Transcribed from the 1889 Cassell and Company edition by David Price, ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
THE VISIONS OF ENGLAND: LYRICS OF LEADING MEN AND EVENTS IN ENGLISH HISTORY
by
FRANCIS T. PALGRAVE
Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford
Late Fellow of Exeter College
TANTA RES EST, UT PAENE VITIO MENTIS TANTUM OPUS INGRESSUS MIHI VIDEAR
CASSELL & COMPANY, limited:
LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK & MELBOURNE
1889
By the same Author
THE VISIONS OF ENGLAND: Seventy Lyrics on leading Men and Events in English History: 8vo. 7/6
LYRICAL POEMS, Four Books: Extra Fcap. 8vo. 6/-
ORIGINAL HYMNS: 18mo. 1/6
* * * * *
Poetry edited by the same
THE GOLDEN TREASURY OF ENGLISH LYRICAL POETRY: 18mo. 4/6
THE CHILDREN’S TREASURY OF ENGLISH LYRICAL POETRY, with Notes and Glossary: 18mo. 2/6. Or in two parts, 1/- each
SHAKESPEARE’S LYRICS. SONGS FROM THE PLAYS AND SONNETS, with Notes: 18mo. 4/6
SELECTION FROM R. HERRICK’S LYRICAL POETRY, with Essay and Notes: 18mo. 4/6
THE POETICAL WORKS OF J. KEATS, reprinted; literatim from the original editions, with Notes: 18mo. 4/6
LYRICAL POEMS BY LORD TENNYSON, selected and arranged, with Notes: 18mo. 4/6
GLEN DESSERAY AND OTHER POEMS, by J. C. Shairp, late Principal of the United College, S. Andrews, and Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford. With Essay and Notes. 8vo.
Messrs. Macmillan, Bedford St., Covent Garden
* * * * *
To be published presently
THE TREASURY OF SACRED SONG, selected from the English Lyrical Poetry of Four Centuries, with Notes Explanatory and Biographical
Clarendon Press, Oxford
Aug. 1889
INTRODUCTION.
Again, on behalf of readers of this National Library, I have to thank a poet of our day—in this case the Oxford Professor of Poetry—for joining his voice to the voices of the past through which our better life is quickened for the duties of to-day. Not for his own verse only, but for his fine sense also of what is truest in the poets who have gone before, the name of Francis Turner Palgrave is familiar to us all. Many a home has been made the richer for his gathering of voices of the past into a dainty “Golden Treasury of English Songs.” Of this work of his own I may cite what was said of it in Macmillan’s Magazine for October, 1882, by a writer of high authority in English Literature, Professor A. W. Ward, of Owens College. “A very eminent authority,” said Professor Ward, “has accorded to Mr. Palgrave’s historical insight, praise by the side of which all words of mine must be valueless,” Canon [now Bishop] Stubbs writes:—“I do not think that there is one of the Visions which does not carry my thorough consent and sympathy all through.”
Here, then, Mr. Palgrave re-issues, for the help of many thousands more, his own songs of the memories of the Nation, addressed to a Nation that has not yet forfeited the praise of Milton. Milton said of the Englishman, “If we look at his native towardliness in the roughcast, without breeding, some nation or
other may haply be better composed to a natural civility and right judgment than he. But if he get the benefit once of a wise and well-rectified nurture, I suppose that wherever mention is made of countries, manners, or men, the English people, among the first that shall be praised, may deserve to be accounted a right pious, right honest, and right hardy nation.” So much is shown by the various utterances in this National Library. So much is shown, in the present volume of it, by a poet’s vision of the England that has been till now, and is what she has been.
H. M.
to the names of
HENRY HALLAM and FRANCIS PALGRAVE
friends and fellow-labourers in english history
for forty years,
who, differing often in judgment,
were at one throughout life in devoted love of
justice, truth, and england,
in affectionate and reverent remembrance
this book is inscribed and dedicated
PREFACE
As the scheme which the Author has here endeavoured to execute has not, so far as he knows, the advantage of any near precedent in any literature, he hopes that a few explanatory words may be offered without incurring censure for egotism.
Our history is so eminently rich and varied, and at the same time, by the fact of our insular position, so stamped with unity, that from days very remote it has supplied matter for song. This, among Celts and Angles, at first was lyrical. But poetry, for many centuries after the Conquest, mainly took the annalistic form, and, despite the ability often shown, was hence predoomed to failure. For a nation’s history cannot but present many dull or confused periods, many men and things intractable by poetry, though, perhaps, politically effective and important, which cannot be excluded from any narrative aiming at consecutiveness; and, by the natural laws of art, these passages, when rendered in verse, in their effect become more prosaic than they would be in a prose rendering.
My attempt has therefore been to revert to the earlier and more natural conditions of poetry, and to offer,—not a continuous narrative; not poems on every critical moment or conspicuous man in our long annals,—but single lyrical pictures of such leading or typical characters and scenes in English history, and only such, as have seemed amenable to a strictly poetical treatment. Poetry, not History, has, hence, been my first and last aim; or, perhaps I might define it, History for Poetry’s sake. At the same time, I have striven to keep throughout as closely to absolute
historical truth in the design and colouring of the pieces as the exigencies of poetry permit:—the result aimed at being to unite the actual tone and spirit of the time concerned, with the best estimate which has been reached by the research and genius of modern investigators. Our island story, freed from the ‘falsehood of extremes,’—exorcised, above all, from the seducing demon of party-spirit, I have thus here done my best to set forth. And as this line of endeavour has conducted and constrained me, especially when the seventeenth century is concerned, to judgments—supported indeed by historians conspicuous for research, ability, and fairness, but often remote from the views popularized by the writers of our own day,—upon these points a few justificatory notes have been added.
A double aim has hence governed and limited both the selection and the treatment of my subjects. The choice has necessarily fallen, often, not on simply picturesque incident or unfamiliar character, but on the men and things that we think of first, when thinking of the long chronicle of England,—or upon such as represent and symbolize the main current of it. Themes, however, on which able or popular song is already extant,—notably in case of Scotland,—I have in general avoided. In the rendering, my desire has been always to rest the poetry of each Vision on its own intrinsic interest; to write with a straightforward eye to the object alone; not studious of ornament for ornament’s sake; allowing the least possible overt intrusion of the writer’s personality; and, in accordance with lyrical law, seeking, as a rule, to fix upon some factual picture for each poem.
* * * * *
To define, thus, the scope of what this book attempts, is, in itself, a confession of presumptuousness,—the writer’s own sense of which is but feebly and imperfectly expressed in the words from Vergil’s letter to Augustus prefixed as my motto. In truth, so rich and so wide are the materials,
that to scheme a lyrical series which should really paint the Gesta Anglorum in their fulness might almost argue ‘lack of wit,’ vitium mentis, in much greater powers than mine. No criticism, however severe, can add to my own consciousness how far the execution of the work, in regard to each of its aims, falls below the plan. Yet I would allow myself the hope, great as the deficiencies may be, that the love of truth and the love of England are mine by inheritance in a degree sufficient to exempt this book, (the labour of several years), from infidelity to either:—that the intrinsic worth and weight of my subject may commend these songs, both at home, and in the many Englands beyond sea, to those who, (despite the inevitably more engrossing attractions of the Present, and the emphatic bias of modern culture towards the immediate and the tangible), maintain that high and soul-inspiring interest which, identifying us with our magnificent Past, and all its varied lessons of defeat and victory, offers at the same time,—under the guidance from above,—our sole secure guarantee for prosperous and healthy progress in the Future.
The world has cycles in its course, when all
That once has been, is acted o’er again;
and only the nation which, at each moment of political or social evolution, looks lovingly backward to its own painfully-earned experience—Respiciens, Prospiciens, as Tennyson’s own chosen device expresses it—has solid reason to hope, that its movement is true Advance—that its course is Upward.
* * * * *
It remains only to add, that the book has been carefully revised and corrected, and that nineteen pieces published in the original volume of 1881 are not reprinted in the present issue.
F. T. P.
July, 1889
THE VISIONS OF ENGLAND
PRELUDE
CAESAR TO EGBERT
1
England, fair England! Empress isle of isles!
—Round whom the loving-envious ocean plays,
Girdling thy feet with silver and with smiles,
Whilst all the nations crowd thy liberal bays;
With rushing wheel and heart of fire they come,
Or glide and glance like white-wing’d doves that know
And seek their proper home:—
England! not England yet! but fair as now,
When first the chalky strand was stirr’d by Roman prow.
2
On thy dear countenance, great mother-land,
Age after age thy sons have set their sign,
Moulding the features with successive hand
Not always sedulous of beauty’s line:—
Yet here Man’s art in one harmonious aim
With Nature’s gentle moulding, oft has work’d
The perfect whole to frame:
Nor does earth’s labour’d face elsewhere, like thee,
Give back her children’s heart with such full sympathy
3
—On marshland rough and self-sprung forest gazed
The imperial Roman of the eagle-eye;
Log-splinter’d forts on green hill-summits raised,
Earth huts and rings that dot the chalk-downs high:—
Dark rites of hidden faith in grove and moor;
Idols of monstrous build; wheel’d scythes of war;
Rock tombs and pillars hoar:
Strange races, Finn, Iberian, Belgae, Celt;
While in the wolds huge bulls and antler’d giants dwelt.
4
—Another age!—The spell of Rome has past
Transforming all our Britain; Ruthless plough,
Which plough’d the world, yet o’er the nations cast
The seed of arts, and law, and all that now
Has ripen’d into commonwealths:—Her hand
With network mile-paths binding plain and hill
Arterialized the land:
The thicket yields: the soil for use is clear;
Peace with her plastic touch,—field, farm, and grange are here.
5
Lo, flintwall’d cities, castles stark and square
Bastion’d with rocks that rival Nature’s own;
Red-furnaced baths, trim gardens planted fair
With tree and flower the North ne’er yet had known;
Long temple-roofs and statues poised on high
With golden wings outstretch’d for tiptoe flight,
Quivering in summer sky:—
The land had rest, while those stern legions lay
By northern ramparts camp’d, and held the Pict at bay.
6
Imperious Empire! Thrice-majestic Rome!
No later age, as earth’s slow centuries glide,
Can raze the footprints stamp’d where thou hast come,
The ne’er-repeated grandeur of thy stride!
—Though now so dense a darkness takes the land,
Law, peace, wealth, letters, faith,—all lights are quench’d
By violent heathen hand:—
Vague warrior kings; names writ in fire and wrong;
Aurelius, Urien, Ida;—shades of ancient song.
7
And Thou—O whether born of flame and wave,
Or Gorlois’ son, or Uther’s, blameless lord,
True knight, who died for those thou couldst not save
When the Round Table brake their plighted word,—
The lord of song hath set thee in thy grace
And glory, rescued from the phantom world,
Before us face to face;
No more Avilion bowers the King detain;
The mystic child returns; the Arthur reigns again!
8
—Now, as some cloud that hides a mountain bulk
Thins to white smoke, and mounts in lighten’d air,
And through the veil the gray enormous hulk
Burns, and the summit, last, is keen and bare,—
From wasted Britain so the gloaming clears;
Another birth of time breaks eager out,
And England fair appears:—
Imperial youth sign’d on her golden brow,
While the prophetic eyes with hope and promise glow.
9
Then from the wasted places of the land,
Charr’d skeletons of cities, circling walls
Of Roman might, and towers that shatter’d stand
Of that lost world survivors, forth she calls
Her new creation:—O’er the land is wrought
The happy villagedom by English tribes
From Elbe and Baltic brought;
Red kine light up with life the ravaged plain;
The forest glooms are pierced; the plough-land laughs again.
Each from its little croft the homesteads peep,
Green apple-garths around, and hedgeless meads,
Smooth-shaven lawns of ever-shifting sheep,
Wolds where his dappled crew the swineherd feeds:—
Pale gold round pure pale foreheads, and their eyes
More dewy blue than speedwell by the brook
When Spring’s fresh current flies,
The free fair maids come barefoot to the fount,
Or poppy-crown’d with fire, the car of harvest mount.
11
On the salt stream that rings us, ness and bay,
The nation’s old sea-soul beats blithe and strong;
The black foam-breasters taste Biscayan spray,
And where ’neath Polar dawns the narwhals throng:—
Free hands, free hearts, for labour and for glee,
Or village-moot, when thane with churl unites
Beneath the sacred tree;
While wisdom tempers force, and bravery leads,
Till spears beat Aye! on shields, and words at once are deeds.
12
Again with life the ruin’d cities smile,
Again from mother-Rome their sacred fire
Knowledge and Faith rekindle through the isle,
Nigh quench’d by barbarous war and heathen ire:—
—No more on Balder’s grave let Anglia weep
When winter storms entomb the golden year
Sunk in Adonis-sleep;
Another God has risen, and not in vain!
The Woden-ash is low, the Cross asserts her reign.
13
—Land of the most law-loving,—the most free!
My dear, dear England! sweet and green as now
The flower-illumined garden of the sea,
And Nature least impair’d by axe and plough!
A laughing land!—Thou seest not in the north
How the black Dane and vulture Norseman wait
The sign of coming forth,
The foul Landeyda flap its raven plume,
And all the realms once more eclipsed in pagan gloom!
14
—O race, of many races well compact!
As some rich stream that runs in silver down
From the White Mount:—his baby steps untrack’d
Where clouds and emerald cliffs of crystal frown;
Now, alien founts bring tributary flood,
Or kindred waters blend their native hue,
Some darkening as with blood;
These fraught with iron strength and freshening brine,
And these with lustral waves, to sweeten and refine.
15
Now calm as strong, and clear as summer air,
Blessing and blest of earth and sky, he glides:
Now on some rock-ridge rends his bosom fair,
And foams with cloudy wrath and hissing tides:
Then with full flood of level-gliding force,
His discord-blended melody murmurs low
Down the long seaward course:—
So through Time’s mead, great River, greatly glide:
Whither, thou may’st not know:—but He, who knows, will guide.
St. 3 Sketches Prehistoric England. St. 4 Mile-paths; old English name for Roman roads. St. 5 Tree and flower; such are reported to have been naturalized in England by the Romans.—Northern ramparts; that of Agricola and Lollius Urbicus from Forth to Clyde, and the greater work of Hadrian and Severus between Tyne and Solway. St. 6, 7 The Arthurian legends,—now revivified for us by Tennyson’s
magnificent Idylls of the King,—form the visionary links in our history between the decline of the Roman power and the earlier days of the Saxon conquest. St. 9 Villagedom; Angles and Saxons seem at first to have burned the larger towns of the Romanized Britons and left them deserted, in favour of village-life. St. 11 Village-moot: Held on a little hill or round a sacred tree: ‘the ealdermen spoke, groups of freemen stood round, clashing shields in applause, settling matters by loud shouts of Aye or Nay.’ (J. R. Green, History of the English People). St. 12 Balder, the God of Light, like Adonis in the old Greek story, is a nature-myth, figuring the Sun, yearly dying in winter, and yearly restored to life. St. 13 Landeyda; Name of Danish banner: ‘the desolation of the land.’
For further details upon points briefly noticed in this Prelude, readers are referred to Mr. J. R. Green’s History, and to Mr. T. Wright’s The Celt, The Roman, and The Saxon, as sources readily accessible.
THE FIRST AND LAST LAND
AT SENNEN
Thrice-blest, alone with Nature!—here, where gray
Belerium fronts the spray
Smiting the bastion’d crags through centuries flown,
While, ’neath the hissing surge,
Ocean sends up a deep, deep undertone,
As though his heavy chariot-wheels went round:
Nor is there other sound
Save from the abyss of air, a plaintive note,
The seabirds’ calling cry,
As ’gainst the wind with well-poised weight they float,
Or on some white-fringed reef set up their post,
And sentinel the coast:—
Whilst, round each jutting cape, in pillar’d file,
The lichen-bearded rocks
Like hoary giants guard the sacred Isle.
—Happy, alone with Nature thus!—Yet here
Dim, primal man is near;—
The hawk-eyed eager traders, who of yore
Through long Biscayan waves
Star-steer’d adventurous from the Iberic shore
Or the Sidonian, with their fragrant freight
Oil-olive, fig, and date;
Jars of dark sunburnt wine, flax-woven robes,
Or Tyrian azure glass
Wavy with gold, and agate-banded globes:—
Changing for amber-knobs their Eastern ware
Or tin-sand silvery fair,
To temper brazen swords, or rim the shield
Of heroes, arm’d for fight:—
While the rough miners, wondering, gladly yield
The treasured ore; nor Alexander’s name
Know, nor fair Helen’s shame;
Or in his tent how Peleus’ wrathful son
Looks toward the sea, nor heeds
The towers of still-unconquer’d Ilion.
Belerium; The name given to the Land’s End by Diodorus, the Greek historical compiler. He describes the natives as hospitable and civilized. They mined tin, which was bought by traders and carried through Gaul to the south-east, and may, as suggested here, have been used in their armour by the warriors during the Homeric Siege of Troy.
PAULINUS AND EDWIN
627
The black-hair’d gaunt Paulinus
By ruddy Edwin stood:—
‘Bow down, O King of Deira,
Before the holy Rood!
Cast forth thy demon idols,
And worship Christ our Lord!’
—But Edwin look’d and ponder’d,
And answer’d not a word.
Again the gaunt Paulinus
To ruddy Edwin spake:
‘God offers life immortal
For His dear Son’s own sake!
Wilt thou not hear his message
Who bears the Keys and Sword?’
—But Edwin look’d and ponder’d,
And answer’d not a word.
Rose then a sage old warrior;
Was five-score winters old;
Whose beard from chin to girdle
Like one long snow-wreath roll’d:—
‘At Yule-time in our chamber
We sit in warmth and light,
While cavern-black around us
Lies the grim mouth of Night.
‘Athwart the room a sparrow
Darts from the open door:
Within the happy hearth-light
One red flash,—and no more!
We see it born from darkness,
And into darkness go:—
So is our life, King Edwin!
Ah, that it should be so!
‘But if this pale Paulinus
Have somewhat more to tell;
Some news of whence and whither,
And where the Soul may dwell:—
If on that outer darkness
The sun of Hope may shine;—
He makes life worth the living!
I take his God for mine!’
So spake the wise old warrior;
And all about him cried
‘Paulinus’ God hath conquer’d!
And he shall he our guide:—
For he makes life worth living,
Who brings this message plain,—
When our brief days are over,
That we shall live again.’
Paulinus was one of the four missionaries sent form Rome by Gregory the Great in 601. The marriage of Edwin, King of Northumbria, with Ethelburga, sister to Eadbald of Kent, opened Paulinus’ way to northern England. Bede, born less than fifty years after, has given an admirable narrative of Edwin’s conversion: which is very completely told in Bright’s Early English Church History, B. IV.
Deira, (from old-Welsh deifr, waters), then comprised Eastern Yorkshire from Tees to Humber. Goodmanham, where the meeting described was held, is some 23 miles from York.
ALFRED THE GREAT
849-901
1
The fair-hair’d boy is at his mother’s knee,
A many-colour’d page before them spread,
Gay summer harvest-field of gold and red,
With lines and staves of ancient minstrelsy.
But through her eyes alone the child can see,
From her sweet lips partake the words of song,
And looks as one who feels a hidden wrong,
Or gazes on some feat of gramarye.
‘When thou canst use it, thine the book!’ she cried:
He blush’d, and clasp’d it to his breast with pride:—
‘Unkingly task!’ his comrades cry; In vain;
All work ennobles nobleness, all art,
He sees; Head governs hand; and in his heart
All knowledge for his province he has ta’en.
2
Few the bright days, and brief the fruitful rest,
As summer-clouds that o’er the valley flit:—
To other tasks his genius he must fit;
The Dane is in the land, uneasy guest!
—O sacred Athelney, from pagan quest
Secure, sole haven for the faithful boy
Waiting God’s issue with heroic joy
And unrelaxing purpose in the breast!
The Dragon and the Raven, inch by inch,
For England fight; nor Dane nor Saxon flinch;
Then Alfred strikes his blow; the realm is free:—
He, changing at the font his foe to friend,
Yields for the time, to gain the far-off end,
By moderation doubling victory.
O much-vex’d life, for us too short, too dear!
The laggard body lame behind the soul;
Pain, that ne’er marr’d the mind’s serene control;
Breathing on earth heaven’s aether atmosphere,
God with thee, and the love that casts out fear!
A soul in life’s salt ocean guarding sure
The freshness of youth’s fountain sweet and pure,
And to all natural impulse crystal-clear:
To service or command, to low and high
Equal at once in magnanimity,
The Great by right divine thou only art!
Fair star, that crowns the front of England’s morn,
Royal with Nature’s royalty inborn,
And English to the very heart of heart!
The fair-hair’d boy: There is a singular unanimity among historians in regard to this ‘darling of the English,’ whose life has been vividly sketched by Freeman (Conquest, ch. ii); by Green (English People, B. I: ch. iii); and, earlier, by my Father in his short History of the Anglo-Saxons, ch. vi-viii.
Changing at the font: Alfred was godfather to Guthrun the Dane, when baptized after his defeat at Ethandune in 878.
A DANISH BARROW
ON THE EAST DEVON COAST
Lie still, old Dane, below thy heap!
—A sturdy-back and sturdy-limb,
Whoe’er he was, I warrant him
Upon whose mound the single sheep
Browses and tinkles in the sun,
Within the narrow vale alone.
Lie still, old Dane! This restful scene
Suits well thy centuries of sleep:
The soft brown roots above thee creep,
The lotus flaunts his ruddy sheen,
And,—vain memento of the spot,—
The turquoise-eyed forget-me-not.
Lie still!—Thy mother-land herself
Would know thee not again: no more
The Raven from the northern shore
Hails the bold crew to push for pelf,
Through fire and blood and slaughter’d kings,
’Neath the black terror of his wings.
And thou,—thy very name is lost!
The peasant only knows that here
Bold Alfred scoop’d thy flinty bier,
And pray’d a foeman’s prayer, and tost
His auburn, head, and said ‘One more
Of England’s foes guards England’s shore,’
And turn’d and pass’d to other feats,
And left thee in thine iron robe,
To circle with the circling globe,
While Time’s corrosive dewdrop eats
The giant warrior to a crust
Of earth in earth, and rust in rust.
So lie: and let the children play
And sit like flowers upon thy grave,
And crown with flowers,—that hardly have
A briefer blooming-tide than they;—
By hurrying years borne on to rest,
As thou, within the Mother’s breast.
HASTINGS
October 14: 1066
‘Gyrth, is it dawn in the sky that I see? or is all the sky blood?
Heavy and sore was the fight in the North: yet we fought for the good.
O but—Brother ’gainst brother!—’twas hard!—Now I come with a will
To baste the false bastard of France, the hide of the tanyard and mill!
Now on the razor-edge lies
England the priceless, the prize!
God aiding, the Raven at Stamford we smote;
One stroke more for the land here I strike and devote!’
Red with fresh breath on her lips came the dawn; and Harold uprose;
Kneels as man before God; then takes his long pole-axe, and goes
Where round their woven wall, tough ash-palisado, they crowd;
Mightily cleaves and binds, to his comrades crying aloud
‘Englishmen stalwart and true,
But one word has Harold for you!
When from the field the false foreigners run,
Stand firm in your castle, and all will be won!
‘Now, with God o’er us, and Holy Rood, arm!’—And he ran for his spear:
But Gyrth held him back, ’mong his brothers Gyrth the most honour’d, most dear:
‘Go not, Harold! thine oath is against thee! the Saints look askance:
I am not king; let me lead them, me only: mine be the chance!’
—‘No! The leader must lead!
Better that Harold should bleed!
To the souls I appeal, not the dust of the tomb:—
King chosen of Edward and England, I come!’
Over Heathland surge banners and lances, three armies; William the last,
Clenching his mace; Rome’s gonfanon round him Rome’s majesty cast:
O’er his Bretons Fergant, o’er the hireling squadrons Montgomery lords,
Jerkin’d archers, and mail-clads, and horsemen with pennons and swords:—
—England, in threefold array,
Anchor, and hold them at bay,
Firm set in your own wooden walls! and the wave
Of high-crested Frenchmen will break on their grave.
So to the palisade on! There, Harold and Leofwine and Gyrth
Stand like a triple Thor, true brethren in arms as in birth:
And above the fierce standards strain at their poles as they flare on the gale;
One, the old Dragon of Wessex, and one, a Warrior in mail.
‘God Almighty!’ they cry!
‘Haro!’ the Northmen reply:—
As when eagles are gather’d and loud o’er the prey,
Shout! for ’tis England the prize of the fray!
And as when two lightning-clouds tilt, between them an arrowy sleet
Hisses and darts; till the challenging thunders are heard, and they meet;
Across fly javelins and serpents of flame: green earth and blue sky
Blurr’d in the blind tornado:—so now the battle goes high.
Shearing through helmet and limb
Glaive-steel and battle-axe grim:
As the flash of the reaper in summer’s high wheat,
King Harold mows horseman and horse at his feet.
O vainly the whirlwind of France up the turf to the palisade swept:
Shoulder to shoulder the Englishmen stand, and the shield-wall is kept:—
As, in a summer to be, when England and she yet again
Strove for the sovranty, firm stood our squares, through the pitiless rain
Death rain’d o’er them all day;
—Happier, not braver than they
Who on Senlac e’en yet their still garrison keep,
Sleeping a long Marathonian sleep!
‘Madmen, why turn?’ cried the Duke,—for the horsemen recoil from the slope;
‘Behold me! I live!’—and he lifted the ventayle; ‘before you is hope:
Death, not safety, behind!’—and he spurs to the centre once more,
Lion-like leaps on the standard and Harold: but Gyrth is before!
‘Down! He is down!’ is the shout:
‘On with the axes! Out, Out!’
—He rises again; the mace circles its stroke;
Then falls as the thunderbolt falls on the oak.
—Gyrth is crush’d, and Leofwine is crush’d; yet the shields hold their wall:
‘Edith alone of my dear ones is left me, and dearest of all!
Edith has said she would seek me to-day when the battle is done;
Her love more precious alone than kingdoms and victory won;
O for the sweetness of home!
O for the kindness to come!’
Then around him again the wild war-dragons roar,
And he drinks the red wine-cup of battle once more.
—‘Anyhow from their rampart to lure them, to shatter the bucklers and wall,
Acting a flight,’ in his craft thought William, and sign’d to recall
His left battle:—O countrymen! slow to be roused! roused, always, as then,
Reckless of life or death, bent only to quit you like men!—
As bolts from the bow-string they go,
Whirl them and hurl them below,
Where the deep foss yawns for the foe in his course,
Piled up and brimming with horseman and horse.
As when October’s sun, long caught in a curtain of gray,
With a flood of impatient crimson breaks out, at the dying of day,
And trees and green fields, the hills and the skies, are all steep’d in the stain;—
So o’er the English one hope flamed forth, one moment,—in vain!
As hail when the corn-fields are deep,
Down the fierce arrow-points sweep:
Now the basnets of France o’er the palisade frown;
The shield-fort is shatter’d; the Dragon is down.
O then there was dashing and dinting of axe and of broad-sword and spear:
Blood crying out to blood: and Hatred that casteth out fear!
Loud where the fight is the loudest, the slaughter-breath hot in the air,
O what a cry was that!—the cry of a nation’s despair!
—Hew down the best of the land!
Down them with mace and with brand!
The fell foreign arrow has crash’d to the brain;
England with Harold the Englishman slain!
Yet they fought on for their England! of ineffaceable fame
Worthy, and stood to the death, though the greedy sword, like a flame,
Bit and bit yet again in the solid ranks, and the dead
Heap where they die, and hills of foemen about them are spread:—
—Hew down the heart of the land,
There, to a man, where they stand!
Till night with her blackness uncrimsons the stain,
And the merciful shroud overshadows our slain.
Heroes unburied, unwept!—But a wan gray thing in the night
Like a marsh-wisp flits to and fro through the blood-lake, the steam of the fight;
Turning the bodies, exploring the features with delicate touch;
Stumbling as one that finds nothing: but now!—as one finding too much:
Love through mid-midnight will see:
Edith the fair! It is he!
Clasp him once more, the heroic, the dear!
Harold was England: and Harold lies here.
The hide of the tanyard; See the story of Arlette or Herleva, the tanner’s daughter, mother to William ‘the Bastard.’
At Stamford; At Stamford Bridge, over the Derwent, Harold defeated his brother Tostig and Harold Hardrada, Sep 25, 1066.
Your castle; Harold’s triple palisade upon the hill of battle is so described by the chronicler, Henry of Huntingdon.
Rome’s gonfanon; The consecrated banner, sent to William from Rome.
The fierce standards; These were planted on the spot chosen by the Conqueror for the high-altar of the Abbey of Battle. The Warrior was Harold’s ‘personal ensign.’
In a summer to be; June 18, 1815.
The ventayle; Used here for the nasale or nose-piece shown in the Bayeux Tapestry.
DEATH IN THE FOREST
August 2: 1100
Where the greenwood is greenest
At gloaming of day,
Where the twelve-antler’d stag
Faces boldest at bay;
Where the solitude deepens,
Till almost you hear
The blood-beat of the heart
As the quarry slips near;
His comrades outridden
With scorn in the race,
The Red King is hallooing
His bounds to the chase.
What though the Wild Hunt
Like a whirlwind of hell
Yestereve ran the forest,
With baying and yell:—
In his cups the Red heathen
Mocks God to the face;
—‘In the devil’s name, shoot;
Tyrrell, ho!—to the chase!’
—Now with worms for his courtiers
He lies in the narrow
Cold couch of the chancel!
—But whence was the arrow?
The dread vision of Serlo
That call’d him to die,
The weird sacrilege terror
Of sleep, have gone by.
The blood of young Richard
Cries on him in vain,
In the heart of the Lindwood
By arbalest slain.
And he plunges alone
In the Serpent-glade gloom,
As one whom the Furies
Hound headlong to doom.
His sin goes before him,
The lust and the pride;
And the curses of England
Breathe hot at his side.
And the desecrate walls
Of the Evil-wood shrine
Lo, he passes—unheeding
Dark vision and sign:—
—Now with worms for his courtiers
He lies in the narrow
Cold couch of the chancel:
—But whence was the arrow?
Then a shudder of death
Flicker’d fast through the wood:—
And they found the Red King
Red-gilt in his blood.
What wells up in his throat?
Is it cursing, or prayer?
Was it Henry, or Tyrrell,
Or demon, who there
Has dyed the fell tyrant
Twice crimson in gore,
While the soul disincarnate
Hunts on to hell-door?
—Ah! friendless in death!
Rude forest-hands fling
On the charcoaler’s wain
What but now was the king!
And through the long Minster
The carcass they bear,
And huddle it down
Without priest, without prayer:—
Now with worms for his courtiers
He lies in the narrow
Cold couch of the chancel:
—But whence was the arrow?
In his cups; Rufus, it is said, was ‘fey,’ as the old phrase has it, on the day of his death. He feasted long and high, and then chose out two cross-bow shafts, presenting them to Tyrrell with the exclamation given above.
Serlo; He was Abbot of Gloucester, and had sent to Rufus the narrative of an ominous dream, reported in the Monastery.
The true dreams; On his last night Rufus ‘laid himself down to sleep, but not in peace; the attendants were startled by the King’s voice—a bitter cry—a cry for help—a cry for deliverance—he had been suddenly awakened by a dreadful dream, as of exquisite anguish befalling him in that ruined church, at the foot of the Malwood rampart.’ Palgrave: Hist. of Normandy and of England, B. IV: ch. xii.
Young Richard; Son to Robert Courthose, and hunting, as his uncle’s guest, in the New Forest in May 1100, was mysteriously slain by a heavy bolt from a Norman Arbalest.
The Evil-wood walls; ‘Amongst the sixty churches which had been ‘ruined,’ my Father remarks, in his notice of the New Forest, ‘the sanctuary below the mystic Malwood was peculiarly remarkable. . . . You reach the Malwood easily from the Leafy Lodge in the favourite deer-walk, the Lind-hurst, the Dragon’s wood.’
Through the long Minster; Winchester. Rufus, with much hesitation, was buried in the chancel as a king; but no religious service or ceremonial was celebrated:—‘All men thought that prayers were hopeless.’
EDITH OF ENGLAND
1100
Through sapling shades of summer green,
By glade and height and hollow,
Where Rufus rode the stag to bay,
King Henry spurs a jocund way,
Another chase to follow.
But when he came to Romsey gate
The doors are open’d free,
And through the gate like sunshine streams
A maiden company:—
One girdled with the vervain-red,
And three in sendal gray,
And touch the trembling rebeck-strings
To their soft roundelay;—
—The bravest knight may fail in fight;
The red rust edge the sword;
The king his crown in dust lay down;
But Love is always Lord!
King Henry at her feet flings down,
His helmet ringing loudly:—
His kisses worship Edith’s hand;
‘Wilt thou be Queen of all the land?’
—O red she blush’d and proudly!
Red as the crimson girdle bound
Beneath her gracious breast;
Red as the silken scarf that flames
Above his lion-crest.
She lifts and casts the cloister-veil
All on the cloister-floor:—
The novice maids of Romsey smile,
And think of love once more.
‘Well, well, to blush!’ the Abbess cried,
‘The veil and vow deriding
That rescued thee, in baby days,
From insolence of Norman gaze,
In pure and holy hiding.
—O royal child of South and North,
Malcolm and Margaret,
The promised bride of Heaven art thou,
And Heaven will not forget!
What recks it, if an alien King
Encoronet thy brow,
Or if the false Italian priest
Pretend to loose the vow?’
O then to white the red rose went
On Edith’s cheek abiding!
With even glance she answer’d meek
‘I leave the life I did not seek,
In holy Church confiding’:—
Then Love smiled true on Henry’s face,
And Anselm join’d the hands
That in one race two races bound
By everlasting bands.
So Love is Lord, and Alfred’s blood
Returns the land to sway;
And all her joyous maidens join
In their soft roundelay:
—For though the knight may fail in fight,
The red rust edge the sword,
The king his crown in dust lay down,
Yet Love is always Lord!
Edith, (who, after marriage, took the name Matilda in compliment to Henry’s mother), daughter to Malcolm King of Scotland by Margaret, granddaughter of Edmund Ironside, had been brought up by her aunt Christina, and placed in Romsey Abbey for security against Norman violence. But she had always refused to take the vows, and was hence, in opposition to her aunt’s wish, declared canonically free to marry by Anselm; called here an Italian priest, as born at Aosta. Henry had been long attached to the Princess, and married her shortly after his accession.
A CRUSADER’S TOMB
1230
Unnamed, unknown:—his hands across his breast
Set in sepulchral rest,
In yon low cave-like niche the warrior lies,
—A shrine within a shrine,—
Full of gray peace, while day to darkness dies.
Then the forgotten dead at midnight come
And throng their chieftain’s tomb,
Murmuring the toils o’er which they toil’d, alive,
The feats of sword and love;
And all the air thrills like a summer hive.
—How so, thou say’st!—This is the poet’s right!
He looks with larger sight
Than they who hedge their view by present things,
The small, parochial world
Of sight and touch: and what he sees, he sings.
The steel-shell’d host, that, gleaming as it turns,
Like autumn lightning burns,
A moment’s azure, the fresh flags that glance
As cornflowers o’er the corn,
Till war’s stern step show like a gala dance,
He also sees; and pierces to the heart,
Scanning the genuine part
Each Red-Cross pilgrim plays: Some, gold-enticed;
By love or lust or fame
Urged; or who yearn to kiss the grave of Christ
And find their own, life-wearied:—Motley band!
O! ere they quit the Land
How maim’d, how marr’d, how changed from all that pride
In which so late they left
Orwell or Thames, with sails out-swelling wide
And music tuneable with the timing oar
Clear heard from shore to shore;
All Europe streaming to the mystic East!
—Now on their sun-smit ranks
The dusky squadrons close in vulture-feast,
And that fierce Day-star’s blazing ball their sight
Sears with excess of light;
Or through dun sand-clouds the blue scimitar’s edge
Slopes down like fire from heaven,
Mowing them as the thatcher mows the sedge.
Then many a heart remember’d, as the skies
Grew dark on dying eyes,
Sweet England; her fresh fields and gardens trim;
Her tree-embower’d halls;
And the one face that was the world to him.
—And one who fought his fight and held his way,
Through life’s long latter day
Moving among the green, green English meads,
Ere in this niche he took
His rest, oft ’mid his kinsfolk told the deeds
Of that gay passage through the Midland sea;
Cyprus and Sicily;
And how the Lion-Heart o’er the Moslem host
Triumph’d in Ascalon
Or Acre, by the tideless Tyrian coast,
Yet never saw the vast Imperial dome,
Nor the thrice-holy Tomb:—
—As that great vision of the hidden Grail
By bravest knights of old
Unseen:—seen only of pure Parcivale.
The ‘Thud Crusade,’ 1189-1193, is the subject of this poem. Richard Coeur de Lion carried his followers by way of Sicily and Cyprus: making a transient conquest of the latter. In the Holy Land the siege of Acre consumed the time and strength of the Crusaders. They suffered terribly in the wilderness of Mount Carmel, and when at last preparing to march on Jerusalem (1192) were recalled to Ascalon. Richard now advanced to Bethany, but was unable to reach the Holy City. The tale is that while riding with a party of knights one of them called out, ‘This way, my lord, and you will see Jerusalem.’ But Richard hid his face and said, ‘Alas!—they who are not worthy to win the Holy City are not worthy to behold it.’
The vast Imperial dome; The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built by the Emperor Constantine; a.d. 326-335.
The hidden Grail; This vision forms the subject of one of Tennyson’s noblest Idylls.
A BALLAD OF EVESHAM
August 4: 1265
Earl Simon on the Abbey tower
In summer sunshine stood,
While helm and lance o’er Greenhill heights
Come glinting through the wood.
‘My son!’ he cried, ‘I know his flag
Amongst a thousand glancing’:—
Fond father! no!—’tis Edward stern
In royal strength advancing.
The Prince fell on him like a hawk
At Al’ster yester-eve,
And flaunts his captured banner now
And flaunts but to deceive:—
—Look round! for Mortimer is by,
And guards the rearward river:—
The hour that parted sire and son
Has parted them for ever!
‘Young Simon’s dead,’ he thinks, and look’d
Upon his living son:
‘Now God have mercy on our souls,
Our bodies are undone!
But, Hugh and Henry, ye can fly
Before their bowmen smite us—
They come on well! But ’tis from me
They learn’d the skill to fight us.’
—‘For England’s cause, and England’s laws,
With you we fight and fall!’
—‘Together, then, and die like men,
And Heaven has room for all!’
—Then, face to face, and limb to limb,
And sword with sword inwoven,
That stubborn courage of the race
On Evesham field was proven
O happy hills! O summer sky
Above the valley bent!
Your peacefulness rebukes the rage
Of blood on blood intent!
No thought was then for death or life
Through that long dreadful hour,
While Simon ’mid his faithful few
Stood like an iron tower,
’Gainst which the winds and waves are hurl’d
In vain, unmoved, foursquare;
And round him raged the insatiate swords
Of Edward and De Clare:
And round him in the narrow combe
His white-cross comrades rally,
While ghastly gashings, cloud the beck
And crimson all the valley,
And triple sword-thrusts meet his sword,
And thrice the charge he foils,
Though now in threefold flood the foe
Round those devoted boils:
And still the light of England’s cause
And England’s love was o’er him,
Until he saw his gallant boy
Go down in blood before him:—
He hove his huge two-handed blade,
He cried ‘’Tis time to die!’
And smote around him like a flail,
And clear’d a space to lie:—
‘Thank God!’—no more;—nor now could life
From loved and lost divide him:—
And night fell o’er De Montfort dead,
And England wept beside him.
In the words given here to Simon (and, indeed, in the bulk of my narrative) I have almost literally followed Prothero’s Life. The struggle, like other critical conflicts in the days of unprofessional war, was very brief.
THE DIRGE OF LLYWELYN
December 10: 1282
Llanyis on Irfon, thine oaks in the drear
Red eve of December are wind-swept and sere,
Where a king by the stream in his agony lies,
And the life of a land ebbs away as he dies.
Carádoc, thy sceptre for centuries kept,
Shall it pass like the ripple, unhonour’d, unwept:
Unknowing the lance, and the victim unknown,
Far from Aberffraw’s halls and Erýri the lone!
O dark day of winter and Cambria’s shame,
To the treason of Builth when from Gwynedd he came,
And Walwyn and Frankton and Mortimer fell
Closed round unawares by the fold in the dell!
—As who, where the shadow beneath him is thrown,
By some well in Saharan high noontide alone
Sits under the palm-tree, nor hears the low breath
Of the russet-maned foe panting hot for his death;
So Llywelyn,—unarm’d, unaware:—Is it she,
Bright star of his morning, when Gwynedd was free,
Fair bride, the long sought, taken early, goes by?
In the heart of the breeze the lost Eleanor’s sigh?
Or the one little daughter’s sweet face with a gleam
Of glamour looks out, as the dream in a dream?
Or for childhood’s first sunshine and calm does he yearn,
As the days of Maesmynan in memory return?
Or,—dear to the heart’s-blood as first-love or wife,—
The mountains whose freedom was one with his life,
Gray farms and green vales of that ancient domain,
The thousand-years’ kingdom, he dreams of again?
Or is it the rage of stark Edward; the base
Unkingly revenge on a kinglier race;
The wrong idly wrought on the patriot dead;
The dark castle of doom; the scorn-diadem’d head?
—Lo, where Rhodri and Owain await thee!—The foe
Slips nearing in silence: one flash—and one blow!
And the ripple that passes wafts down to the Wye
The last prayer of Llywelyn, the nation’s last sigh.
But Llanynis yet sees the white rivulet gleam,
And the leaf of December fall sere on the stream;
While Irfon his dirge whispers on through the combe,
And the purple-topt hills gather round in their gloom.
Where a king; The war in which Llywelyn fell was the inevitable result of the growing power of England under Edward I; and, considering the vast preponderance of weight against the Welsh Prince it could not have ended but in the conquest of Wales. Yet its issue, as told here, was determined as if by chance.
Aberffraw; in Anglesea: the residence of the royal line of Gywnedd from the time of Rhodri Mawr onwards.
Eryri; the Eagle’s rock is a name for Snowdon. The bird has been seen in the neighbourhood within late years.
Is it she; Eleanor, daughter to Simon de Montfort. After some years of betrothal and impediment arising from the jealousy of Edward I, she and Llywelyn were married in 1278. But after only two years of happiness, Eleanor died, leaving one child, Catharine or Gwenllian.
Maesmynan; by Caerwys in Flintshire; where Llywelyn lived retiredly in youth.
The thousand-years’ kingdom; The descent of the royal house of North Wales is legendarily traced from Caradoc-Caractacus. But the accepted genealogy of the Princes of Gwynedd begins with Cunedda Wledig (Paramount) cir. 400: ending in 1282 with Llywelyn son of Gruffydd.
The scorn-diadem’d head; On finding whom he had slain, Frankton carried Llywelyn’s head to Edward at Rhuddlan, who, with a barbarity unworthy of himself, set it over the Tower of London, wreathed in mockery of a prediction (ascribed to Merlin) upon the coronation of a Welsh Prince in London.
Rhodri and Owain; Rhodri Mawr, (843), who united under his supremacy the other Welsh principalities, Powys and Dinefawr; Owain Gwynedd, (1137),—are among the most conspicuous of Llywelyn’s royal predecessors.
THE REJOICING OF THE LAND
1295
So the land had rest! and the cloud of that heart-sore struggle and pain
Rose from her ancient hills, and peace shone o’er her again,
Sunlike chasing the plagues wherewith the land was defiled;
And the leprosy fled, and her flesh came again, as the flesh of a child.
—They were stern and stark, the three children of Rolf, the first from Anjou:
For their own sake loving the land, mayhap, but loving her true;
France the wife, and England the handmaid; yet over the realm
Their eyes were in every place, their hands gripp’d firm on the helm.
Villein and earl, the cowl and the plume, they were bridled alike;
One law for all, but arm’d law,—not swifter to aid than to strike.
Lo, in the twilight transept, the holy places of God,
Not with sunset the steps of the altar are dyed, but with scarlet of blood!
Clang of iron-shod feet, and sheep for their shepherd who cry;
Curses and swords that flash, and the victim proffer’d to die!
—Bare thy own back to the smiter, O king, at the shrine of the dead:
Thy friend thou hast slain in thy folly; the blood of the Saint on thy head:
Proud and priestly, thou say’st;—yet tender and faithful and pure;
True man, and so, true saint;—the crown of his martyrdom sure:—
As friend with his friend, he could brave thee and warn; thou hast silenced the voice,
Ne’er to be heard again:—nor again will Henry rejoice!
Green Erin may yield her, fair Scotland submit; but his sunshine is o’er;
The tooth of the serpent, the child of his bosom, has smote him so sore:—
Like a wolf from the hounds he dragg’d off to his lair, not turning to bay:—
Crying ‘shame on a conquer’d king!’—the grim ghost fled sullen away.
—Then, as in gray Autumn the heavens are pour’d on the rifted hillside,
When the Rain-stars mistily gleam, and torrents leap white in their pride,
And the valley is all one lake, and the late, unharvested shocks
Are rapt to the sea, the dwellings of man, the red kine and the flocks,—
O’er England the ramparts of law, the old landmarks of liberty fell,
As the brothers in blood and in lust, twin horror begotten of hell,
Suck’d all the life of the land to themselves, like Lofoden in flood,
One in his pride, in his subtlety one, mocking England and God.
Then tyranny’s draught—once only—we drank to the dregs!—and the stain
Went crimson and black through the soul of the land, for all time, not in vain!
We bore the bluff many-wived king, rough rival and victor of Rome;
We bore the stern despot-protector, whose dawning and sunset were gloom;
For they temper’d the self of the tyrant with love of the land,
Some touch of the heart, some remorse, refraining the grip of the hand.
But John’s was blackness of darkness, a day of vileness and shame;
Shrieks of the tortured, and silence, and outrage the mouth cannot name.
—O that cry of the helpless, the weak that writhe under the foe,
Wrong man-wrought upon man, dumb unwritten annals of woe!
Cry that goes upward from earth as she rolls through the peace of the skies
‘How long? Hast thou forgotten, O God!’ . . . and silence replies!
Silence:—and then was the answer;—the light o’er Windsor that broke,
The Meadow of Law—true Avalon where the true Arthur awoke!
—Not thou, whose name, as a seed o’er the world, plume-wafted on air,
Britons on each side sea,—Caerlleon and Cumbria,—share,
Joy of a downtrod race, dear hope of freedom to-be,
Dream of poetic hearts, whom the vision only can see! . . .
For thine were the fairy knights, fair ideals of beauty and song;
But ours, in the ways of men, walk’d sober, and stumbling, and strong;—
Stumbling as who in peril and twilight their pathway trace out,
Hard to trace, and untried, and the foe above and about;
For the Charter of Freedom, the voice of the land in her Council secure
All doing, all daring,—and, e’en when defeated, of victory sure!
Langton, our Galahad, first, stamp’d Leader by Rome unaware,
Pembroke and Mowbray, Fitzwarine, Fitzalan, Fitzwalter, De Clare:—
—O fair temple of Freedom and Law!—the foundations ye laid:—
But again came the storm, and the might of darkness and wrong was array’d,
A warfare of years; and the battle raged, and new heroes arose
From a soil that is fertile in manhood’s men, and scatter’d the foes,
And set in their place the bright pillars of Order, Liberty’s shrine,
O’er the land far-seen, as o’er Athens the home of Athena divine.
—So the land had rest:—and the cloud of that heart-sore struggle and pain
Sped from her ancient hills, and peace shone o’er her again,
Sunlike chasing the plagues wherewith the land was defiled:
And the leprosy fled, and her flesh came again, as the flesh of a child.
For lo! the crown’d Statesman of Law, Justinian himself of his realm,
Edward, since Alfred our wisest of all who have watch’d by the helm!
He who yet preaches in silence his life-word, the light of his way,
From his marble unadorn’d chest, in the heart of the West Minster gray,
Keep thy Faith . . . In the great town-twilight, this city of gloom,
—O how unlike that blithe London he look’d on!—I look on his tomb,
In the circle of kings, round the shrine, where the air is heavy with fame,
Dust of our moulder’d chieftains, and splendour shrunk to a name.
Silent synod august, ye that tried the delight and the pain,
Trials and snares of a throne, was the legend written in vain?
Speak, for ye know, crown’d shadows! who down each narrow and strait
As ye might, once guided,—a perilous passage,—the keel of the State,
Fourth Henry, fourth Edward, Elizabeth, Charles,—now ye rest from your toil,
Was it best, when by truth and compass ye steer’d, or by statecraft and guile?
Or is it so hard, that steering of States, that as men who throw in
With party their life, honour soils his own ermine, a lie is no sin? . . .
—Not so, great Edward, with thee,—not so!—For he learn’d in his youth
The step straightforward and sure, the proud, bright bearing of truth:—
Arm’d against Simon at Evesham, yet not less, striking for Law,—
Ages of temperate freedom, a vision of order, he saw!—
—Vision of opulent years, a murmur of welfare and peace:
Orchard golden-globed, plain waving in golden increase;
Hopfields fairer than vineyards, green laughing tendrils and bine;
Woodland misty in sunlight, and meadow sunny with kine;—
Havens of heaving blue, where the keels of Guienne and the Hanse
Jostle and creak by the quay, and the mast goes up like a lance,
Gay with the pennons of peace, and, blazon’d with Adria’s dyes,
Purple and orange, the sails like a sunset burn in the skies.
Bloodless conquests of commerce, that nation with nation unite!
Hand clasp’d frankly in hand, not steel-clad buffets in fight:
On the deck strange accents and shouting; rough furcowl’d men of the north,
Genoa’s brown-neck’d sons, and whom swarthy Smyrna sends forth:
Freights of the south; drugs potent o’er death from the basilisk won,
Odorous Phoenix-nest, and spice of a sunnier sun:—
Butts of Malvasian nectar, Messene’s vintage of old,
Cyprian webs, damask of Arabia mazy with gold:
Sendal and Samite and Tarsien, and sardstones ruddy as wine,
Graved by Athenian diamond with forms of beauty divine.
To the quay from the gabled alleys, the huddled ravines of the town,
Twilights of jutting lattice and beam, the Guild-merchants come down,
Cheapening the gifts of the south, the sea-borne alien bales,
For the snow-bright fleeces of Leom’ster, the wealth of Devonian vales;
While above them, the cavernous gates, on which knight-robbers have gazed
Hopeless, in peace look down, their harrows of iron upraised;
And Dustyfoot enters at will with his gay Autolycus load,
And the maidens are flocking as doves when they fling the light grain on the road.
Low on the riverain mead, where the dull clay-cottages cling
To the tall town-ward and the towers, as nests of the martin in spring,
Where the year-long fever lurks, and gray leprosy burrows secure,
Are the wattled huts of the Friars, the long, white Church of the poor:
—Haven of wearied eyelids; of hearts that care not to live;
Shadow and silence of prayer; the peace which the world cannot give!
Tapers hazily gloaming through fragrance the censers outpour;
Chant ever rising and rippling in sweetness, as waves on the shore;
Casements of woven stone, with more than the rainbow bedyed;
Beauty of holiness! Spell yet unbroken by riches and pride!
—Ah! could it be so for ever!—the good aye better’d by Time:—
First-Faith, first-Wisdom, first-Love,—to the end be true to their prime! . .
Far rises the storm o’er horizons unseen, that will lay them in dust,
Crashings of plunder’d cloisters, and royal insatiate lust:—
Far, unseen, unheard!—Meanwhile the great Minster on high
Like a stream of music, aspiring, harmonious, springs to the sky:—
Story on story ascending their buttress’d beauty unfold,
Till the highest height is attain’d, and the Cross shines star-like in gold,
Set as a meteor in heaven; a sign of health and release:—
And the land rejoices below, and the heart-song of England is Peace.
This date has been chosen as representing at once the culminating point in the reign of Edward, and of Mediaevalism in England. The sound, the fascinating elements of that period rapidly decline after the thirteenth century in Church and State, in art and in learning.
‘In the person of the great Edward,’ says Freeman, ‘the work of reconciliation is completed. Norman and Englishman have become one under the best and greatest of our later Kings, the first who, since the Norman entered our land, . . . followed a purely English policy.’
The three children; William I and II, and Henry I.
The transept; of Canterbury Cathedral, after Becket’s death named the ‘Martyrdom.’
Nor again; See the Early Plantagenets, by Bishop Stubbs: one of the very few masterpieces among the shoal of little books on great subjects in which a declining literature is fertile.
Britons on each side sea; Armorica and Cornwall, Wales and Strathclyde, all share in the great Arthurian legend.
Justinian; ‘Edward,’ says Dr. Stubbs, ‘is the great lawgiver, the great politician, the great organiser of the mediaeval English polity:’ (Early Plantagenets).
Keep thy Faith; ‘Pactum serva’ may be still seen inscribed on the huge stone coffin of Edward I.
The keels of Guienne . . . Adria’s dyes; The ships of Gascony, of the Hanse Towns, of Genoa, of Venice, are enumerated amongst those which now traded with England.
Malvasian nectar; ‘Malvoisie,’ the sweet wine of the Southern Morea, gained its name from Monemvasia, or Napoli di Malvasia, its port of shipment.
Sendal; A thin rich silk. Samite; A very rich stuff, sometimes wholly of silk, often crimson, interwoven with gold and silver thread, and embroidered. Tarsien; Silken stuff from Tartary.
Athenian diamond; A few very fine early gems ascribed to Athens, are executed wholly with diamond-point.
The snow-bright fleeces; Those of Leominster were very long famous.
Devonian vales; The ancient mining region west of Tavistock.
Dustyfoot; Old name for pedlar.
CRECY
August 26: 1346
At Crecy by Somme in Ponthieu
High up on a windy hill
A mill stands out like a tower;
King Edward stands on the mill.
The plain is seething below
As Vesuvius seethes with flame,
But O! not with fire, but gore,
Earth incarnadined o’er,
Crimson with shame and with fame!—
To the King run the messengers, crying
‘Thy Son is hard-press’d to the dying!’
—‘Let alone: for to-day will be written in story
To the great world’s end, and for ever:
So let the boy have the glory.’
Erin and Gwalia there
With England are one against France;
Outfacing the oriflamme red
The red dragons of Merlin advance:—
As harvest in autumn renew’d
The lances bend o’er the fields;
Snow-thick our arrow-heads white
Level the foe as they light;
Knighthood to yeomanry yields:—
Proud heart, the King watches, as higher
Goes the blaze of the battle, and nigher:—
‘To-day is a day will be written in story
To the great world’s end, and for ever!
Let the boy alone have the glory.’
Harold at Senlac-on-Sea
By Norman arrow laid low,—
When the shield-wall was breach’d by the shaft,
—Thou art avenged by the bow!
Chivalry! name of romance!
Thou art henceforth but a name!
Weapon that none can withstand,
Yew in the Englishman’s hand,
Flight-shaft unerring in aim!
As a lightning-struck forest the foemen
Shiver down to the stroke of the bowmen:—
—‘O to-day is a day will be written in story
To the great world’s end, and for ever!
So, let the boy have the glory.’
Pride of Liguria’s shore
Genoa wrestles in vain;
Vainly Bohemia’s King
Kinglike is laid with the slain.
The Blood-lake is wiped-out in blood,
The shame of the centuries o’er;
Where the pride of the Norman had sway
The lions lord over the fray,
The legions of France are no more:—
—The Prince to his father kneels lowly;
—‘His is the battle! his wholly!
For to-day is a day will be written in story
To the great world’s end, and for ever:—
So, let him have the spurs, and the glory!’
Erin and Gwalia; Half of Edward’s army consisted of light armed footmen from Ireland and Wales—the latter under their old Dragon-flag.
Chivalry; The feudal idea of an army, resting ‘on the superiority of the horseman to the footman, of the mounted noble to the unmounted churl,’ may be said to have been ruined by this battle: (Green, B. IV: ch. iii).
Liguria; 15,000 cross-bowmen from Genoa were in Philip’s army.
The Blood-lake; Senlac; Hastings.
THE BLACK SEATS
1348-9
Blue and ever more blue
The sky of that summer’s spring:
No cloud from dawning to night:
The lidless eyeball of light
Glared: nor could e’en in darkness the dew
Her pearls on the meadow-grass string.
As a face of a hundred years,
Mummied and scarr’d, for the heart
Is long dry at the fountain of tears,
Green earth lay brown-faced and torn,
Scarr’d and hard and forlorn.
And as that foul monster of Lerna
Whom Héraclés slew in his might,
But this one slaying, not slain,
From the marshes, poisonous, white,
Crawl’d out a plague-mist and sheeted the plain,
A hydra of hell and of night.
—Whence upon men has that horror past?
From Cathaya westward it stole to Byzance,—
The City of Flowers,—the vineyards of France;—
O’er the salt-sea ramparts of England, last,
Reeking and rank, a serpent’s breath:—
What is this, men cry in their fear, what is this that cometh?
’Tis the Black Death, they whisper:
The black black Death!
The heart of man at the name
To a ball of ice shrinks in,
With hope, surrendering life:—
The husband looks on the wife,
Reading the tokens of doom in the frame,
The pest-boil hid in the skin,
And flees and leaves her to die.
Fear-sick, the mother beholds
In her child’s pure crystalline eye
A dull shining, a sign of despair.
Lo, the heavens are poison, not air;
And they fall as when lambs in the pasture
With a moan that is hardly a moan,
Drop, whole flocks, where they stand;
And the mother lays her, alone,
Slain by the touch of her nursing hand,
Where the household before her is strown.
—Earth, Earth, open and cover thy dead!
For they are smitten and fall who bear
The corpse to the grave with a prayerless prayer,
And thousands are crush’d in the common bed:—
—Is it Hell that breathes with an adder’s breath?
Is it the day of doom, men cry, the Judge that cometh?
—’Tis the Black Death, God help us!
The black black Death.
Maid Alice and maid Margaret
In the fields have built them a bower
Of reedmace and rushes fine,
Fenced with sharp albespyne;
Pretty maids hid in the nest; and yet
Yours is one death, and one hour!
Priest and peasant and lord
By the swift, soft stroke of the air,
By a silent invisible sword,
In plough-field or banquet, fall:
The watchers are flat on the wall:—
Through city and village and valley
The sweet-voiced herald of prayer
Is dumb in the towers; the throng
To the shrine pace barefoot; and where
Blazed out from the choir a glory of song,
God’s altar is lightless and bare.
Is there no pity in earth or sky?
The burden of England, who shall say?
Half the giant oak is riven away,
And the green leaves yearn for the leaves that die.
Will the whole world drink of the dragon’s breath?
It is the cup, men cry, the cup of God’s fury that cometh!
’Tis the Black Death, Lord help us!
The black black Death.
In England is heard a moan,
A bitter lament and a sore,
Rachel lamenting her dead,
And will not be comforted
For the little faces for ever gone,
The feet from the silent floor.
And a cry goes up from the land,
Take from us in mercy, O God,
Take from us the weight of Thy hand,
The cup and the wormwood of woe!
’Neath the terrible barbs of Thy bow
This England, this once Thy beloved,
Is water’d with life-blood for rain;
The bones of her children are white,
As flints on the Golgotha plain;
Not slain as warriors by warriors in fight,
By the arrows of Heaven slain.
We have sinn’d: we lift up our souls to Thee,
O Lord God eternal on high:
Thou who gavest Thyself to die,
Saviour, save! to Thy feet we flee:—
Snatch from the hell and the Enemy’s breath,
From the Prince of the Air, from the terror by night that cometh:—
From the Black Death, Christ save us!
The black black Death!
That foul monster; The Lernaean Hydra of Greek legend.
From the marshes; The drought which preceded the plague in England, and may have predisposed to its reception, was followed by mist, in which the people fancied they saw the disease palpably advancing.
From Cathaya; The plague was heard of in Central Asia in 1333; it reached Constantinople in 1347.
The City of Flowers; Florence, where the ravages of the plague were immortalized in the Decamerone of Boccaccio.
The pest boil; Seems to have been the enlarged and discharging gland by which the specific blood-poison of the plague relieved itself. A ‘muddy glistening’ of the eye is noticed as one of the symptoms.
The common bed; More than 50,000 are said to have been buried on the site of the Charter House.
Albespyne; Hawthorn.
Half the giant oak; ‘Of the three or four millions who then formed the population of England, more than one-half were swept away’: (Green, B. IV: ch. iii).
THE PILGRIM AND THE PLOUGHMAN
1382
It is a dream, I know:—Yet on the past
Of this dear England if in thought we gaze,
About her seems a constant sunshine cast;
In summer calm we see and golden haze
The little London of Plantagenet days;
Quaint labyrinthine knot of toppling lanes,
And thorny spires aflame with starlike vanes.
Our silver Thames all yet unspoil’d and clear;
The many-buttress’d bridge that stems the tide;
Black-timber’d wharves; arcaded walls, that rear
Long, golden-crested roofs of civic pride:—
While flaunting galliots by the gardens glide,
And on Spring’s frolic air the May-song swells,
Mix’d with the music of a thousand bells.
Beyond the bridge a mazy forest swims,
Great spars and sails and flame-tongued flags on high,
Wedged round the quay, a-throng with ruddy limbs
And faces bronzed beneath another sky:
And ’mid the press sits one with aspect shy
And downcast eyes of watching, and, the while,
The deep observance of an inward smile.
In hooded mantle gray he smiled and sate,
With ink-horn at his knees and scroll and pen.
And took the toll and register’d the freight,
’Mid noise of clattering cranes and strife of men:
And all that moved and spoke was in his ken,
With lines and hues like Nature’s own design’d
Deep in the magic mirror of his mind.
Thence oft, returning homeward, on the book,—
His of Certaldo, or the bard whose lays
Were lost to love in Scythia,—he would look
Till his fix’d eyes the dancing letters daze:
Then forth to the near fields, and feed his gaze
On one fair flower in starry myriads spread,
And in her graciousness be comforted:—
Then, joyous with a poet’s joy, to draw
With genial touch, and strokes of patient skill,
The very image of each thing he saw:—
He limn’d the man all round, for good or ill,
Having both sighs and laughter at his will;
Life as it went he grasp’d in vision true,
Yet stood outside the scene his pencil drew.
—Man’s inner passions in their conscience-strife,
The conflicts of the heart against the heart,
The mother yearning o’er the infant’s life,
The maiden wrong’d by wealth and lecherous art,
The leper’s loathsome cell from man apart,
War’s hell of lust and fire, the village-woe,
The tinsel chivalry veiling shame below,—
Not his to draw,—to see, perhaps:—Our eyes
Hold bias with our humour:—His, to paint
With Nature’s freshness, what before him lies:
The knave, the fool; the frolicsome, the quaint:
His the broad jest, the laugh without restraint,
The ready tears, the spirit lightly moved;
Loving the world, and by the world beloved.
So forth fared Chaucer on his pilgrimage
Through England’s humours; in immortal song
Bodying the form and pressure of his age,
Tints gay as pure, and delicate as strong;
Still to the Tabard the blithe travellers throng,
Seen in his mind so vividly, that we
Know them more clearly than the men we see.
Fair France, bright Italy, those numbers train’d;
First in his pages Nature wedding Art
Of all our sons of song; yet he remain’d
True English of the English at his heart:—
He stood between two worlds, yet had no part
In that new order of the dawning day
Which swept the masque of chivalry away.
O Poet of romance and courtly glee
And downcast eager glance that shuns the sky,
Above, about, are signs thou canst not see,
Portents in heaven and earth!—And one goes by
With other than thy prosperous, laughing eye,
Framing the rough web of his rueful lays,
The sorrow and the sin—with bitter gaze
As down the Strand he stalks, a sable shade
Of death, while, jingling like the elfin train,
In silver samite knight and dame and maid
Ride to the tourney on the barrier’d plain;
And he must bow in humble mute disdain,
And that worst woe of baffled souls endure,
To see the evil that they may not cure.
For on sweet Malvern Hill one morn he lay,
Drowsed by the music of the constant stream:—
Loud sang the cuckoo, cuckoo!—for the May
Breathed summer: summer floating like a dream
From the far fields of childhood, with a gleam
Of alien freshness on her forehead fair,
And Heaven itself within the common air.
Then on the mead in vision Langland saw
A pilgrim-throng; not missal-bright as those
Whom Chaucer’s hand surpass’d itself to draw,
Gay as the lark, and brilliant as the rose;—
But such as dungeon foul or spital shows,
Or the serf’s fever-den, or field of fight,
When festering sunbeams on the wounded smite.
No sainted shrine the motley wanderers seek,
Pilgrims of life upon the field of scorn,
Mocking and mock’d; with plague and hunger weak,
And haggard faces bleach’d as those who mourn,
And footsteps redden’d with the trodden thorn;
Blind stretching hands that grope for truth in vain,
Across a twilight demon-haunted plain.