's graves.
 
 122 THE RAISING OF THE FLAG AT FORT SUMTER. 
 
 "Who smiteth with the sword," God saith, "shall perish by the sword." 
 
 She marked not nor remembered that, forsaken of the Lord, 
 
 Like riiaroah did lie doom her, in Ilis ire, to be laid low, 
 
 Becanse she dealt out hell to men, nor let her bondsmen go. 
 
 Her heart lie hardened and her eyes He blinded in His wrath 
 
 That she might spurn His warnings of the pit within her path. 
 
 She saw not then the fiery hand that wrote in gathering gloom. 
 
 The " Mene Tekel" on her walls that told her hastening doom. 
 
 Ho ! women-whippers ply the scourge ! toys of your pride and lust. 
 
 The chattels that j'ou held not men tread on you in the dust. 
 
 The negroes that you scourged and sold, the blacks that you abhorred, 
 
 God bids, within your streets to-day, hold over you the sword. 
 
 You dared defy the right He spake — spake from His judgment-seat, 
 
 Therefore this hour in fear you lie beneath yoi.r bondsmen's feet. 
 
 Yet, preacher of God's truth, to-day — mortal, to whom 'tis given 
 
 To tell to man in Sumter's walls the righteous ways of Heaven ; 
 
 While thou with trembling heart behold'st the sin of years laid low, 
 
 Pray that, the evil gone, the All-good fresh vengeance may forego ; 
 
 That He may bid the tempest hush — the wrath of men be still. 
 
 That thy great land, purged in the fire, henceforth may work His will ; 
 
 That, purified through pain and death — baptized in blood and tears, 
 
 Victor and vanquished both may read the judgments of these years. 
 
 So shall the anguish ye have sown, the losses which ye weep. 
 
 Else into harvests of all good you and your sons may reap — 
 
 That, M'hen they tell to future times of all God by you wrought. 
 
 They still may see your strength was still the right for which you fought. 
 
 The wrong He smites. Praise to our God ! The right He shields and saves. 
 
 Thou flag preach this, long as thy pride o'er ball-rent Sumter waves !
 
 123 
 
 THE LUCK OF EDEX HALL. 
 
 A PKAYER TO THE PEOPLE. 
 
 
 Song, that all ■wondrous things can save, 
 
 Tells Low, of old, to Eden's lord 
 A magic gift the fairies gave, 
 
 Some kindly action's rich reward ; 
 A crystal cup, that, safe, no ill 
 
 Should unto Eden's race hefall ; 
 Theirs should he every hlessing still, 
 
 While theirs the Luck of Eden Hall. 
 0, lords of Eden, treasure up 
 The fairies' gift, your magic cup ! 
 
 Lands, state and reverence, courage, power, 
 
 Wealth that no wildest waste impairs. 
 Health, genius, every good's theii- dower, 
 
 "While the good fairies' gift is theirs. 
 But let a rash or faithless hand 
 
 The magic hlessing once let fall. 
 Lost shall he power, and wealth, and land, 
 
 Lost with the Luck of Eden Hall. 
 0, race of Eden, treasure up 
 The fairies' gift, your magic cup ! 
 
 truth, in olden fiction told ! 
 
 England, heed the lesson well; 
 A precious truth this tale of old, ^ 
 
 To ears that heed it, still should tell ;
 
 124 THE LUCK OF EDEN HALL. 
 
 Unto thy trust a gift, how rare ! 
 
 By gracious Providence is given ; 
 0, of that priceless gift take care, 
 
 Freedom, that priceless gift of heaven! 
 0, land of freemen, treasure up. 
 Freedom, God's gift, thy magic cup ! 
 
 Since thou hast had it, time can tell 
 
 How every blessing has been yours ; 
 Still dost thou prize thy treasure well ; 
 
 See how thy greatness still endures ! 
 Matchless the race that in thee dwells ; 
 
 Thy sails are white on every sea ; 
 To wondering nations, Glory tells 
 
 Of all possessed and done by thee. 
 0, land of freemen, treasure up 
 God's priceless gift, thy magic cup ! 
 
 Ilark ! through the troubled earth, resounds 
 
 The strife for rights thy sons have here ; 
 Whilst peace abides within thy bounds, 
 
 And wisdom rules thee, free from fear. 
 Envious, thy state the nations see, 
 
 By tyrants gagged, by priests oppressed ; 
 race, so great because so free, 
 
 How blessed are you with freedom blessed ! 
 0, race of freemen, treasure up 
 God's priceless gift, your magic cup ! 
 
 Ah, prize it well ! my own land, 
 Let not the mocking nations see 
 ■ This blessing, given to thy hand. 
 
 E'er held lesa dear than now by thee !
 
 OrR GLORY ROLL. r2d 
 
 Still let this highest gift of God, 
 
 Thee, land, above the nations lift, 
 So shall thy future path be trod, 
 
 Secure from ill, through this God's gift. 
 0, land of freemen, treasure up 
 God's priceless gift, thy magic cup ! 
 
 So in its ■sveird strength shalt thou stand, 
 
 Eock-Uke amid the Tvaves of ill ; 
 Thy conquering march through time, how grand ! 
 
 Thy future ever grander still; 
 But 0, remember, in that hour 
 
 Thy hold is from thy treasure forced. 
 To weakness turns thy vaunted power ; 
 
 "With freedom's loss shall all be lost. 
 0, race of freemen, treasure up 
 God's priceless gift, yoiu- magic cup ! 
 
 OUE GLORY EOLL. 
 
 MY land, thou land of heroes ! through my thoughts what glories pour. 
 
 As thy mighty past to memory tells thy roU 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 he, 
 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. 
 Still to haunt thy countless children with the ghosts of womJcrs done, 
 Till with deeds that match their fathers', each shall prove himself theii" son.
 
 126 OUR GLORY ROLL. 
 
 Saints and heroes ! who may name all who have toiled and thought and bled 
 For thy sake, since, from thj' tierce ones, Rome and Caesar almost fled, 
 Since, hut dim-seen through thy long-past, with thine Ai-thur, knight on 
 
 knight, 
 All the might of thy Eound Table streamed on through Badon'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 Harold 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. 
 
 So thy mighty will, " live free ! die free !" thy Wallace dared to learn, 
 
 And thy Bruce and Douglas rung it down to us from Bannockburn. 
 
 Praise to them, our Norman fathers, whose mailed gauntlets rent away 
 
 From the despot's grasp at Runnymede the rights we hold to-day. 
 
 To De Montfort, thy " Great Baron!" he whose strong arm planted deep 
 
 First our rightful power to rule ourselves, the power that still we keep. 
 
 Nor, if they blindly strove for wrong, name M^e 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, showed what thine could dare and do. 
 
 From thy Talbot, France's terror, and thy Hal, who smote her down. 
 
 To each bowman and each billman 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 won by these, thy mighty brood, 
 And holier glories than are reaped in fiercest fields of blood.
 
 Ot'R GLOKV EOLL. 127 
 
 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 hlessed 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 M-hom 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 Le the faith they freed, when we tell of them not ! 
 
 Oh days, o'erfiUed with thought and deed ! 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, ntter o'er 
 The names that were earth's wonders then, and shall be evermore ! 
 One then, 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 Sidney 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 guiile, 
 For thee thy Raleigh wrote and bled, thy Grenville dauntless died. 
 Thy Hawkins and thy Frobisher and Cavendish, for thee ^ 
 Brought wounds and gold and galleons back from every unknown sea.
 
 128 
 
 OUR GLORY ROLL. 
 
 For thee, no fear of pike or stot, or storm or odds, tBey knew, 
 
 Winning from death Panama's bars, the ingots of Peru. 
 
 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, 
 
 mighty Tudor times ! 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, 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. 
 The Tyrant fine 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, 
 When Popish prelates, fell as Eome'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 biithright sprang.
 
 ocH glout roll. 129 
 
 And -n-hcn the Tp-ant loosed at last his hell-hounds on their prey, 
 And through thy ways his cry -^-ent forth to plunder, bind, and slay. 
 Then ^th lit eye, thou well might' st see how gathered to thy side 
 Thy stem ones who on Marston Moor broke fiery Eupert's pride, 
 Whom Naseby's day and Worcester's fray, thy conquering soldiers saw, 
 Who fought thy fight at red Dunbar, Wexford, and Philiphaugh, 
 Thy Koundhead ranks, thy Ironsides, who down the scoflers 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'd'st 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. 
 
 Is or 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, 
 When from thy once unfeariag 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 stem 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 thy Tyrant's eye. 
 Rose some to dare the strife for thee, for thee content to die. 
 When thou dost count thy martyrs o'er, thou dost remember well 
 IIow Eussell on the scaffold bled, how murdered Sidney fell ; 
 
 I
 
 130 OUR GLOEY ROLL. 
 
 But t]ieii- 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 Eomish 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, 
 
 Theii' curses and oui" endless hate, by hell's own deeds might earn. 
 
 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 owm 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 CuUoden all their savage clans clove down 
 
 And made us freemen, nevermore to di-ead 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 ! 
 What might and thought and wealth and rule, that still know greater growth ! 
 "What triumphs still in war and peace ! thou, still the ftrst 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-souled, but all thine own, thy "^''alpole 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.
 
 OUR GLORY ROLL. 131 
 
 Since, for thy rule, his mighty will launched "Wolfe afar, to wrest 
 From France's hold, on Abraham's heights, her empii-e 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 Grattan's grasp and Curran's strength and Eurke, to whom 'twas 
 
 known 
 To soar to heights, unsealed by thought, saye in his words alone ; 
 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 mighty 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 
 
 "Was spent to reap renovra 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, Oudeuarde and Malplaquet ; 
 
 Still, with quick breath and flushing blood, the conquering tale is read 
 
 Of how before him Tallard foil and boastful Villars fled.
 
 132 OUR GLORY ROLL, 
 
 IIow, "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 nearer sons who hurled thy ranks through many a famous field. 
 
 From when thy dying Wolfe exulting heard, " The French — they iiin ! " 
 
 From when thy hoyish Clive won states beneath the Indian sun, 
 
 From when Gibraltar fire-girt saw thy Elliott bide the shock 
 
 Of empires armed, and fling them hack 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 Abercrombie's hand at Alexandria tore 
 
 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 stem to the yain boasts of Kegnier'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, Victor, and Massena he o'erthrew 
 
 In fields almost as stern as thine, world-known "Waterloo ! 
 
 C) old Yalkyriur, work ye had, ye choosers of the slain. 
 
 In all his hundred conquering strifes that freed the fields of Sjiaiu ; 
 
 Busaco, Talavera, Salamanca, well each name 
 
 Thou know'st, old land ; well know'st thou, too, Vittoria'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 ; 
 
 Through pass and cloud, he hurled them down from I van telly'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 ;
 
 OUK GLORY ROLL. 133 
 
 A sterner strife, a nobler hour, old land, you never knew 
 Than -when you smote !Xapoleon down, destroyed at Waterloo. 
 
 Yet, ye years that we have seen, ye too our blood could stir 
 
 With deeds that show that we, this hour, are aU our fathers were ; 
 
 No nobler hearts, through Fontenoy or lost Ahnanza, kept 
 
 Their even tread and steady pulse, while down their ranks were swept, 
 
 Than those that at ilooltan's far walls with Edwardes did not fail, 
 
 Than those that, in JeUalabad, 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 CornwaUis 's to thee, as Peterborough's, dear. 
 
 His fame who crushed at Hydrabad its many a fierce Ameer, 
 
 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, whUe, 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 ; 
 How ever yet thy mighty blood with fiery gladness thrills ^ 
 As thou remcmberest how thy ranks charged up the Alma's hills,
 
 134 OUR GLORY ROLL. 
 
 How, all imsuccoiired, with the Turk, thy boldest gathered soars 
 
 "With Williams, while the Ilussiaii hordes rolled from the mounds of Kar3, 
 
 How thou did'st weep proud tears for those who iu 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 soldier's deeds at gory Inkermann ; 
 
 Long, through all future coming years, shalt thou delight thy soul 
 
 "With thoughts of these, thy sons, who won for thee Sebastopol. 
 
 But brighter yet shall blaze thine eye and deeper flush thy cheek, 
 
 "When thou unto thy childi-en 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 ti'usted 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, 
 
 And, in that dreadest of thine hours, still unto both were true ; 
 
 Long unto distant marvelling years shall the proud talc be sung. 
 
 How "Wilson, Hodson, and thy few to Delhi's hill-tops elimg, 
 
 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 ;
 
 Oril GLORY KOLL. 135 
 
 Yes, in tlie weakness of thine age, thy memory mwst 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 Inglis' 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 stoim, no sons of thine are they ; 
 
 Thou, throned upon the subject isles, what triumphs, land, to thee, 
 
 VThat spoils and rules, thy brave have borne from every wind-swept sea ! 
 
 How have they joyed as through the thundering Knes they cleft theii* way. 
 
 As gun to gun, for fiery houi-s, amid the foe they lay, 
 
 As their fierce broadsides, crash on crash, through side and porthole roared, 
 
 And shroud and sail and spUntering 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, 
 
 Earth, to thee in ocean-bursts by tempests to thee flung. 
 
 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 EusscU knew, 
 
 The deeds that Eooke and Shovel dared in ocean's sight to do. 
 
 How Anson streamed our conquering flag in triumph round 4he world, 
 
 How Vernon its consuming fire to Darien's winds unfurled,
 
 136 OUR GLORY ROLL. 
 
 How tliroiigli the shoals of Quiberon, through its white breakers' roar, 
 
 In storm and fire, our fearless Hawke, brave Conflans, clutched and tore ; 
 
 Nor yet forget how, one to ten, bold Benbow struck Du Casse. 
 
 Nor how keen Eodney 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 the Tricolor tore down. 
 
 Still in your dash, windswept waves, these glories England hears, 
 
 Still swells to catch St. Vincent's roar and Camperdown's fierce cheers, 
 
 Still hearkens, with Ht eyes, to all told by the billows' roar 
 
 Of Exmouth, Cochrane, and Napier, and fames unnumbered more. 
 
 But one great name, 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, sceptered land, what other glories are 
 As dear as his whose broadsides stilled the Nile and Trafalgar, 
 Who, fi'om 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, 
 Kobed thee with power and rule that earth might tremble in thy sight, 
 But when thy days 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 laws by which the suns are ruled, by which the worlds are rolled ! 
 Not from swart Egypt's priestly lips, not in the Hebrew flame 
 Of prophet fire, not from keen Greek, to man that wisdom came ;
 
 OUR GLORY ROLL. 137 
 
 Thee, land, He chose out from all lands, His mysteries forth to show. 
 Thy tongue, to bid the sons of men His wondrousness to kno'w, 
 Through thee, He spake the words of power that lit the ends of nfght. 
 Through Xewton'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. 
 
 Those who, with Davy, natiu'e'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 WTieatstone, seized the power that earth, \vith 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 whii-ling 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 di-agons came 
 
 And flashed man round the wondering earth, wrapped in their breath of flame. 
 
 Who were thy sons whose mighty soxils adored their God in stone ? 
 
 With Him to whom they piled their prayers, their memory Uves alone. 
 
 Their frozen music chants His praise for ever in our sight 
 
 From carven shaft and stiU 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. 
 
 stony dream Ictinus wrought up the blue Attic air. 
 
 Still, stDl thy white perfection makes the thoughts of centuries fair. 
 
 Still is his Florence glorified by Brunelleschi's dome, 
 
 Still Michael Angclo'a di-ead thought soars vast o'er prostrate Rome ;
 
 138 OUR GLORY ROLL. 
 
 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, land, is thine 
 "Who may be breathed, uncrushed, with him, the mighty Florentine ? 
 One ; when all nations utter these, mother-land, even then 
 Thou, thou can' st dare to breathe with theirs the glory of thy "Wren ; 
 Thy swelling heart, evea with their fames, his vast renown recalls, 
 And Pallas' fane, St. Peter's pile but mate with thy St. Paul's. 
 
 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 Handel's soul to God in thunders soared. 
 Upon the wings of thy great speech, upmounting, be 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 Hogartb gives ! 
 From Reynolds' hands, for ever fair, how mortal beauty Hves ! 
 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 sumise of thy deathless verse that made its morning bright, 
 Thy Chaucer, whose clear radiance first brake sweetly up the night, 
 Thy Massinger, Green, Decker, Peele, and Marlowe, all who Lit, 
 With Fletcher, honey-tongued, and Ford, the Mermaid bright with wit ; 
 Thy Herrick, 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, Mdth the dread Florentine, 'twas given in life alone 
 Alike to see the torturing flames and gaze upon The Throne.
 
 OUR GLORY ROLL, 139 
 
 These flash do'mi 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 I 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 ; 
 
 Thine, Richardson and SmoUett, Steele and Fielding, fellows fit ; 
 
 Thine, Yanbrugh's, Farquhar's dazzling scenes, and Congi-eve's diamond wit ; 
 
 Thine were the hand and the fine brain whose quaint and gentle powers. 
 
 How tenderly and rarely well, made his " Sir Boger " ours ; 
 
 Thine, Dryden's strong resounding Kne, and Pope's poiut, 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 Eamsay's bonnie lassies' chat, and the dear lines of Gay; 
 Still, through thy memory murmur on the tones thy smooth Gray sung ; 
 Thy gi-eater Collins, still his " Odes " swell grandly on thy tongue ; 
 Thy Cowper's quiet feeling yet our grateful reverence eai-ns ; 
 Still, on our tongues and in our blood, dance on the songs of Burns ; 
 Nor 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 ? 
 Fair are the dreams unto thine eyes thy Keats for ever brings ; 
 Sweet are the streams of thoughts divine thy Shelley to thee sings. 
 Still thy rough Crabbe, thy softer Moore now wake thy sighs or mirth ; 
 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 ;
 
 140 OUR GLORY ROLL. 
 
 Christ's tender love for all, tliy Hood unto tliy heart has taught ; 
 
 To natm-e's worship, 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 ; 
 
 AH thy souls shall then be lifted to the greatness of self-rule ; 
 
 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 ; 
 
 0, thou mother-land of nations, from thy mighty womb have sprung 
 
 States, the nilers 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 h ave sown. 
 
 Isles and continents thy conquering sons have swarmed forth and possest, 
 
 Planting chainless faith and freedom in the South and mighty West ;
 
 MY LAND, MOTHERLAND. 141 
 
 These shall glory to thy great ones to add kindred glories, these 
 Shall breed heroes thou shalt warm to by the far Australian seas ; 
 Lo, they gather, these thy nations, from the broad Atlantic's roar, 
 From the Mesic bay, Vancouver's seas, to the white Arctic shore; 
 Young giants, how they laugh aloud to feel their infant strength ! 
 "What 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 Xew World's hosts of nations, these shall glorify and guide, 
 Looking seaward, my England, how thy heart shall leap with pride ! 
 Not thy past is starred with grandeurs as the centuries that arise ; 
 Look not back, 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. 
 
 MY LAND, MOTnERLAND. 
 
 MY land, motherland. 
 How our hearts witliin us yearn 
 
 To you ! 
 How our hearts within us bum 
 Your mighty love to earn, 
 And some deed, with head or hand, 
 That shall make you yet more grand, 
 
 my land, 
 
 In our turn, 
 To do!
 
 142 MY LAND, MOTHERLAND. 
 
 my land, mighty land. 
 How yonr past's great thousand years, 
 
 For you, 
 Have won, 'mid toils and tears, 
 From dangers, joys and fears, 
 A rule to your groat hand 
 That the deeds must make more grand, 
 my land. 
 That our years 
 Must do. 
 
 my land, glorious land, 
 "Who, to glory, is as dear 
 
 As you ! 
 Not for us is it to hear 
 That your present has a^eer ; 
 'Tis for us to make you stand 
 High in glory, sole and grand, 
 my land, 
 Tour work here. 
 To do. 
 
 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, 
 
 my land. 
 
 For the free 
 May do.
 
 MY LAND, MOTHERLAND. I43 
 
 my land, my own land, 
 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 stiU withstand ; 
 
 my land, 
 
 Eight, thou'rt strong 
 To do. 
 
 my land, my own land, 
 Do the nations, scorning say, 
 
 From you. 
 Rule and might even to-day 
 From your grasp shaU pass away ! 
 Fools! to you shall God's right hand 
 Still give lordship and command ; 
 
 Who, my land, 
 
 Your decay 
 ShaU view ! 
 
 my land, peerless land, 
 Time, to you, nor shame nor scorn 
 
 ShaU do. 
 StiU to you are great sculs born 
 From whom Ufe must first be torn 
 Ere a foe wrench from your hand 
 Right or sway that makes you grand ; 
 
 Sweet, my land, 
 
 Were death, borne 
 For you.
 
 144 MY LAND, MOTHERLAND. 
 
 my land, my O'^vii 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. 
 
 ■ 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 ; 
 Yet, still mightier, shall you stand 
 Through the future, yet more grand. 
 
 To God, land, 
 
 If you be 
 Still true. 
 
 WKRTHKIMEB, LEA AND CO., PELSTEBS, FIKSBURT CIRCUS.
 
 PREPARING FOR PUBLICATION. 
 
 A BALLAD AO SONG HISTOEY OF 
 
 ENGLAND, 
 
 AND 
 
 THE STATES SPRUNG FROM HER. 
 
 EDITED, 
 
 WITH HISTORICAL, BIOGRAPHICAL, AND CRITICAL NOTES, 
 
 BY 
 
 W. C. BENNETT.
 
 2 
 
 W. C. BENNETT'S POEMS, 
 
 In Shilling Parts. 
 
 1. BABY MAY, THE WORN WEDDIN"Ct RING, aud other 
 
 HOME POEMS. With Illustration by Watson. Is. 
 
 2. QUEEN ELEANOR'S VENGEANCE, BALLADS, and NAR- 
 
 RATIVE POEMS. With lUustration by Watson. Is. 
 
 3. SONGS by a SONG-WRITER. With Steel Portrait. First 
 
 Series, Is. 
 
 4. SONGS by a SONG- WRITER. With Illustration by Watson. 
 
 Second Series, Is. 
 
 5. POEMS of THOUGHT and FANCY, aud ONE HUNDRED 
 
 SONNETS. With Illustration by Watson. Is. 
 
 ROUTLEDGE'S BRITISH POETS. 
 
 In fscp. 8vo, cloth extra, gilt edges, price us. ; morocco elegant or 
 
 antique, 9s., 
 
 "W. C. BENNETT'S POETICAL WORKS. 
 
 Now first Collected and Classified, with Portrait and Four page 
 Illustrations by Watson. 
 
 London: George Eoutledge and Sons, The Broadway, 
 Lmliiate Hill.
 
 BABY MAY, 
 3lnli ot^cr ISanns on Eufants. 
 
 -0- 
 
 From Jfiss MitfortTs " Recollections of a Literary LlfeJ' 
 Of all \rriters, the one ■who has best understood, best painted, best felt 
 infant nature, is Mr. Bennett. We see at once that it is not only a charna- 
 ing and richly-gifted poet who is describing childish beauty, but a young 
 father writing from his heart. " Baby May" is amongst the most popular 
 of Mr. Bennett's lyrics, and amongst the most original, as that which is per- 
 fectly true to nature can hardly fail to be. The " Epitaphs for Infants" are 
 of great sweetness and tenderness. "The Seasons," four stanzas on a sub- 
 ject so hackneyed that many writers would have shrunk from attempting it, 
 would make four charming pictures. 
 
 From the Weekly Disjmtch. 
 Some of his poems on children are among the most charming in the lan- 
 guage, and are familiar in a thousand homes. 
 
 From the Critic. 
 Mr. Bennett's great triumphs, in our opinion, consist not in the kingly 
 manner in which he walks the classic regions of the " Gods," but in the 
 homely step which carries him through the dwellings of men. He is known 
 — and it is a pleasing acknowledgment of his fame to say so — by thousands 
 of little happy folk, wingless, but no less on that account our nursery 
 angels, and by thousands of full-grown men and women. No wonder he is 
 so well known, since he has conversed with them in a language they can 
 understand — since he has expressed to them home delights and home sorrows 
 with the purest Saxon feeling. , 
 
 From tlie Examiner. 
 
 that love of children, which few writers of our day have expressed 
 
 •ndth so much naive fidelity as Mr. Bennett. 
 
 From the llluHtrated Times. 
 The poems about children (especially the charming one entitled " Babj-'s 
 Shoes") are as good as anything of the kind that has ever been written. 
 
 From Sharp's Magazine. 
 
 What say our readers to the following picture of a baby, culled from a 
 recent volume of poems by W. C. Bennett? Nothing more difficult, as 
 painters know, than to catch on canvass the evanescent graces of childhood — 
 to fix its rapidly fleeting and alternating images ; nor does it require less 
 the hand of a master to translate them into verse. From two or three, all 
 equally beautiful, we take the following, " Baby May." 
 
 The Rev. Geo. GilfiUan, in Hogg's Instructor. 
 
 What a quaint, true, lively ditty is " Baby May '{" It is the " Wee 
 Willie Wiukie" of England. It shakes off" and catches up, all the poetry 
 hanging so sweetly and unconsciously about a child.
 
 From the Leader. 
 Here we find the sweet song of " Baby's Shoes," which has heen so fre- 
 quently quoted with enthusiastic recognition. 
 
 From the Daily Telegraph. 
 " Baby's Shoes" is worthy to rank with " Baby May," which, from its 
 completeness and finished charm as a picture of infancy, is one of the most 
 exquisite among the whole of Mr. Bennett's productions. 
 
 From the Eclectic Review. 
 
 We confess, of all things small, we love babies ; and we derive more 
 poetical inspiration from baby watchings and baby nursings than from any 
 other class of sub -adorations ; and we further confess that we never met 
 with more truthful descriptions of them than we find in this volume. Me- 
 mory itself is not so faithful, though it is capable of appreciating the 
 fidelity of the artist. 
 
 From the Atlas. 
 
 "Would you have a poem on domestic subjects, on the love between 
 parent and child ? How charmingly is that brought out in the little poem 
 entitled " Baby's Shoes." 
 
 From the Globe. 
 
 We know Mr. Bennett as the sweet singer of the domestic hearth, as one 
 ready to hail each aspect of nature aad her influences in words as fresh as 
 her flowers, in music as soft as the voice of her birds. 
 
 From Chambers' s Journal. 
 
 In Mr. Bennett's descriptions we seem to hear the very jerk of the cradle 
 breaking the sweet monotony of the mother's song. In the new volume 
 before us there are several excellent songs — those which have little children 
 for their subject, as usual, the best ; but there is none which quite comes 
 up to our old favourite, " Baby May." Perhaps some of our readers may 
 be even yet unacquainted with that lyric of the nursery, in which case we 
 could scarcely do them a pleasanter piece of service than by extracting it. 
 It is a poem with which every woman, and every man with a heart within 
 him, is charmed at the first reading, quite apart from its perfectness as a 
 work of art. It bears criticism, indeed, of the strictest kind ; but just 
 as their "mother's grave" bears the sons who come to "peep and 
 botanize" upon it. Critics are warned ofl" the premises as trespassers. " All 
 the place is holy ground;" "hollow smile and frozen sneer" have no busi- 
 ness there. Look at the child ! 
 
 Who but a real poet could have made such a subject as the following 
 (" Baby's Shoes") awaken thoughts at least deep enough for tears ? Thus 
 far it will be owned that he has borrowed of no brother of his craft ; that 
 his lyrics have been as original as they have been natural and tender ; but 
 before we have done with him it is but fair to show how he can hold his 
 own when entering the lists with some of our older poets. He does not 
 expend his energies, indeed, as some of them did, upon " Inscriptions for a
 
 Grotto," or "Lines upon a Crystal Spring ;"' but the form, intention, and 
 even metre of his lines are identical with many of theirs who have lived 
 thus long, and are even now admired, with a not greater right, as we 
 believe, to the laurel crown than has Mr. Bennett. Have Waller or Shen- 
 stone ever written, in the same manner, anything more admirable than these 
 two " Epitaphs for Infants ?" 
 
 QUEEN- ELEANOR'S VENGEANCE, 
 
 From tne Critic. 
 
 "We look upon Mr. Bennett as a landmark to indicate the way where lie 
 the strength of nature and the power of simplicit}'. He is one of those old- 
 fashioned poets — rare now, and valuable from their rarity — who were not 
 ashamed to speak naturally like men, and who evince power without the 
 exhibition of muscular throes. As a poem, " Queen Eleanor's Vengeance" 
 is admirable ; it has the intensity of tragic tire. It is brief, but pointed and 
 defined as a poinard. In conspicuous contrast to this poem we would place 
 another entitled "A New Griselda." Here there is simplicity of style, but 
 neither bareness or barrenness. The tender emotions, which are best known 
 to those who dive deepest below the surfacee of domestic life, are employed 
 in this poem as only a true poet can employ them. The volume before us 
 wiU serve stiU more to rivet the fellowship of the poet and his readers." 
 
 From Frasers Magazine. 
 
 It is impossible to deny the genuine pictorial power of the mind from 
 which this description, that might stand for a translation into words of 
 Titian's " Bacchus and Ariadne," in our National Gallery, proceeds. Per- 
 haps a famous song of Shelley's may have been echoing in Mr. Bennett's 
 brain when he wrote this " Summer Invocation ;" but no one that was not 
 a true poet could have reproduced the echo with such a sweet melody, and 
 such deHcate touches of his own. Altogether, Mr. Bennett's volume ajipears 
 to us full of promise. 
 
 From the Afhentcum. 
 
 Many a tender thought and charming fancy find graceful utterance in his 
 pages. 
 
 From the Examiner. 
 
 Mr. W. C. Bennett shares with l)r. Mackay the right to be popular on the 
 score of simple, unaffected utterance. There is everywhere uuexaggerated 
 expression, a pleasant sense of the joy of the primrose bank, of blooming 
 thorn-trees, and of summer rain ; and there is occasional expression of that 
 love of children, which few writers of our day have expressed- with so much 
 naive fidelity as Mr. Bennett."
 
 Fi'om the Weekly Dispatch. 
 
 Mr. W. C. Bennett is a poet of great power, and possessing a fine descrip- 
 tive faculty, especially when employed on subjects of a picturesque, rural 
 character. The longest poem in the book is " Queen Eleanor's Vengeance," 
 a terrible tale, related with commensurate force. " Pygmalion" is an 
 ambitious strain, finely conceived and executed. Mr. Bennett has produced 
 a channing and graceful book. 
 
 From the Guardian. 
 
 Mr. Bennett writes with practised skill, and, what is more remarkable in 
 these daj's, with imimpeachable taste. He is a man of taste and ability, 
 who will yield pleasure and interest to every one who reads him. 
 
 From the National Magazine. 
 
 Another volume has proceeded from the pen of Mr. "W. C. Bennett. It is 
 entitled " Queen Eleanor's Vengeance, and other Poems." Among these 
 there are strains that bring Tennyson and Browning to mind, without 
 abating our respect for the immediate author. The ballad which initiates 
 the collection is written in stanza-couplets, and shows a power in dealing 
 with the elements of the terrible perhaps not suspected by the author's 
 admirers. On the Fair Eosamond he dwells but little ; the vindictive feel- 
 ings of the jealous Eleanor are those that have plainly fascinated the poet's 
 genius. A dramatic poem, entitled " A Character," manifests the same 
 tendency. The Creole, Lina Merton, is a Queen Eleanor on a small scale, 
 and of a more metaphysical turn of mind ; but her vengeance is equally 
 cruel, or rather more so. The Queen only murders, but the Creole annihi- 
 lates. The piece, however, most to our mind, is " The Boat Eace." The 
 " New Griselda," which is evidently the writer's favourite, has less of pure 
 beauty, and the conventions introduced disturb the ideal impressions. Mr. 
 Bennett's classic imitations are, as usual, excellent. Theocritus writes again 
 in such pieces as " Pygmalion," " Ariadne," and " The Judgment of Midas." 
 The political pieces are vigorous, satirical, and fully justify the reputation 
 already acquired by the author for compositions of the kind. But it is in 
 his domestic moods that we best love to encounter Mr. Bennett. Is not the 
 following ("Baby's Shoes") exquisite? Among the more ambitious efforts, 
 Ave may note with especial commendation the poems entitled " Columbus," 
 and the " Star of the Ballet." The last is a ballad, in which simplicity, 
 thought, and sentiment wrestle for the victory, and lovingly unite, as it 
 were, in a war embrace.
 
 SONGS BY A SONG-WRITER. 
 
 FIRST HUNDRED. 
 
 From the Leader. 
 
 Mr. '^. C. Bennett has been well-advised to collect his various songs. 
 The onl)- difficulty that could be in his waj' was their number. He has en- 
 deavoured to solve this by experimenting, Urstof all, with a specimen of his 
 quality. He has selected from his large store a hundred ; and here they are, 
 in a handsome volume, which ought immediately to become popular. We 
 find here many old acquaintances, and some new faces ; but everywhere the 
 same grace, melody, and Saxon purity of language. A little more accuracy 
 and finish, and Mr. Bennett might rank as the Bcranger of England. Here 
 we find the sweet song of " Baby"s Shoes," on which Miss Mitford bestows 
 such high commendation, and which has been so frequently quoted with 
 enthusiastic recognition ; and that Beranger-like " London Lyric. From a 
 Garret," which so rationally and heroically moralises on the distinction 
 between true and false riches, and defies poverty altogether. To this we 
 would add " The Dres.smaker's Thrush." Fine, too, is the song inscribed 
 " To the Memory of Ilobert Burns," a just tribute from one whose own 
 writings reflect so much of the intluences derived from those of the Scottish 
 bard. It is one of the most ambitious poems in the collection. Other poems 
 of Mr. Bennett show, in lyrical form, a fine degree of political shrewdness 
 and a sconi of mere partial prejudices, whether national or social. ^N^itness 
 those capital " Friendly Hints to Transatlantic Friends," which he ha.s 
 headed with "God save the Queen." For the most part Mr. Bennett's 
 songs deal with facts, the stern, hard facts of the Mammon-ridden world ; 
 but there are, nevertheless, some most delicious fancies scattered between. 
 Mr. Bennett has borrowed largely from our old poets, and sometimes in- 
 dulges freely in their wildest conceits. His mind is not simply a mirror, 
 purely reflecting nature and society, but he has coloured it with innumer- 
 able associations, both ancient and modern ; so that his subjects always 
 derive some attributes from the media through which he perceives thein. 
 Though a self-taught, he is a highly-educated writer, and to some extent, 
 therefore, his treatment of his themes is artificial ; there is, however, always 
 a basis of originality in all he writes, for he is not a mere mocking-bii'd, but 
 a genuine poet." 
 
 From the Literary Gazette. 
 
 He bids fair to become one of our best English song-writers. 
 
 From the Athenceum. 
 
 "We always like his writing when he dares to be true to his own genius. 
 The stream of his verse is not a deep-tlowing one, byj; it is clear and 
 healthy ; it runs ^^•ith a sprightly music, and there often flutters such a
 
 fLance of sunbeams on the surface, that we do not think of gauging the 
 ilejith. Here is a song with a minuet movement and a conscious seven- 
 teenth century kind of grace. This soft, sweet murmuring invocation to 
 the summer rain is one we like. 
 
 From the Crilie. 
 
 Mr. Bennett comes before us in his hundred songs— only an instalment, 
 these — with qualiiications which admirably adapt him to his work. In his 
 poems, which have demanded constructive power, which a song, strictly 
 speaking, does not, he has shown two of the conditions without which song 
 cannot exist. These are melody and naturahiess. "We hold Mr. Bennett 
 to be among the best of our song- writers. There is fire in his patriotic, and 
 tenderness in his domestic, themes. What a sweet picture, and what homely 
 pathos there is in " The Daisy." And what more joyous than this " Spring 
 Song >" For a truthful, heart-gushing strain, we should quote " The 
 Dressmaker's Thrush." What a wide-world sermon lives in that regretful 
 refrain ! We hope Mr. Bennett will give the world the remainder of his 
 songs. He is so genial, so healthy, so purely Saxon, that silence on his 
 part would go far to favour the growth of literary spasm and contortion. 
 
 From the Illustrated Times. 
 
 Mr. Bennett is quite right in calling himself a writer of songs. Nearly 
 all the lyric poetry contained in this volume is admirable, but the songs are 
 particularly beautiful. Mr. Bennett's verse is always flowing and melodious, 
 but, on the whole, he is more a song-writer than anything else. When he 
 wiites in his own simple, natural M-ay, we have no song- writer who can be 
 compared to him. 
 
 From the Atlas. 
 
 We opened this volume with serious misgivings, which passed away 
 before we had read three pages. Mr. Bennett has achieved a most decided 
 success ; his songs as poems will cHng fast to the reader's mind, and if only 
 they be joined to fitting music, the author may look forward to a popularity 
 almost as great as Dibdin ever enjoyed. We coiild only wish that he had 
 himself written his lyrics to some of the old favourite tunes, which are at 
 present in the company of very bad words. Mr. Bennett is a man of all 
 moods. Here is a pretty love-song, ("A Sailor's Song,") which none can 
 read and not admire. In the piece entitled " The Tricolor," we have an 
 appeal to our patriotism. Its vigour and melody of rhythm carry the reader 
 along as if to the sound of martial music. Beautifully contrasted and- 
 thoughtfully worked-out are the ideas in the only two songs which we have 
 space to quote, " The Homeward Watch," and " The Wrecked Hope." 
 
 From the John Bull. 
 
 This author has established such general fame as a song-writer, that few 
 writers have achieved similar popularity. The present " first hundred " com-
 
 positions are conceived in the purest and most versatile vein of poetry, and if 
 their reception does not encourage successive centuries of verse, we shall be 
 much mistaken. 
 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 Mr. Bennett's volume contains a hundred songs, many of them of great 
 merit. " Song-writer " is an ambitious title, but Mr. Bennett has vindicated 
 his right to a place of some note among those to whom it may be applied. 
 
 From the Morning Herald. 
 
 Mr. Bennett is already known to the English reading public as a poet of 
 much ability. He is extremely happy in his descriptions of pastoral and 
 domestic life. He possesses real poetic feeling, and we are glad to add, his 
 sentiments are always EngUsh, and they are sure to find a response in the 
 hearts of his countrymen and countrywomen. He has written nearly 400 
 songs. Most of those in the volume now published are very good indeed. 
 Many are really beautiful. 
 
 From the News of the World. 
 
 " Ever since I could read songs," says Mr. Bennett, " I have loved them," 
 and we may add, that ever since he began to write them the public have been 
 pleased with what he has written. In this volume we have a hundred 
 charming things, which will delight all readers because of their true feeling 
 and unaffected grace. 
 
 From the Inquirer. 
 
 Mr. Bennett's stimng war-songs and occasional contributions to news- 
 papers and magazines have made their writer widely known as a popular 
 poet. Like most good songs, some of the lighter strains in the volume before 
 us need to be wedded to suitable music in order to be fully appreciated ; but 
 in the graver pieces we discern a deep sympathy with humanity and a 
 fervid sentiment of patriotism which entitle their aiithor to a high place 
 among our popular song-writers. Mr. Bennett does not belong to the servile 
 horde of imitators, but writes with a vigour of thought and a graceful clear- 
 ness of style which are peculiarly his own. The following pathetic lines 
 ("The AVife's Appeal,") for the sake of the powerful infiuence they are 
 calculated to exercise in a good cause, if for no other reason, deserve as wide 
 a circulation as can possibly be given to them. 
 
 From the Weekly Dispatch. 
 
 Mr. Bennett has collected into a neat volume a century of songs, and 
 promises more. This fertility would be alarming in a writer of feeble powers, 
 but Mr. Bennett writes so freshly and charmingly that we always read his 
 poems with pleasure. He writes lilcc a true poet, especially on domestic
 
 10 
 
 subjects, or -vrlien sketcliing landscapes, with a feeling akin to that of Crcs- 
 Avick or Lee. We are bound to say that his political songs have a vigour 
 such as few poets can infuse. One, indeed, " The Tricolour," might, if 
 ■wedded to kindi-ed music, become another " Marseillaise." 
 
 From the Observer. 
 
 The author of these songs has a considerable fund of poetry in his nature, 
 and has wTitten several songs which deserve to be popular. One of them, 
 "The Dressmaker's Thrush," is of the right stuff, and will doubtless obtain 
 admiration. This volume ought to meet with public favour, more particu- 
 larly as the feeling which animates its contents is true. 
 
 From the Morning Star. 
 
 Many of these songs would inspire us to wish that Mr. Bennett may be 
 induced to appear soon again in print. One of the best songs in the book is 
 to the memory of Beranger ; another, to the memory of Robert Burns, is of 
 nearly equal merit. There are several of the songs we should like to quote, 
 but must refer our readers to the volume itself, and we feel sure that those 
 who have a taste for this particular kind of poetry will find much that is 
 pleasing and original. 
 
 From the Daily Telegraph. 
 
 From the poems published in the present volume, we should select " The 
 Tricolour,' as pre-eminently distinguished for vigour and that melodious ring 
 of rhyme which thi'ills the heart through the ear, making the pulses beat to 
 the march of verse as to warlike music. There is pith and irresistible 
 humour in his " Hints to Transatlantic Friends." But Mr. Bennett speaks 
 to the heart not only through the heroic chanson or sparkling satire ; not less 
 elfective are those fragments appealing to the social and domestic feelings. 
 In these we perceive a tender grace, a pathos, and a charm, which ofl'er a 
 refreshing contrast to the prosaic monotony usually characterising effusions 
 of this class. This truthfulness to nature, hearty simplicity of utterance, 
 and sportive plaj- of fancy, it is which enables Mr. Bennett so well to adapt 
 the poetic art to the events and emotions of ordinarj' life. To beautify and 
 elevate these through the transfiguration of poetry, is, we think, essentially 
 Mr. Bennett's vocation, though he has proved himself to possess unmistak- 
 able capacity for minstrelsy of another order. 
 
 From the Sunday Times. 
 
 He possesses, in no small degree, the qualities which this species of com- 
 position requii-es — feeling, fancy, condensation, and a varied power of ex- 
 pression. 
 
 From the Weekly Times. 
 
 He is terse, epigrammatic, and can be, when he pleases, eloquent and 
 pathetic.
 
 11 
 
 From the Mornhig Advertiser. 
 
 Varied in sentiment and style, some of the compositions display mucli 
 force, feeling, and taste. The volume will be acceptable to a vast number 
 of readers — those to whom the song sings to the heart. We can heartily 
 commend Mr. Bennett's songs to our readers. 
 
 From the Mornhig Chronicle. 
 
 This volume of a h^mdred songs by Mr. Bennett will be a welcome addi- 
 tion to the poetic literature of the day. 
 
 WAR SONGS. 
 
 From the Athcnatim. 
 In the "War Songs" of AV. C. Bennett we recognise a poet who has 
 frequently merited and received our commendation. He is a writer who 
 has always preferred sense to sound. An earnest student of the poetic art as 
 applicable to the common-places of life, and the events of the passing day, he 
 has dealt with fugitive themes, but in a manner that will relieve his songs 
 and sagas from the epithet. His style, too, is his own ; strong and vigor- 
 ous, never formal. His words are, for the most part, Saxon. Such is the 
 character of Mr. Bennett's genius. It is eminently patriotic, also ; and these 
 "War Songs, both in their themes and treatment, come " as natural to him as 
 eating and drinking;" he had but to let his heart speak, and they existed. 
 " Occasional" poems are generallj' artificial; with Mr. Bennett they are but 
 opportunities for spontaneous utterance. 
 
 From the Examiner. 
 There is spirit and true instinct for poetry in these " War Songs." 
 
 From the Weekly Dispatch. 
 These songs have vigor and fire about them. 
 
 From the Dublin Tlniversity Magazine. 
 
 These songs have this great merit, that they are Avritten in strong, 
 vigorous, maiil}' English. 
 
 From the Morning Advertiser. 
 Full of feeling, melody, and fire.
 
 12 
 
 THE WORN WEDDING-RIWG, 
 
 Sinn otfjcr Poems. 
 
 From the Morning Chronicle. 
 
 Mr. Bennett has unquestionably won the right of being reckoned with 
 the poets of his country. At present he is the poet of the home andits affec- 
 tions. His "Baby May and other Poems on Infants" broke entirely new 
 ground; it was found that we had a singer amongst us able to touch our 
 hearts on the tenderest side. His " Baby's Shoes" was hailed as a poem 
 perfect of its kind, and sure of admiration as long as fathers and mothers 
 shall continue to love their children, or children remain the lovely things 
 that God has made them. In the round of English poetry there are no lyrics 
 that are so thoroughly imbued with the spirit of childhood as those of Mr. 
 Bennett. But it is not only as the poet of chUdhood that Mr. Bennett has 
 won his well-deserved popularity. It has been said of him, that with a 
 very little more of accuracy and finish he might faiily be called the 
 Bcranger of England. There is, undoubtedly, a remarkable similarity of 
 power evinced by Mr. Bennett ru his songs ; they come nearer to the heart- 
 stirring strains of the great French lyrist than any songs of the day. _ 
 
 In the volume before us the excellence of Mr. Bennett's songs is very 
 conspicuous. They have all the qualities requisite to make them popular, 
 and, like those which he has before published, they wiU doubtless be 
 heartily received by the public. Full of vigour, freshness, music, and feel- 
 ing, they are worthy to be on every Hp. " The Worn Wedding-ring," 
 which gives its title to the present volume, is a little poem, full of grace, 
 tenderness, and piety, in which the sight of his M'ife's worn wedding-ring 
 calls up in the poet's mind the history of all the joys, sorrows and cares 
 that have passed over them both, since the time " when this old ring was 
 new." Some of the Sonnets are decidedly fine, reminding us of Wordsworth, 
 and even of Milton. 
 
 From the Literary Gazette. 
 
 Many of the Sonnets are equal, after their kind, to his best songs. Many 
 are as fresh, thoughtful, and musical as any that have appeared since 
 Wordsworth thought and wrote. Of the earlier part of Mr. Bennett's 
 volume we can only remark, to those who know that he is great in songs, 
 that he here well sustains his reputation. We would, in conclusion, say of 
 Mr. Bennett, that we hope he will always give us such a Christmas-box. 
 " Baby May," was, perhaps, more charming in its simplicity than anything 
 in the present volume, but the old graceful homeliness and pathos are fully 
 evidenced here.
 
 13 
 
 From the Spectator. 
 
 " The "Worn "Wedding-ring" is one of the prettiest poems by the author of 
 " Baby May." It expresses, in simple and enthusiastic verses, the genuine 
 feeling of a man who has been married many years to a wife he has always 
 loved. This is a good subject for a poem, because it is common human 
 ground for fceUng. Mr. "W. C. Bennett is a sweet singer of the people ; to 
 our thinking, one of the very best among those who use " The Doric 
 strain." His domestic poems and songs of every-day life would have found 
 favour with Wordsworth, for the sake of their love of nature and power of 
 appreciating all the small goods of life. 
 
 From the Critic. 
 
 There is an earnest simplicity about Mr. Bennett which gives him a high 
 place among our modern poets. 
 
 From the Globe. 
 
 The poem which gives a title to this volume is in the happiest style of 
 the writer, who is established as the poet of heart and home. " The Worn 
 Wedding-ring" is a fitting address to the mother of " Baby May." Simi- 
 larly illustrative of the hold which home association has over Mr. Bennett, 
 is his address to his "Native Town." " Leafy Greenwich, green, plea- 
 sant Greenwich" is simg in the most taking, homely ballad style, such as 
 Isaac "Walton would have loved to hear "maidens singing over their 
 milking-pails." 
 
 From the Illustrated Times. 
 
 Mr. Bennett is now well known, and cordially accepted as a writer of 
 songs and of child-poetry ; and the songs in this new volume are most of 
 them very welcome and pleasant reading. The refrains are capitally 
 managed. 
 
 From the London American. 
 
 Mr. Bennett's happiest eflbrts are those in which he deals with the 
 social afl'ections. He' certainly has the power to enwrap the feelings while, 
 he charms the imagination. A sort of pastoral simplicity breathes through 
 his odes, bringing the freshness of the country into town, as witness the 
 following on Greenwich. But with all the gentleness breathing in this and 
 kindred compositions, Mr. Bennett has a reserved power which reminds us, 
 in its occasional manifestation, of some of the grandest strains of Schiller 
 and Goethe. 
 
 From the Morning Advertiser. 
 
 Mr. Bennett is equally happy in his description of rural beauty, tlic 
 pleasures of the country, and the sublimity of the ocean. The book alto- 
 gether will be decidedly popular with the lovers of poetry-*"
 
 14 
 
 From the Weekhj Dispatch. 
 " A new volume of poems by Mr. Bennett is sure of a welcome. Few of 
 our writers are so happy in the exhibition of the domestic feelings, the pure 
 and intense love of a good man for the wife and children, M'hose presence 
 at the domestic fireside imparts its dearest charm. Without obtruding 
 personal relationships, Mr. Bennett sounds a note of natural emotion, to 
 which all must respond ; and this is the reason of the great popularity of 
 his child-poets. Natural and unaffected, playful and tender, they are 
 almost imequalled for their understanding of child nature, — a most delight- 
 ful thing, though a great mystery to some. But Mr. Bennett is not alone a 
 poet of the domestic affections. He can raise a louder and loftier strain on 
 the side of freedom and progress, and sketch, with rare felicity, the aspect of 
 nature, especially in rural scenes. The volume before us contains specimens 
 of all the aspects of his muse ; and we recognise one or two sonnets, especial 
 favourites of ours, which well deserved the reprint. 
 
 From the English Churchman. 
 "We have before had occasion to praise Mr. Bennett as worthy to rank 
 amongst the best of our modern song writers. The volume which he now 
 puts forward forms another instalment of miscellaneous pieces and sonnets, 
 all of them embodying graceful thoughts in pleasant verse, and each in its 
 turn exhibiting the versatility of the writer, — the pathetic, the stirring, the 
 earnest, and the quaint following each other in quick succession throughout 
 the volume. We cordially recommend it to notice. 
 
 From the Atlas. 
 These poems have refreshed and delighted us. 
 
 From the John Bull. 
 
 Mr. Bennett has before this established his fame as a popular poet. " The 
 Worn Wedding-ring" and the "Green Hills of Surrey" are specimens of 
 Mr. Bennett's very best style in the way of songs, both happily rendering 
 true himian emotion in musical and vigoroxis lines. We like his sonnets 
 better than his songs ; there is something in the mood of his poetry which 
 siiits the form of the sonnet, and he has especial strength in illustrating by 
 this medium the higher aspect of art. We may cite particularly in evidence 
 of this, his sonnet on " Holman Hunt's Picture," and that on the " Tomb 
 of Benozzo Gozzoli." His beautiful sonnet on the "Venus de Medici" is 
 conceived in a far higher vein of poetry than the sensuous stanza of Childe 
 Harold on the same subject ; and among many that will make the name of 
 their author live, we may point especially to those on" The Turners," "The 
 Photograph of Dante," and " To Keats." 
 
 From the National Jfac/azine. 
 Mr. Bennett has again come before the world with a volume of poems. 
 To the readers of the "National" it is superfluous to expatiate on his
 
 15 
 
 merits. "We all love him as the poet of home and its treasures. No one 
 has sung so well of the joy, and beauty, and blessedness of childhood — of 
 the sacred tie which binds together man and wife — of the tenderness which 
 grows and ripens, and bears fruit hj the fireside. His verse is always 
 harmonious, healthy, and cheering ; and we feel all the better after reading 
 his songs. Some of his very sweetest are in the volume whose title we 
 have just given, and, besides, we have many noble sonnets, in simplicity 
 and dignity almost rivalling those of Wordsworth. Let us trust he may go 
 on singing, and the world listening-, for many coming years. When such 
 poems as these are in demand it is a good sign of the times. 
 
 From the Eclectic Review. 
 
 Mr. Bennett's volume is born of a reverent and loving spirit, enjoying 
 the world, and especially the social affections of the English fireside. Mr. 
 Bennett's poems are well known by us, and we have before now said our 
 hearty commendatory word upon them ; they are the productions of a happy, 
 cheerful nature, to whom life has brought all its best things, and taken few 
 away. His verses, so flowing along like a merry brook, occasionally de- 
 tained, it may be, for a few moments, and compelled to wear upon its wave- 
 lets a deeper shadow from some overhanging tree, or brooding village, or 
 darker bay, but hastening on again, as fast as possible, into the open space, 
 the sunshine, and the buoyant air and light; a hearty appreciation of all grace- 
 ful and beautiful things — not merely the cold critical eye to perceive, but the 
 heart to feel beauty as well, for whom travel has done a little, and books 
 more. Happy husband, happy father, livel3 and free, in his, no doubt, 
 happy home, and with no disposition to see the dark things of life. We do 
 not think that this volume will add to Mr. Bennett's reputation ; certainly 
 it will not diiuiaish it. We have no baby poetry here; and Mr. Bennett is 
 the acknowledged and crowned laureate of babies. He has a tine eye 
 for nature — lines of a very graphic description — description which shows 
 heart-work and artist-work are here. He has also a tine eye for art ; he 
 has also, wliich in these days is a more rare faculty, reverence before noble 
 men and teachers.
 
 In fscp. 4to, 5s., 
 
 OUR GLORY ROLL, 
 
 AND 
 
 NATIONAL POEMS. 
 
 BY 
 
 W. C. BENNETT. 
 
 London : George Eoutledge & Sons, The Broadway, 
 
 Ludgate Hill.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
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