1685

Fear not, my child, though the days be dark,
   Never fear, he will come again,
With the long brown hair, and the banner blue,
   King Monmouth and all his men!

      The summer-smiling bay
      Has doff’d its vernal gray;
   A peacock breast of emerald shot with blue:
      Is it peace or war that lands
      On these pale quiet sands,
As round the pier the boats run-in their silent crew?

      Bent knee, and forehead bare;
      That moment was for prayer!
   Then swords flash out, and—Monmouth!—is the cry:
      The crumbling cliff o’erpast,
      The hazard-die is cast,
’Tis James ’gainst James in arms!  Soho! and Liberty!

—Fear not, my child, though he come with few;
   Alone will he come again;
God with him, and his right hand more strong
   Than a thousand thousand men!

      They file by Colway now;
      They rise o’er Uplyme brow;
   And faithful Taunton hails her hero-knight:
      And girlhood’s agile hand
      Weaves for the patriot band
The crown-emblazon’d flag, their gathering star of fight.

      Yet by the dour deep trench
      Their mettle did not blench,
   When mist and midnight closed o’er sad Sedgemoor;
      Though on those hearts of oak
      The tall cuirassiers broke,
And Afric’s tiger-bands sprang forth with sullen roar:

      Though the loud cannon plane
      Death’s lightning-riven lane,
   Levelling that unskill’d valour, rude, unled:
      —Yet happier in their fate
      Than whom the war-fiends wait
To rend them limb from limb, the gibbet-withering dead!

—Yet weep not, my child, though the dead be dead,
   And the wounded rise not again!
For they are with God who for England fought,
   And they bore them as Englishmen.

      Stout hearts, and sorely tried!
      —But he, for whom they died,
   Skulk’d like the wolf in Cranborne, torn and gaunt:—
      Till, dragg’d and bound, he knelt
      To one no prayers could melt,
Nor bond of blood, nor fear of fate, from vengeance daunt.

      —O hill of death and gore,
      Fast by the tower’d shore,
   What wealth of precious blood is thine, what tears!
      What calmly fronted scorn;
      What pangs, not vainly borne!
For heart beats hot with heart, and human grief endears!

Monmouth’s invasion forms one of the most brilliant,—perhaps the most brilliant,—of Lord Macaulay’s narratives.  But many curious details are added in the History by Mr. G Roberts (1844).

The belief, which this poem represents, that ‘King Monmouth,’ as he was called in the West, would return, lasted long.  He landed in Lyme Bay, June 11, 1685, between the Cobb (Harbour-pier) and the beginning of the Ware cliffs: marching north, after a few days, by the road which left the ruins of Colway House on the right and led over Uplyme to Axminster.

Soho; the watch-word on Monmouth’s side at Sedgemoor; his London house was in the Fields, (now Square), bearing that name.

Faithful Taunton; here the Puritan spirit was strong; and here Monmouth was persuaded to take the title of king (June 20), symbolized by the flag which the young girls of Taunton presented to him.  It bore a crown with the cypher J B.—Monmouth’s own name being James.

Dour deep trench; Sedgemoor lies in a marshy district near Bridgewater, much intersected by trenches or ‘Rhines.’  One, the Busses Rhine, lay between the two armies as they fought, July 6.  Monmouth was caught hiding in Cranborne Chase, July 8; executed, after a vain attempt to move the heart of his uncle the king, July 15, on Tower Hill.

Afric’s tiger-bands; Kirke savage troops from Tangier.

Yes! we confess it! ’mong the sons of Fate,
   Earth’s great ones, thou art great!
As that tall peak which from her silver cone
   Of maiden snow unstain’d
All but the bravest scares, and reigns alone

In glacier isolation: Thus wert thou,
   With that pale steadfast brow,
Gaunt aquiline: Thy whole life one labouring breath,
   Yet the strong soul untamed;
France bridled, England saved, thy task ere death!

—O day of triumph, when thy bloodless host
   From Devon’s russet coast
Through the fair capital of the garden-West,
   And that, whose gracious spire
Like childhood’s prayer springs heaven-ward unrepress’d,

To Thames march’d legion-like, and at their tread
   The sullen despot fled,
And Law and Freedom fair,—so late restored,
   And to so-perilous life,
While Stuart craft replaced the Usurper’s sword,—

Broke forth, as sunshine from the breaking sky,
   When vernal storm-wings fly!
That day was thine, great Chief, from sea to sea:
   The whole land’s welcome seem’d
The welcome of one man! a realm by thee

On wider aims, not worthier, set:—A soul
   Immured in self-control;
Saving the thankless in their own despite:—
   Then turning with a gasp
Of joy, to his own land by native right;

Changing the Hall of Rufus and the Keep
   Of Windsor’s terraced steep
For Guelderland horizons, silvery-blue;
   The green deer-twinkling glades,
And long, long, avenues of the stately Loo.

‘William,’ says his all too zealous panegyrist, ‘never became an Englishman.  He served England, it is true; but he never loved her, and he never obtained her love.  To him she was always a land of exile, visited with reluctance and quitted with delight. . . . Her welfare was not his chief object.  Whatever patriotic feeling he had was for Holland. . . . In the gallery of Whitehall he pined for the familiar House in the Wood at the Hague, and never was so happy as when he could quit the magnificence of Windsor for his humbler seat at Loo:’ (Macaulay: Hist. ch. vii)

One labouring breath; William throughout life was tortured by asthma.

Demon’s russet coast; Torbay.—Capital of the garden-West; Exeter.—Gracious spire; Salisbury.—Hall of Rufus; The one originally built by William II at Westminster.

1700-1702

Oft in midnight visions
   Ghostly by my bed
Stands a Father’s image,
   Pale discrownéd head:—
—I forsook thee, Father!
   Was no child to thee!
Child-forsaken Mother,
   Now ’tis so with me.

Oft I see the brother,
   Baby born to woe,
Crouching by the church-wall
   From the bloodhound-foe.
Evil crown’d of evil,
   Heritage of strife!
Mine, an heirless sceptre:
   His, an exile life!

—O my vanish’d darlings,
   From the cradle torn!
Dewdrop lives, that never
   Saw their second morn!
Buds that fell untimely,—
   Till one blossom grew;
As I watch’d its beauty,
   Fading whilst it blew.

O the little footsteps
   On the nursery floor!
Lispings light and laughter
   I shall hear no more!
Eyes that gleam’d at waking
   Through their silken bars;
Starlike eyes of children,
   Now beyond the stars!

Where the murder’d Mary
   Waits the rising sign,
They are laid in darkness,
   Little lambs of mine.
Only this can comfort:
   Safe from earthly harms
Christ the Saviour holds them
   In His loving arms:—

Spring eternal round Him,
   Roses ever fair:—
Will His mercy set them
   All beside me there?
Will their Angels guide me
   Through the golden gate?
—Wait a little, children!
   Mother, too, must wait!

I forsook thee; Marlborough, desirous to widen the breach between Anne and William III, influenced her to write to her Father, ‘supplicating his forgiveness, and professing repentance for the part she had taken.’

Now ’tis so; Anne ‘was said to attribute the death of her children to the part she had taken in dethroning her father:’ (Lecky, History of the Eighteenth Century).

One blossom; The Duke of Gloucester, who grew up to eleven years, dying in July 1700.  After his death Anne signed, in private letters, ‘your unfortunate’ friend.

Anne’s character, says the candid Lecky, ‘though somewhat peevish and very obstinate, was pure, generous, simple, and affectionate; and she displayed, under bereavements far more numerous than fall to the share of most, a touching piety that endeared her to her people.’

Where the murder’d Mary; ‘Above and around, in every direction,’ says Dean Stanley, describing the vault beneath the monument of Mary of Scotland in Henry the Seventh’s Chapel,—‘crushing by the accumulated weight of their small coffins the receptacles of the illustrious dust beneath, lie the eighteen children of Queen Anne, dying in infancy or stillborn, ending with William Duke of Gloucester, the last hope of the race:’ (Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey, ch. iii).

BLENHEIM

August 13: 1704

      Oft hast thou acted thy part,
      My country, worthily thee!
      Lifted up often thy load
      Atlantean, enormous, with glee:—
   For on thee the burden is laid to uphold
   World-justice; to keep the balance of states;
   On thee the long cry of the tyrant-oppress’d,
   The oppress’d in the name of liberty, waits:—
      Ready, aye ready, the blade
      In its day to draw forth, unafraid;
      Thou dost not blench from thy fate!
By thy high heart, only, secure; by thy magnanimity, great.

      As the lava thrusts onward its wall,
      One mass down the valley they tramp;
      Fascine-fill the marsh and the stream;
      Like hornets they swarm up the ramp,
   Lancing a breach through the long palisade,
   Where the rival swarms of the stubborn foe,
   While the sun goes high and goes down o’er the fight,
   Sting them back, blow answering blow:—
      O life-blood lavish as rain
      On war’s red Aceldama plain!
      While the volleying death-rattle rings,
And the peasant pays for the pride and the fury-ambition of kings!

      And as those of Achaia and Troia
      By the camp on the sand, so they
      In the aether-amber of evening
      Kept even score in the fray;
   Rank against rank, man match’d with man,
   In backward, forward, struggle enlaced,
   Grappled and moor’d to the ground where they stood
   As wrestlers wrestling, as lovers embraced:—
      And the lightnings insatiable fly,
      As the lull of the tempest is nigh,
      And each host in its agony reels,
And the musket falls hot from the hand, enflamed by the death that it deals.

      As a rock by blue lightning divided
      Down the hillside scatters its course,
      So in twain their army is parted
      By the sabres sabring in force:
   They have striven enough for honour! . . . and now
   Crumble and shatter, and sheer o’er the bank
   Where torrent Danube hisses and swirls
   Slant and hurry in rankless rank:—
      There are sixty thousand the morn
      ’Gainst the Lions marching in scorn;
      But twenty, when even is here,
Broken and brave and at bay, the Lilied banner uprear.

      O names that enhearten the soul,
      Blenheim and Waterloo!
      In no vain worship of glory
      The poet turns him to you!
   O sung by worthier song than mine,
   If the day of a nation’s weakness rise,
   Of the little counsels that dare not dare,
   Of a land that no more on herself relies,—
      O breath of our great ones that were,
      Burn out this taint in the air!
      The old heart of England restore,
Till the blood of the heroes awake, and shout in her bosom once more!

      —Morning is fresh on the field
      Where the war-sick champions lie,
      By the wreckage of stiffening dead,
      The anguish that yearns but to die.
   Ah note of human agony heard
   The paean of victory over and through!
   Ah voice of duty and justice stern
   That, at e’en this price, commands them to do!
      And a vision of Glory goes by,
      Veil’d head and remorseful eye,
      A triumph of Death!—And they cried
‘Only less dark than defeat is the morning of conquest’;—and sigh’d.

‘The French and Bavarians, who numbered, like their opponents, some fifty thousand men, lay behind a little stream which ran through swampy ground to the Danube . . . It was not till midday that Eugene, who commanded on the right, succeeded in crossing the stream.  The English foot at once forded it on the left.’  They were repelled for the time.  But, in the centre, Marlborough, ‘by making an artificial road across the morass which covered it,’ in two desperate charges turned the day.

A map of 1705 in the Annals of Queen Anne’s Reign, shows vast hillsides to the right of the Allies covered with wood.  This map also specifies the advance of the English in nine columns.

Only less; ‘Marlborough,’ says Lord Stanhope, ‘was a humane and compassionate man.  Even in the eagerness to pursue fresh conquests he did not ever neglect the care of the wounded.’

AT HURSLEY IN MARDEN

1712

         We count him wise,
Timoleon, who in Syracuse laid down
   That gleaming bait of all men’s eyes,
And for his cottage changed the invidious crown;
Moving serenely through his grayhair’d day
      ’Mid vines and olives gray.

         He also, whom
The load of double empire, half the world
   His own, within a living tomb
Press’d down at Yuste,—Spain’s great banner furl’d
His winding-sheet around him,—while he strove
      The impalpable Above

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

         There, when the cloud
Eased its dark breast in thunder, and the light
   Ran forth, their hearts recall the loud
Hoarse onset roar, the flashing of the fight;
Those other clouds piled-up in white array
      Whence deadlier lightnings play.

         There, when the seas
Murmur at midnight, and the dome is clear,
   And from their seats in heaven the breeze
Loosens the stars, to blaze and disappear,
And such as Glory! . . . with a sigh suppress’d
      They smile, and turn to rest.

         —But he, who here
Unglorious hides, untrain’d, unwilling Lord,
   The phantom king of half a year,
From England’s throne push’d by the bloodless sword,
Unheirlike heir to that colossal fame;—
      How should men name his name,

         By other rule
Than man’s coarse glory-test does God bestow
   His crowns: exalting oft the fool,
So deem’d, and the world-hero levelling low.
—And he, who from the palace pass’d obscure,
      And honourably poor,

         Spurning a throne
Held by blood-tenure, ’gainst a nation’s will;
   Lived on his narrow fields alone,
Content life’s common service to fulfil;
Not careful of a carnage-bought renown,
      Or that precarious crown:—

         Him count we wise,
Him also! though the chorus of the throng
   Be silent: though no pillar rise
In slavish adulation of the strong:—
But here, from blame of tongues and fame aloof,
      ’Neath a low chancel roof,

         —The peace of God,—
He sleeps: unconscious hero!  Lowly grave
   By village-footsteps daily trod
Unconscious: or while silence holds the nave,
And the bold robin comes, when day is dim,
      And pipes his heedless hymn.

Timoleon; was invited from Corinth by the Syracusans (b.c. 344) to be their leader in throwing off the tyranny of the second Dionysius.  Having effected this, defeated the Carthaginian invaders, and reduced all the minor despotisms within Sicily, he voluntarily resigned his paramount power and died in honoured retirement.

Loosens the stars; So Vergil, Georg. I., 365:

Saepe etiam stellas vento inpendente videbis
Praecipites caelo labi . . .

The phantom king; Richard Cromwell was Protector from Sep. 3, 1658 to May 25, 1659.  After 1660 his life was that of a simple country gentleman, till his death in 1712, when he was buried at Hursley near Winchester.

Unheirlike heir; See Appendix E.

CHARLES EDWARD AT ROME

1785

1

      O sunset, of the rise
   Unworthy!—that, so brave, so clear, so gay;
   This, prison’d in low-hanging earth-mists gray,
      And ever-darken’d skies:—
   Sad sunset of a royal race in gloom,
Accomplishing to the end the dolorous Stuart doom!

2

      Ghost of a king, he sate
   In Rome, the city of ghosts and thrones outworn,
   Drowsing his thoughts in wine;—a life forlorn;
      Pageant of faded state;
   Aged before old age, and all that Past,
Like a forgotten thing of shame, behind him cast.

3

4

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

5

      —Told how, o’er the boisterous seas
      From faithless France he danced his way
      Where Alban’s thousand islands lay,
   The kelp-strown ridge of the lone Hebrides:—
   How down each strath they stream’d as springtide rills,
            When he to Finnan vale
            Came from Glenaladale,
And that snow-handful grew an avalanche of the hills.

6

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

7

8

         Cluster’d down the slope they go,
      Red clumps of ragged valour, down,
      While morn-mists yet the hill-top crown:—
   Clan Colla! on!—the Camerons touch the foe!
   One touch!—the battle breaks, the fight is fought,
            As summit-boulders glide
            Riddling the forest-side,
And in one moment’s crash an army melts to nought!

9

         —Ah gay nights of Holyrood!
      Star-eyes of Scotland’s fairest fair,
      Sun-glintings of the golden hair,
   Life’s tide at full in that brief interlude!
   Then as a bark slips from her natural coast
            Deep into seas unknown,
            Scotland went forth alone,
Unfriended, unallied; a handful ’gainst a host.

10

         By the Bolder moorlands bare,
      By faithless Solway’s glistening sands,
      And where Caer Luel’s dungeon stands,
   Huge keep of ancient Urien, huge, foursquare:—
   Preston, and loyal Lancashire; . . . and then
            From central Derby down,
            To strike the royal town,
And to his German realm the usurper thrust again!

         —O the lithesome mountaineers,
      Wild hearts with kingly boyhood high,
      And victory in each forward eye,
   While stainless honour his white banner rears!
   Then all the air with mountain-music thrill’d,
            The bonnets o’er the brow,—
            My gallant clans! . . . and now
The voices closed in earth, in death the pibroch still’d!

12

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

13

         —O soul-piercing stroke of shame!
      O last, last, chance,—and wasted so!
      Work wanting but the final blow,—
   And, then, the hopeless hope, the crownless name,
   The heart’s desire defeated!—What boots now
            That ice-brook-temper’d will,
            Indomitable still
As on through snow and storm their path the dalesmen plough?

14

15

         Up the gorse-embattled brae,
      With equal eager feet they dash,
      And on the moorland summit clash,
   Friend mix’d with foe in stormy disarray:
   Once more the Northern charge asserts its right,
            As with the driving rain
            They drive them down the plain:
That star alone before Drummossie gilds the night.

16

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

17

         Faithful in a faithless age!
      Yet happier, in that death-dew drench’d,
      In each rude hand the claymore clench’d,
   Than who, to soothe a nation’s craven rage,
   To the red scaffold went with steady eye,
            And the red martyr-grave,
            For one, who could not save!
Who only lives to weep the weight of life, and die!

18

            19

      The wanderer hid, and all
   His Odyssey of woes!—Then, agonized
   Not by the wrongs he suffer’d and despised,
      But for the Cause’s fall,—
   The faces, loved and lost, that for his sake
Were raven-torn and blanch’d, high on the traitor’s stake,

20

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

21

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

St. 2 Drowsing His thoughts; The habit of intemperance, common in that century to many who had not Charles Edward’s excuses, appear to have been learned during the long privations which accompanied his wanderings, between Culloden and his escape to France.

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

St. 7 Fettering Forth; ‘Forth,’ according to the proverb, ‘bridles the wild Highlandman.’—Charles passed it at the Ford of Frew, about eight miles above Stirling.—At Gladsmuir; or Preston Pans; Sep. 21, 1745.—White Horse; The armorial bearing of Hanover.

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

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

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

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

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

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

St. 17  A nation’s craven rage; See Appendix F.

St. 21  Love’s gentler judgment; We may perhaps quote on his behalf Vergil’s beautiful words

. . . utcumque ferent ea facta minores,
Vincet amor patriae laudumque inmensa cupido.

—It is also pleasant to record that over the coffin of Charles in S. Peter’s, Rome, a monument was placed by George the Fourth, upon which, by a graceful and gallant ‘act of oblivion,’ are inscribed the names of James the Third, Charles the Third, and Henry the Ninth, ‘Kings of England.’

On the simple monument set up by his brother Henry in S. Pietro, Frascati, it may be worth notice that Charles is only described as Paterni iuris et regiae | dignitatis successor et heres:—the title, King, (given to his Father in the inscription), not being assigned to Charles, or assumed by the Cardinal.

October 21: 1805

Heard ye the thunder of battle
   Low in the South and afar?
Saw ye the flash of the death-cloud
   Crimson o’er Trafalgar?
Such another day never
   England will look on again,
When the battle fought was the hottest,
   And the hero of heroes was slain!

For the fleet of France and the force of Spain were gather’d for fight,
A greater than Philip their lord, a new Armada in might:—
And the sails were aloft once more in the deep Gaditanian bay,
Where Redoubtable and Bucentaure and great Trinidada lay;
Eager-reluctant to close; for across the bloodshed to be
Two navies beheld one prize in its glory,—the throne of the sea!
Which were bravest, who should tell? for both were gallant and true;
But the greatest seaman was ours, of all that sail’d o’er the blue.

   So with those.—But meanwhile, as against some dyke that men massively rear,
From on high the torrent surges, to drive through the dyke as a spear,
Eagled-eyed e’en in his blindness, our chief sets his double array,
Making the fleet two spears, to thrust at the foe, any way, . . .
‘Anyhow!—without orders, each captain his Frenchman may grapple perforce:
Collingwood first’ (yet the Victory ne’er a whit slacken’d her course)
‘Signal for action!  Farewell! we shall win, but we meet not again!’
—Then a low thunder of readiness ran from the decks o’er the main,
And on,—as the message from masthead to masthead flew out like a flame,
England expects every man will do his duty,—they came.

   As when beyond Dongola the lion, whom hunters attack,
Plagued by their darts from afar, leaps in, dividing them back;
So between Spaniard and Frenchman the Victory wedged with a shout,
Gun against gun; a cloud from her decks and lightning went out;
Iron hailing of pitiless death from the sulphury smoke;
Voices hoarse and parch’d, and blood from invisible stroke.
Each man stood to his work, though his mates fell smitten around,
As an oak of the wood, while his fellow, flame-shatter’d, besplinters the ground:—
Gluttons of danger for England, but sparing the foe as he lay;
For the spirit of Nelson was on them, and each was Nelson that day.

   To his heart death rose: and for Hardy, the faithful, he cried in his pain,—
‘How goes the day with us, Hardy?’ . . . ‘’Tis ours’:—Then he knew, not in vain
Not in vain for his comrades and England he bled: how he left her secure,
Queen of her own blue seas, while his name and example endure.
O, like a lover he loved her! for her as water he pours
Life-blood and life and love, lavish’d all for her sake, and for ours!
—‘Kiss me, Hardy!—Thank God!—I have done my duty!’—And then
Fled that heroic soul, and left not his like among men.

TORRES VEDRAS

1810

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

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

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

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

While purblind party-strife with venomous spite
   Made plausible wrong seem right,—
O then for that unselfish hero-chief
   Tender and true, and lost
At Trafalgar,—or him, whose patriot grief

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

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

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

O firm and foursquare mind!  O solid will
   Fix’d, inexpugnable
By crowns or censures! only bent to do
   The day’s work in the day;—
Fame with her idiot yelp might come, or go!

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

Impassive, iron, he and they!—and then
   With eagle-keener ken
Glanced through the field, the crisis-instant knew,
   And through the gap of war
His thundering legions on their victory threw.

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

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

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

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

November 5: 1854

   In the solid sombre mist
   And the drizzling dazzling shower
   They may mass them as they list,
   The gray-coat Russian power;
They are fifties ’gainst our tens, they, and more!
   And from the fortress-town
   In silent squadrons down
   O’er the craggy mountain-crown
      Unseen, they pour.

   On the meagre British line
   That northern ocean press’d;
   But we never knew how few
   Were we who held the crest!
While within the curtain-mist dark shadows loom
   Making the gray more gray,
   Till the volley-flames betray
   With one flash the long array:
      And then, the gloom.

   For our narrow line too wide
   On the narrow crest we stood,
   And in pride we named it Home,
   As we sign’d it with our blood.
And we held-on all the morning, and the tide
   Of foes on that low dyke
   Surged up, and fear’d to strike,
   Or on the bayonet-spike
      Flung them, and died.

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

   Nor the gallant chief who led
   Those others, how he fell;
   When our men the captive guns
   Set free they loved so well,
And embraced them as live things, by loss endear’d:—
   Nor, when the crucial stroke
   On their last asylum broke,
   And e’en those hearts of oak
      Might well have fear’d,—

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

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

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

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

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

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

AFTER CAWNPORE

June: 1857

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

         With each quick volley-flash
         The bullets ping and plash:
         Yet, though the tropic noon
         With furnace-fury broke
         The sulphur-curling smoke,
Scarr’d, sear’d, thirst-silenced, hunger-faint, they stood:
      And soon
   A dusky wall,—death sheltering life,—uprose
         Against their foes.

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

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

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

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

      But those fourteen, the while,
      Wrapt in the present, smile
      On their grim baffled foe;
      Till o’er the wall he heaps
      The fuel-pile, and steeps
With all that burns and blasts;—and now, perforce, they go
   Hack’d down and thinn’d, beyond that temple-door
         But Seven,—no more.

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

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

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

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

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

MOUNT VERNON

October 5: 1860

Before the hero’s grave he stood,
—A simple stone of rest, and bare
To all the blessing of the air,—
And Peace came down in sunny flood
From the blue haunts of heaven, and smiled
Upon the household reconciled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—O larger England o’er the wave,
Larger, not greater, yet!—With joy
Of generous hearts ye hail’d the Boy
Who bow’d before the sacred grave,
With Love’s fair freight across the sea
Sped from the Fatherland to thee!

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

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

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

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

Ripe to wed with Liberty; See Appendix G.

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

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

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

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

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

1871

   In the drear November gloom
   And the long December night,
   There were omens of affright,
   And prophecies of doom;
And the golden lamp of life burn’d spectre-dim,
   Till Love could hardly mark
   The little sapphire spark
   That only made the dark
      More dark and grim.

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

   Where’er in world-wide skies
   The Lion-Banner burns,
   A common impulse turns
   All hearts to where he lies:—
For as a babe the heir of that great throne
   Is weak and motionless;
   And they feel the deep distress
   On wife and mother press,
      As ’twere their own.

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

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

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