But if tha wants ony grog tha mun goä fur it down to the Hinn,
Fur I weänt shed a drop on ‘is blood, noä, not fur Sally’s oän kin.
The Revenge. A Ballad of the Fleet
1878
I.
AT FLORES in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay,
And a pinnace, like a fluttered bird, came flying from far away:
“Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted fifty-three!”
Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: “‘Fore God I am no coward;
But I cannot meet them here, for my ships are out of gear,
And the half my men are sick. I must fly, but follow quick.
We are six ships of the line; can we fight with fifty-three?”
II.
Then spake Sir Richard Grenville: “I know you are no coward;
You fly them for a moment to fight with them again.
But I’ve ninety men and more that are lying sick ashore.
I should count myself the coward if I left them, my Lord Howard,
To these Inquisition dogs and the devildoms of Spain.”
III.
So Lord Howard passed away with five ships of war that day,
Till he melted like a cloud in the silent summer heaven;
But Sir Richard bore in hand all his sick men from the land
Very carefully and slow,
Men of Bideford in Devon,
And we laid them on the ballast down below;
For we brought them all aboard,
And they blest him in their pain, that they were not left to Spain,
To the thumbscrew and the stake, for the glory of the Lord.
IV.
He had only a hundred seamen to work the ship and to fight,
And he sailed away from Flores till the Spaniard came in sight,
With his huge sea-castles heaving upon the weather bow.
“Shall we fight or shall we fly?
Good Sir Richard, tell us now,
For to fight is but to die!
There’ll be little of us left by the time this sun be set.”
And Sir Richard said again: “We be all good English men.
Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the devil,
For I never turn’d my back upon Don or devil yet.”
V.
Sir Richard spoke and he laughed, and we roared a hurrah, and so
The little Revenge ran on sheer into the heart of the foe,
With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below;
For half of their fleet to the right and half to the left were seen,
And the little Revenge ran on through the long sea-lane between.
VI.
Thousands of their soldiers looked down from their decks and laughed,
Thousands of their seamen made mock at the mad little craft
Running on and on, till delayed
By their mountain-like San Philip that, of fifteen hundred tons,
And up-shadowing high above us with her yawning tiers of guns,
Took the breath from our sails, and we stayed.
VII.
And while now the great San Philip hung above us like a cloud
Whence the thunderbolt will fall
Long and loud,
Four galleons drew away
From the Spanish fleet that day,
And two upon the larboard and two upon the starboard lay,
And the battle-thunder broke from them all.
VIII.
But anon the great San Philip, she bethought herself and went
Having that within her womb that had left her ill content;
And the rest they came aboard us, and they fought us hand to hand,
For a dozen times they came with their pikes and musqueteers,
And a dozen times we shook ‘em off as a dog that shakes his ears
When he leaps from the water to the land.
IX.
And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea,
But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three.
Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons came,
Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-thunder and flame;
Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and her shame.
For some were sunk and many were shattered, and so could fight us no more —
God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the world before?
X.
For he said “Fight on! fight on!”
Though his vessel was all but a wreck;
And it chanced that, when half of the short summer night was gone,
With a grisly wound to be dressed he had left the deck,
But a bullet struck him that was dressing it suddenly dead,
And himself he was wounded again in the side and the head,
And he said “Fight on! fight on!”
XI.
And the night went down, and the sun smiled out far over the summer sea,
And the Spanish fleet with broken sides lay round us all in a ring;
But they dared not touch us again, for they fear’d that we still could sting,
So they watched what the end would be.
And we had not fought them in vain,
But in perilous plight were we,
Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain,
And half of the rest of us maimed for life
In the crash of the cannonades and the desperate strife;
And the sick men down in the hold were most of them stark and cold,
And the pikes were all broken or bent, and the powder was all of it spent;
And the masts and the rigging were lying over the side;
But Sir Richard cried in his English pride:
“We have fought such a fight for a day and a night
As may never be fought again!
We have won great glory, my men!
And a day less or more
At sea or ashore,
We die — does it matter when?
Sink me the ship, Master Gunner — sink her, split her in twain!
Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!”
XII.
And the gunner said “Ay, ay,” but the seamen made reply:
“We have children, we have wives,
And the Lord hath spared our lives.
We will make the Spaniard promise, if we yield, to let us go;
We shall live to fight again and to strike another blow.”
And the lion there lay dying, and they yielded to the foe.
XIII.
And the stately Spanish men to their flagship bore him then,
Where they laid him by the mast, old Sir Richard caught at last,
And they praised him to his face with their courtly foreign grace;
But he rose upon their decks, and he cried:
“I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man and true;
I have only done my duty as a man is bound to do:
With a joyful spirit I Sir Richard Grenville die!”
And he fell upon their decks, and he died.
XIV.
And they stared at the dead that had been so valiant and true,
And had holden the power and glory of Spain so cheap
That he dared her with one little ship and his English few;
Was he devil or man? He was devil for aught they knew,
But they sank his body with honour down into the deep,
And they manned the Revenge with a swarthier alien crew,
And away she sailed with her loss and longed for her own;
When a wind from the lands they had ruined awoke from sleep,
And the water began to heave and the weather to moan,
And or ever that evening ended a great gale blew,
And a wave like the wave that is raised by an earthquake g
rew,
Till it smote on their hulls and their sails and their masts and their flags,
And the whole sea plunged and fell on the shot-shattered navy of Spain,
And the little Revenge herself went down by the island crags
To be lost evermore in the main.
The Sisters
THEY have left the doors ajar; and by their clash,
And prelude on the keys, I know the song,
Their favourite — which I call ‘The Tables Turned.’
Evelyn begins it ‘O diviner Air.’
EVELYN.
O diviner Air,
Thro’ the heat, the drowth, the dust, the glare,
Far from out the west in shadowing showers,
Over all the meadow baked and bare,
Making fresh and fair
All the bowers and the flowers,
Fainting flowers, faded bowers,
Over all this weary world of ours,
Breathe, diviner Air!
A sweet voice that — you scarce could better that.
Now follows Edith echoing Evelyn.
EDITH.
O diviner light,
Thro’ the cloud that roofs our noon with night,
Thro’ the blotting mist, the blinding showers,
Far from out a sky for ever bright,
Over all the woodland’s flooded bowers,
Over all the meadow’s drowning flowers,
Over all this ruin’d world of ours,
Break, diviner light!
Marvellously like, their voices — and themselves
Tho’ one is somewhat deeper than the other,
As one is somewhat graver than the other —
Edith than Evelyn. Your good Uncle, whom
You count the father of your fortune, longs
For this alliance: let me ask you then,
Which voice most takes you? for I do not doubt
Being a watchful parent, you are taken
With one or other: tho’ sometimes I fear
You may be flickering, fluttering in a doubt
Between the two — which must not be — which might
Be death to one: they both are beautiful:
Evelyn is gayer, wittier, prettier, says
The common voice, if one may trust it: she?
No! but the paler and the graver, Edith.
Woo her and gain her then: no wavering, boy!
The graver is perhaps the one for you
Who jest and laugh so easily and so well.
For love will go by contrast, as by likes.
No sisters ever prized each other more.
Not so: their mother and her sister loved
More passionately still.
But that my best
And oldest friend, your Uncle, wishes it,
And that I know you worthy everyway
To be my son, I might, perchance, be loath
To part them, or part from them: and yet one
Should marry, or all the broad lands in your view
From this bay window — which our house has held
Three hundred years — will pass collaterally.
My father with a child on either knee,
A hand upon the head of either child,
Smoothing their locks, as golden as his own
Were silver, ‘get them wedded’ would he say.
And once my prattling Edith ask’d him why?’
Ay, why? said he, ‘ for why should I go lame?’
Then told them of his wars, and of his wound.
For see — this wine — the grape from whence it flow’d
Was blackening on the slopes of Portugal,
When that brave soldier, down the terrible ridge
Plunged in the last fierce charge at Waterloo,
And caught the laming bullet. He left me this.
Which yet retains a memory of its youth,
As I of mine, and my first passion. Come!
Here’s to your happy union with my child!
Yet must you change your name: no fault of mine!
You say that you can do it as willingly
As birds make ready for their bridal-time
By change of feather: for all that, my boy,
Some birds are sick and sullen when they moult.
An old and worthy name! but mine that stirr’d
Among our civil wars and earlier too
Among the Roses, the more venerable.
I care not for a name — no fault of mine.
Once more — a happier marriage than my own!
You see yon Lombard poplar on the plain.
The highway running by it leaves a breadth
Of sward to left and right, where, long ago,
One bright May morning in a world of song,
I lay at leisure, watching overhead
The aërial poplar wave, an amber spire.
I dozed; I woke. An open landaulet
Whirl’d by, which, after it had past me, show’d
Turning my way, the loveliest face on earth.
The face of one there sitting opposite.
On whom I brought a strange unhappiness,
That time I did not see.
Love at first sight
May seem — with goodly rhyme and reason for it —
Possible — at first glimpse, and for a face
Gone in a moment — strange. Yet once, when first
I came on lake Llanberris in the dark,
A moonless night with storm — one lightning-fork
Flash’d out the lake; and tho’ I loiter’d there
The full day after, yet in retrospect
That less than momentary thunder-sketch
Of lake and mountain conquers all the day.
The Sun himself has limn’d the face for me.
Not quite so quickly, no, nor half as well.
For look you here — the shadows are too deep,
And like the critic’s blurring comment make
The veriest beauties of the work appear
The darkest faults: the sweet eyes frown: the lips
Seem but a gash. My sole memorial
Of Edith — no, the other, — both indeed.
So that bright face was flash’d thro’ sense and soul
And by the poplar vanish’d — to be found
Long after, as it seem’d, beneath the tall
Tree-bowers, and those long-sweeping beechen boughs
Of our New Forest. I was there alone:
The phantom of the whirling landaulet
For ever past me by: when one quick peal
Of laughter drew me thro’ the glimmering glades
Down to the snowlike sparkle of a cloth
On fern and foxglove. Lo, the face again,
My Rosalind in this Arden — Edith — all
One bloom of youth, health, beauty, happiness,
And moved to merriment at a passing jest.
There one of those about her knowing me
Call’d me to join them; so with these I spent
What seem’d my crowning hour, my day of days.
I wood her then, nor unsuccessfully,
The worse for her, for me! was I content?
Ay — no, not quite; for now and then I thought
Laziness, vague love-longings, the bright May,
Had made a heated haze to magnify
The charm of Edith — that a man’s ideal
Is high in Heaven, and lodged with Plato’s God,
Not findable here — content, and not content,
In some such fashion as a man may be
That having had the portrait of his friend
Drawn by an artist, looks at it, and says,
‘Good! very like! not altogether he.’
As yet I had not bound myself by words,
Only, believing I loved Edith, made
Edith love me. Then came the day when I,
Flattering myself that all my doubts were fools
Born of the fool this Age that doubts of all —
Not I that day of Edith’s love or mine —
Had braced my purpose to declare myself:
I stood upon the stairs of Paradise.
The golden gates would open at a word.
I spoke it — told her of my passion, seen
And lost and found again, had got so far,
Had caught her hand, her eyelids fell — I heard
Wheels, and a noise of welcome at the doors —
On a sudden after two Italian years
I lad set the blossom of her health again,
The younger sister, Evelyn, enter’d — there,
There was the face, and altogether she.
The mother fell about the daughter’s neck,
The sisters closed in one another’s arms,
Their people throng’d about them from the hall,
And in the thick of question and reply
I fled the house, driven by one angel face,
And all the Furies.
I was bound to her;
I could not free myself in honour — bound
Not by the sounded letter of the word,
Put counterpressures of the yielded hand
That timorously and faintly echoed mine,
Quick blushes, the sweet dwelling of her eyes
Upon me when she thought I did not see —
Were these not bonds? nay, nay, but could I wed her
Loving the other? do her that great wrong?
Had I not dream’d I loved her yestermorn?
Had I not known where Love, at first a fear,
Grew after marriage to full height and form?
Yet after marriage, that mock-sister there —
Brother-in-law — the fiery nearness of it —
Unlawful and disloyal brotherhood —
What end but darkness could ensue from this
For all the three? So Love and Honour jarr’d
Tho’ Love and honour join’d to raise the full
High-tide of doubt that sway’d me up and down
Advancing nor retreating.
Edith wrote:
‘My mother bid; me ask’ (I did not tell you —
A widow with less guile than many a child.
God help the wrinkled children that are Christ’s
As well as the plump cheek — she wrought us harm,
Poor soul, not knowing) ‘are you ill?’ (so ran
The letter) ‘you have not been here of late.
You will not find me here. At last I go
On that long-promised visit to the North.
I told your wayside story to my mother
And Evelyn. She remembers you. Farewell.
Pray come and see my mother. Almost blind
With ever-growing cataract, yet she thinks
She sees you when she hears. Again farewell.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series Page 112