Till o'er this rock of refuge, deem'd secure, —This palace of the poor, Ascetic luxury, wealth too frankly shown,— The royal robber swept His lustful eye, and seized the prey his own.

—Ah, calm of Nature! Now thou hold'st again Thy sweet and silent reign! And, as our feverish years their orbit roll, This pure and cloister'd peace In its old healing virtue bathes the soul.

1539 is the year when the greater monasteries, amongst which Fountains in Yorkshire held a prominent place, were confiscated and ruined by Henry VIII.

The tiny creeper; Certhia Familiaris; the smallest of our birds after the wren. It belongs to a class nearly related to the woodpecker.

White-robed; The colour of the Cistercian order, to which Fountains belonged.



SIR HUGH WILLOUGHBY

1553-4

Two ships upon the steel-blue Arctic seas When day was long and night itself was day, Forged heavily before the South West breeze As to the steadfast star they curved their way; Two specks of man, two only signs of life, Where with all breathing things white Death keeps endless strife.

The Northern Cape is sunk: and to the crew This zone of sea, with ice-floes wedged and rough, Domed by its own pure height of tender blue, Seems like a world from the great world cut off: While, round the horizon clasp'd, a ring of white, Snow-blink from snows unseen, walls them with angry light.

Now that long day compact of many days Breaks up and wanes; and equal night beholds Their hapless driftage past uncharted bays, And in her chilling, killing arms enfolds: While the near stars a thousand arrowy darts Bend from their diamond eyes, as the low sun departs.

Or the weird Northern Dawn in idle play Mocks their sad souls, now trickling down the sky In many-quivering lines of golden spray, Then blazing out, an Iris-arch on high, With fiery lances fill'd and feathery bars, And sheeny veils that hide or half-reveal the stars.

A silent spectacle! Yet sounds, 'tis said, On their forlornness broke; a hissing cry Of mockery and wild laugh, as, overhead, Those blight fantastic squadrons flaunted by:— And that false dawn, long nickering, died away, And the Sun came not forth, and Heaven withheld the day.

O King Hyperion, o'er the Delphic dale Reigning meanwhile in glory, Ocean know Thine absence, and outstretch'd an icy veil, A marble pavement, o'er his waters blue; Past the Varangian fiord and Zembla hoar, And from Petsora north to dark Arzina's shore:—

An iron ridge o'erhung with toppling snow And giant beards of icicled cascade:— Where, frost-imprison'd as the long mouths go, The Good Hope and her mate-ship lay embay'd; And those brave crews knew that all hope was gone; England be seen no more; no more the living sun.

A store that daily lessens 'neath their eyes; A little dole of light and fire and food:— While Night upon them like a vampyre lies Bleaching the frame and thinning out the blood; And through the ships the frost-bit timbers groan, And the Guloine prowls round, with dull heart-curdling moan.

Then sometimes on the soul, far off, how far! Came back the shouting crowds, the cannon-roar, The latticed palace glittering like a star, The buoyant Thames, the green, sweet English shore, The heartful prayers, the fireside blaze and bliss, The little faces bright, and woman's last, last kiss.

—O yet, for all their misery, happy souls! Happy in faith and love and fortitude:— For you, one thought of England dear controls All shrinking of the flesh at death so rude! Though long at rest in that far Arctic grave, True sailor hero hearts, van of our bravest brave.

And one by one the North King's searching lance Touch'd, and they stiffen'd at their task, and died; And their stout leader glanced a farewell glance; 'God is as close by sea as land,' he cried, 'In His own light not nearer than this gloom,'— And look'd as one who o'er the mountains sees his home.

Home!—happy sound of vanish'd happiness! —But when the unwilling sun crept up again, And loosed the sea from winter and duresse, The seal-wrapt race that roams the Lapland main Saw in Arzina, wondering, fearing more, The tatter'd ships, in snows entomb'd and vaulted o'er:

And clomb the decks, and found the gallant crew, As forms congeal'd to stone, where frozen fate Took each man in his turn, and gently slew:— Nor knew the heroic chieftain, as he sate, English through every fibre, in his place, The smile of duty done upon the steadfast face.

Sir Hugh Willoughby, in the Bona Esperanza, with two other vessels, sailed May 10, 1553, saluting the palace of Greenwich is they passed. By September 18 he, with one consort, reached the harbour of Arzina, where all perished early in 1554. His will, dated in January of that year, was found when the ships were discovered by the Russians soon after.

Willoughby has been taken here as the representative of the great age of British naval adventure and exploration.

Arzina is placed near the western headland of the White Sea, east of the Waranger Fiord, and west of Nova Zembla and the mouth of the Petchora.



CROSSING SOLWAY

May 16: 1568

Blow from the North, thou bitter North wind, Blow over the western bay, Where Nith and Eden and Esk run in And fight with the salt sea spray, And the sun shines high through the sailing sky In the freshness of blue Mid-may.

Blow North-North-West, and hollow the sails Of a Queen who slips over the sea As a hare from the hounds; and her covert afar; And now she can only flee; And death before and the sisterly shore That smiles perfidiously.

O Mid-may freshness about her cheek And piercing her poor attire, The sting of defeat thou canst not allay, The fever of heart and the fire, The death-despair for the days that were, And famine of vain desire!

—On Holyrood stairs an iron-heel'd clank Came up in the gloaming hour: And iron fingers have bursten the bar Of the palace innermost bower: And fiend-like on her the Douglas and Ker And spectral Ruthven glower.

She hears the shriek as the Morton horde Hurry the victim beneath; And she feels their dead man's grasp on her skirt In the frenzy-terror of death; And the dastard King at her bosom cling With a serpent's poison-breath.

O fair girl Queen, well weep for the friend To his faith too faithful and thee; For a brother's hypocrite tears; for the flight To the Castle set by the sea;— Where thy father's tomb lay and gaped in the gloom 'Twere better for thee to be!

O better at rest where the crooning dove May sing requiem o'er thy bed, Sweet Robin aflame with love's sign on his breast With quick light footstep tread; While over the sod the Birds of God Their guardian feathers outspread!

Too womanly sweet, too womanly frail, Alone in thy faith and thy need; In the homeless home, in the poisonous air Of spite and libel and greed; Mid perfidy's net thy pathway is set, And thy feet in the pitfalls bleed.

—O lightnings, not lightnings of Heaven, that flare Through the desolate House in the Field! Craft that the Fiend had envied in vain; Till the terrible Day unreveal'd,— Till the Angels rejoice at the Verdict-voice, And Mary's pardon is seal'd!

As a bird from the mesh of the fowler freed With wild wing shatters the air, From shelter to shelter, betray'd, she flees, Or lured to some treacherous lair, And the vulture-cry of the enemy nigh, And the heavens dark with despair!

Bright lily of France, by the storm stricken low, A sunbeam thou seest through the shade Where Order and Peace are throned 'neath the smile Of a royal sisterly Maid:— For hope in the breast of the girl has her nest, Ever trusting, and ever betray'd.

Brave womanly heart that, beholding the shore, Beholds her own grave unaware,— Though the days to come their shame should unveil Yet onward she still would dare! Though the meadows smile with statesmanly guile, And the cuckoo's call is a snare!

Turn aside, O Queen, from the cruel land, From the greedy shore turn away; From shame upon shame:—But most shame for those On their passionate captive who play With a subtle net, hope enwoven with threat, Hung out to tempt her astray!

Poor scape-goat of crimes, where,—her part what it may,— So tortured, so hunted to die, Foul age of deceit and of hate,—on her head Least stains of gore-guiltiness lie; To the hearts of the just her blood from the dust Not in vain for mercy will cry.

Poor scape-goat of nations and faiths in their strife So cruel,—and thou so fair! Poor girl!—so, best, in her misery named,— Discrown'd of two kingdoms, and bare; Not first nor last on this one was cast The burden that others should share.

—When the race is convened at the great assize And the last long trumpet-call, If Woman 'gainst Man, in her just appeal, At the feet of the Judge should fall, O the cause were secure;—the sentence sure! —But she will forgive him all!—

O keen heart-hunger for days that were; Last look at a vanishing shore! In two short words all bitterness summ'd, That Has been and Nevermore! Nor with one caress will Mary bless, Nor look on the babe she bore!

Blow, bitter wind, with a cry of death, Blow over the western bay: The sunshine is gone from the desolate girl, And before is the doomster-day, And the saw-dust red with the heart's-blood shed In the shambles of Fotheringay.

Mary of Scotland is one of the five or six figures in our history who rouse an undying personal interest. Volumes have been and will be written on her:—yet if we put aside the distorting mists of national and political and theological partisanship, the common laws of human nature will give an easy clue to her conduct and that of her enemies.

Her flight from Scotland, as the turning-point in Mary's unhappy and pathetic career, has been here chosen for the moment whence to survey it.

On Holyrood stairs; Riccio was murdered on March 9, 1566. Mary's exclamation when she heard of his death next day, No more tears; I will think upon a revenge, is the sufficient explanation,—in a great degree should be the sufficient justification, with those who still hold her an accomplice in the death of Darnley and the marriage with Bothwell,—(considering the then lawless state of Scotland, the complicity of the leading nobles, the hopelessness of justice)—of her later conduct whilst Queen.

The friend; In Riccio's murder the main determinant was his efficiency in aiding Mary towards a Roman Catholic reaction, which might have deprived a large body of powerful nobles of the church lands. The death of Riccio (Mary's most faithful friend) prevented this: the death of Darnley became necessary to secure the position gained.

A brother's hypocrite tears; Murray, in whose interest Riccio was murdered, and whose privity to the murder (as afterwards to that of Darnley) is reasonably, though indirectly, proved, affected to shed tears on seeing his sister. Next day she learned the details of the plot, and her half-brother's share in it.

The flight; Mary then fled by a secret passage from Holyrood Palace through the Abbey Church, the royal tombs which had been broken open by the revolutionary mob of 1559.

The Castle; Dunbar.

Till the terrible Day unreveal'd; See Appendix A.



SIDNEY AT ZUTPHEN

October 2: 1586

1

Where Guelderland outspreads Her green wide water-meads Laced by the silver of the parted Rhine; Where round the horizon low The waving millsails go, And poplar avenues stretch their pillar'd line; That morn a clinging mist uncurl'd Its folds o'er South-Fen town, and blotted out the world.

2

There, as the gray dawn broke, Cloked by that ghost-white cloke, The fifty knights of England sat in steel; Each man all ear, for eye Could not his nearest spy; And in the mirk's dim hiding heart they feel, —Feel more than hear,—the signal sound Of tramp and hoof and wheel, and guns that bruise the ground.

3

—Sudden, the mist gathers up like a curtain, the theatre clear; Stage of unequal conflict, and triumph purchased too dear! Half our boot treasures of gallanthood there, with axe and with glaive, One against ten,—what of that?—We are ready for glory or grave! There, Spain and her thousands nearing, with lightning-tongued weapons of war;— Ebro's swarthy sons, and the bands from Epirus afar; Crescia, Gonzaga, del Vasto,—world-famous names of affright, Veterans of iron and blood, insatiate engines of fight:— But ours were Norris and Essex and Stanley and Willoughby grim, And the waning Dudley star, and the star that will never be dim, Star of Philip the peerless,—and now at height of his noon, Astrophel!—not for thyself but for England extinguish'd too soon!

4

Red walls of Zutphen behind; before them, Spain in her might:— O! 'tis not war, but a game of heroic boyish delight! For on, like a bolt-head of steel, go the fifty, dividing their way, Through and over the brown mail-shirts,—Farnese's choicest array; Over and through, and the curtel-axe flashes, the plumes in their pride Sink like the larch to the hewer, a death-mown avenue wide: While the foe in his stubbornness flanks them and bars them, with merciless aim Shooting from musket and saker a scornful death-tongue of flame. As in an autumn afar, the Six Hundred in Chersonese hew'd Their road through a host, for their England and honour's sake wasting their blood, Foolishness wiser than wisdom!—So these, since Azincourt morn, First showing the world the calm open-eyed rashness of Englishmen born!

5

Foes ere the cloud went up, black Norris and Stanley in one Pledge iron hands and kiss swords, each his mate's, in the face of the sun, Warm with the generous wine of the battle; and Willoughby's might To the turf bore Crescia, and lifted again,—knight honouring knight; All in the hurry and turmoil:—where North, half-booted and rough, Launch'd on the struggle, and Sidney struck onward, his cuisses thrown off, Rash over-courage of poet and youth!—while the memories, how At the joust long syne She look'd on, as he triumph'd, were hot on his brow, 'Stella! mine own, my own star!'—and he sigh'd:—and towards him a flame Shot its red signal; a shriek!—and the viewless messenger came; Found the unguarded gap, the approach left bare to the prey, Where through the limb to the life the death-stroke shatter'd a way.

6

—Astrophel! England's pride! O stroke that, when he died, Smote through the realm,—our best, our fairest ta'en! For now the wound accurst Lights up death's fury-thirst;— Yet the allaying cup, in all that pain, Untouch'd, untasted he gives o'er To one who lay, and watch'd with eyes that craved it more:—

7

'Take it,' he said, ''tis thine; Thy need is more than mine';— And smiled as one who looks through death to life: —Then pass'd, true heart and brave, Leal from birth to grave:— For that curse-laden roar of mortal strife, With God's own peace ineffable fill'd,— In that eternal Love all earthly passion still'd.

In 1585 Elizabeth, who was then aiding the United Provinces in their resistance to Spain, sent Sir Philip Sidney (born 1554) as governor of the fortress of Flushing in Zealand. The Earl of Leicester, chosen by the Queen's unhappy partiality to command the English force, named Sidney (his nephew) General of the horse. He marched thence to Zutphen in Guelderland, a town besieged by the Spaniards, in hopes of destroying a strong reinforcement which they were bringing in aid of the besiegers. The details of the rash and heroic charge which followed may be read in Motley's History of the United Netherlands, ch. ix.

St. 1 Guelderland; in this province the Rhine divides before entering the sea: 'gliding through a vast plain.'—South-Fen; Zutphen, on the Yssel (Rhine).

St. 3 The bands from Epirus; Crescia, the Epirote chief, commanded a body of Albanian cavalry.—The waning Dudley star; Leicester, who was near the end of his miserable career.—Astrophel; Sidney celebrated his love for Penelope Devereux, Lady Rich, in the series of Sonnets and Lyrics named Astrophel and Stella:—posthumously published in 1591.—After, or with Shakespeare's Sonnets, this series seems to me to offer the most powerful picture of the passion of love in the whole range of our poetry.

St. 4 Saker; early name for field-piece.—The Six Hundred; The Crimea in ancient days was named Chersonesus Taurica.

St. 5 Black Norris; had been at variance with Sir W. Stanley before the engagement. Morris was one of twelve gallant brothers, whose complexion followed that of their mother, named by Elizabeth 'her own crow.'—North; was lying bedrid from a wound in the leg, but could not resist volunteering at Zutphen, and rode up 'with one boot on and one boot off.'—Cuisses;

I saw young Harry, with his beaver on, His cuisses on his thighs: (Henry IV, Part I: A. iv: S. i):—

Sidney flung off his 'in a fit of chivalrous extravagance.'—At the joust; In Sonnets 41 and 53 of Astrophel and Stella Sidney describes how the sudden sight of his lady-love dazzled him as he rode in certain tournaments. In Son. 69 he cries:

I, I, O, I, may say that she is mine.



ELIZABETH AT TILBURY

September: 1588

Let them come, come never so proudly, O'er the green waves as giants ride; Silver clarions menacing loudly, 'All the Spains' on their banners wide; High on deck of the gilded galleys Our light sailers they scorn below:— We will scatter them, plague, and shatter them, Till their flag hauls down to their foe! For our oath we swear By the name we bear, By England's Queen, and England free and fair,— Her's ever and her's still, come life, come death:— God save Elizabeth!

Sidonia, Recalde, and Leyva Watch from their Castles in swarthy scorn, Lords and Princes by Philip's favour;— We by birthright are noble born! Freemen born of the blood of freemen, Sons of Crecy and Flodden are we! We shall sunder them, fire, and plunder them,— English boats on an English sea! And our oath we swear, By the name we bear, By England's Queen, and England free and fair,— Her's ever and her's still, come life, come death! God save Elizabeth!

Drake and Frobisher, Hawkins, and Howard, Raleigh, Cavendish, Cecil, and Brooke, Hang like wasps by the flagships tower'd, Sting their way through the thrice-piled oak:— Let them range their seven-mile crescent, Giant galleons, canvas wide! Ours will harry them, board, and carry them, Plucking the plumes of the Spanish pride. For our oath we swear By the name we bear, By England's Queen, and England free and fair,— Her's ever and her's still, come life, come death! God save Elizabeth!

—Hath God risen in wrath and scatter'd? Have His tempests smote them in scorn? Past the Orcades, dumb and tatter'd, 'Mong sea-beasts do they drift forlorn? We were as lions hungry for battle; God has made our battle His own! God has scatter'd them, sunk, and shatter'd them: Give the glory to Him alone! While our oath we swear, By the name we bear, By England's Queen, and England free and fair,— Her's ever and her's still, come life, come death! God save Elizabeth!



AT BEMERTON

1630-1633

Sick with the strife of tongues, the blustering hate Of frantic Party raving o'er the realm, Sonorous insincerities of debate, And jealous factions snatching at the helm, And Out o'er-bidding In with graceless strife, Selling the State for votes:—O happy fields, I cried, where Herbert, by the world misprized, Found in his day the life That no unrest or disappointment yields, Vergilian vision here best realized!

His memory is Peace: and peace is here;— The eternal lullaby of the level brook, With bird-like chirpings mingled, glassy-clear; The narrow pathway to the yew-clipp'd nook; Trim lawn, familiar to the pensive feet; The long gray walls he raised:—A household nest Where Hope and firm-eyed Faith and heavenly Love Made human love more sweet; While,—earth's rare visitant from the choirs above,— Urania's holy steps the cottage blest.

Peace there:—and peace upon the house of God, The little road-side church that room-like stands Crouching entrench'd in slopes of daisy sod, And duly deck'd by Herbert-honouring hands:— Cell of detachment! Shrine to which the heart Withdraws, and all the roar of life is still; Then sinks into herself, and finds a shrine Within the shrine apart: Alone with God, as on the Arabian hill Man knelt in vision to the All-divine!

—Thrice happy they,—and know their happiness,— Who read the soul's star-orbit Heaven-ward clear; Not roving comet-like through doubt and guess, But 'neath their feet tread nescient pride and fear; Scan the unseen with sober certainty, God's hill above Himalah;—Love green earth With deeper, truer love, because the blue Of Heaven around they see;— Who in the death-gasp hail man's second birth, And yield their loved ones with a brief adieu!

—Thee, too, esteem I happy in thy death, Poet! while yet peace was, and thou might'st live Unvex'd in thy sweet reasonable faith, The gracious creed that knows how to forgive:— Not narrowing God to self,—the common bane Of sects, each man his own small oracle; Not losing innerness in external rite; A worship pure and plain, Yet liberal to man's heaven-imbreathed delight In all that sound can hint, or beauty tell.

A golden moderation!—which the wise Then highest rate, when fury-factions roar, And folly's choicest fools the most despise:— —O happy Poet! laid in peace before Rival intolerants each 'gainst other flamed, And flames were slaked in blood, and all the grace Of life before that sad illiterate gloom Puritan, fled ashamed: While, as the red moon lifts her turbid face, Titanic features on the horizon loom!

George Herbert's brief career as a parish priest was passed at Bemerton, a pretty village near Salisbury in the vale of the Avon. His parsonage, with its garden running down to the stream, and the little church across the road in which he lies buried, remain comparatively unchanged (March 26, 1880) since he lived and mused and wrote his Poems within these precincts. The justly-famous Temple was published shortly after his death by his friend Nicholas Ferrar.

Arabian hill; Mount Sinai.

Titanic features; See A Churchyard in Oxfordshire, st. iii.



PRINCESS ANNE

November 5: 1640

Harsh words have been utter'd and written on her, Henrietta the Queen: She was young in a difficult part, on a cruel and difficult scene:— Was it strange she should fail? that the King overmuch should bow down to her will? —So of old with the women, God bless them!—it was, so will ever be still! Rash in counsel and rash in courage, she aided and marr'd The shifting tides of the fight, the star of the Stuarts ill-starr'd. In her the false Florentine blood,—in him the bad strain of the Guise; Suspicion against her and hate, all that malice can forge and devise;— As a bird by the fowlers o'ernetted, she shuffles and changes her ground; No wile unlawful in war, and the foe unscrupulous round! Woman-like overbelieving Herself and the Cause and the Man, Fights with two-edged intrigue, suicidal, plan upon plan; Till the law of this world had its way, and she fled,—like a frigate unsail'd, Unmasted, unflagg'd,—to her land; and the strength of the stronger prevail'd.

But it was not thus, not thus, in the years of thy springtide, O Queen, When thy children came in their beauty, and all their future unseen: When the kingdom had wealth and peace, one smile o'er the face of the land: England, too happy, if thou could'st thy happiness understand! As those over Etna who slumber, and under them rankles the fire. At her side was the gallant King, her first-love, her girlhood's desire, And around her, best jewels and dearest to brighten the steps of the throne, Three golden heads, three fair little maids, in their nursery shone. 'As the mother, so be the daughters,' they say:—nor could mother wish more For her own, than men saw in the Queen's, ere the rosebud-dawning was o'er, Heart-wise and head-wise, a joy to behold, as they knelt for her kiss,— Best crown of a woman's life, her true vocation and bliss!— But the flowers were pale and frail, and the mother watch'd them with dread, As the sunbeams play'd round the room on each gay, glistening head.

Anne in that garden of childhood grew nearest Elizabeth: she Tenderly tended and loved her, a babe with a babe on her knee: Slight and white from the cradle was Anne; a floweret born Rathe, out of season, a rose that peep'd out when the hedge was in thorn. 'Why should it be so with us?' thought Elizabeth oft; for in her The soul 'gainst the body protesting, was but more keenly astir: 'As saplings stunted by forest around o'ershading, we two: What work for our life, my mother,' she said, 'is left us to do? Or is't from the evil to come, the days without pleasure, that God In mercy would spare us, over our childhood outstretching the rod?' —So she, from her innocent heart; in all things seeing the best With the wholesome spirit of childhood; to God submitting the rest: Not seeing the desolate years, the dungeon of Carisbrook drear; Eyes dry-glazed with fever, and none to lend even a tear! Now, all her heart to the little one goes; for, day upon day, As a rosebud in canker, she pales and pines, and the cough has its way. And the gardens of Richmond on Thames, the fine blythe air of the vale Stay not the waning pulse, and the masters of science fail. Then the little footsteps are faint, and a child may take her with ease; As the flowers a babe flings down she is spread on Elizabeth's knees, Slipping back to the cradle-life, in her wasting weakness and pain: And the sister prays and smiles and watches the sister in vain.

So she watch'd by the bed all night, and the lights were yellow and low, And a cold blue blink shimmer'd up from the park that was sheeted in snow: And the frost of the passing hour, when souls from the body divide, The Sarsar-wind of the dawn, crept into the palace, and sigh'd. And the child just turn'd her head towards Elizabeth there as she lay, And her little hands came together in haste, as though she would pray; And the words wrestled in her for speech that the fever-dry mouth cannot frame, And the strife of the soul on the delicate brow was written in flame: And Elizabeth call'd 'O Father, why does she look at me so? Will it soon be better for Anne? her face is all in a glow':— But with womanly speed and heed is the mother beside her, and slips Her arm 'neath the failing head, and moistens the rose of the lips, Pale and sweet as the wild rose of June, and whispers to pray To the Father in heaven, 'the one she likes best, my baby, to say': And the soul hover'd yet o'er the lips, as a dove when her pinions are spread, And the light of the after-life came again in her eyes, and she said; 'For my long prayer it is not time; for my short one I think I have breath; Lighten mine eyes, O Lord, that I sleep not the sleep of death.' —O! into life, fair child, as she pray'd, her innocence slept! 'It is better for her,' they said:—and knelt, and kiss'd her, and wept.

In her; Henrietta's mother was by birth Mary de' Medici; the great-grandmother of Charles was Mary of Guise.

'With Charles I,' says Ranke, 'nothing was more seductive than secrecy. The contradictions in his conduct entangled him in embarrassments, in which his declarations, if always true in the sense he privately gave them, were only a hair's-breadth removed from actual, and even from intentional, untruth.'—Whether traceable to descent, or to the evil influence of Buckingham and the intriguing atmosphere of the Spanish marriage-negotiations, this defect in political honesty is, unquestionably, the one serious blot on the character of Charles I.—Yet, whilst noting it, candid students will regretfully confess that the career of Elizabeth and her counsellors is defaced by shades of bad faith, darker and more numerous.

When the kingdom; See Clarendon's description of England during this period, 'enjoying the greatest calm and the fullest measure of felicity that any people in any age for so long time together have been blessed with.'

Three golden heads; Mary, the second child of Charles and Henrietta, was born Nov. 4, 1631: Elizabeth, Dec. 28, 1635: Anne, Mar. 17, 1637. The last two were feeble from infancy. Consumption soon showed itself in Anne, and her short life, passed at Richmond, closed in November, 1640. For her last words, we are indebted to Fuller, who adds: 'This done, the little lamb gave up the ghost.'

The affection and care of the royal parents is well attested. 'Their arrival,' when visiting the nursery, 'was the signal of a general rejoicing.'

In the latter portion of this piece I have ventured, it will be seen, on an ideal treatment. The main facts, and the words of the dear child, are historical:—for the details I appeal to any mother who has suffered similar loss whether they could have been much otherwise.

Not seeing; See the Captive Child.

The frost; It is noticed that death, the Sarsar-wind of Southey's Thalaba, often occurs at the turn between night and day, when the atmosphere is wont to be at the coldest.



AFTER CHALGROVE FIGHT

June 18: 1643

Flags crape-smother'd and arms reversed, With one sad volley lay him to rest: Lay him to rest where he may not see This England he loved like a lover accursed By lawlessness masking as liberty, By the despot in Freedom's panoply drest:— Bury him, ere he be made duplicity's tool and slave, Where he cannot see the land that he could not save! Bury him, bury him, bury him With his face downward!

Chalgrove! Name of patriot pain! O'er thy fresh fields that summer pass'd The brand of war's red furnace blast, Till heaven's soft tears wash'd out the blackening stain;— Wash'd out and wept;—But could not so restore England's gallant son: Ere the fray was done The stately head bow'd down; shatter'd; his warfare o'er.

Bending to the saddle-bow With leaden arm that idle hangs, Faint with the lancing torture-pangs, He drops the rein; he lets the battle go:— There, where the wife of his first love he woo'd Turning for retreat;— Memories bitter-sweet Through death's fast-rising mist in youth's own light renew'd.

Then, as those who drown, perchance, And all their years, a waking dream, Flash pictured by in lightning gleam, His childhood home appears, the mother's glance, The hearth-side smile; the fragrance of the fields: —Now, war's iron knell Wakes the hounds of hell, Whilst o'er the realm her scourge the rushing Fury wields!

Doth he now the day lament When those who stemm'd despotic might O'erstrode the bounds of law and right, And through the land the torch of ruin sent? Or that great rival statesman as he stood Lion-faced and grim, Hath he sight of him, Strafford—the meteor-axe—the fateful Hill of Blood?

—Heroes both! by passion led, In days perplex'd 'tween new and old, Each at his will the realm to mould; This, basing sovereignty on the single head, This, on the many voices of the Hall:— Each for his own creed Prompt to die at need: His side of England's shield each saw, and took for all.

Heroes both! For Order one And one for Freedom dying!—We May judge more justly both, than ye Could, each, his brother, ere the strife was done! —O Goddess of that even scale and weight, In whose awful eyes Truest mercy lies, This hero-dirge to thee I vow and dedicate!

—Slanting now,—the foe is by,— Through Hazeley mead the warrior goes, And hardly fords the brook that flows Bearing to Thame its cool, sweet, summer-cry. Here take thy rest; here bind the broken heart! By death's mercy-doom Hid from ills to come, Great soul, and greatly vex'd, Hampden!—in peace depart!

In the heart of the fields he loved and the hills, Look your last, and lay him to rest, With the faded flower, the wither'd grass; Where the blood-face of war and the myriad ills Of England dear like phantoms pass And touch not the soul that is with the Blest. Bury him in the night and peace of the holy grave, Where he cannot see the land that he could not save! Bury him, bury him, bury him With his face downward!

John Hampden met his death at Chalgrove in an attempt to check the raids which Prince Rupert was making from Oxford. Struck at the onset in the shoulder by two carabine balls, he rode off before the action was ended by Hazeley towards Thame, finding it impossible to reach Pyrton, the home of his father-in-law. The body was carried to his own house amid the woods and hills of the Chiltern country, and buried in the church close by.

With his face downward; This was the dying request of some high-minded Spaniard of old, unwilling, even in the grave, as it were, to look on the misfortunes of his country.

O'erstrode the bounds; 'After every allowance has been made,' says Hallam, speaking of the Long Parliament from a date so early as August, 1641, 'he must bring very heated passions to the records of those times, who does not perceive in the conduct of that body a series of glaring violations, not only of positive and constitutional, but of those higher principles which are paramount to all immediate policy': (Const. Hist. ch. ix).

The axe; A clear and impartial sketch of Stafford's trial will be found in Ranke (B. viii): who deals dispassionately and historically with an event much obscured by declamation in popular narratives. Even in Hallam's hand the balance seems here to waver a little.

Heroes both;—Each his side; See Appendix B.



A CHURCHYARD IN OXFORDSHIRE

September: 1643

Sweet air and fresh; glades yet unsear'd by hand Of Midas-finger'd Autumn, massy-green; Bird-haunted nooks between, Where feathery ferns, a fairy palmglove, stand, An English-Eastern band:— While e'en the stealthy squirrel o'er the grass Beside me to the beech-clump dares to pass:— In this still precinct of the happy dead, The sanctuary of silence,—Blessed they! I cried, who 'neath the gray Peace of God's house, each in his mounded bed Sleep safe, nor reck how the great world runs on; Peasant with noble here alike unknown.

Unknown, unnamed beneath one turf they sleep, Beneath one sky, one heaven-uplifted sign Of love assured, divine: While o'er each mound the quiet mosses creep, The silent dew-pearls weep: —Fit haven-home for thee, O gentlest heart Of Falkland! all unmeet to find thy part In those tempestuous times of canker'd hate When Wisdom's finest touch, and, by her side, Forbearance generous-eyed To fix the delicate balance of the State Were needed;—King or Nation, which should hold Supreme supremacy o'er the kingdoms old.

—God's heroes, who? . . . Not most, or likeliest, he Whom iron will cramps to one narrow road, Driving him like a goad Till all his heart decrees seem God's decree; That worst hypocrisy When self cheats self, and conscience at the wheel Herself is steer'd by passion's blindfold zeal; A nether-world archangel! Through whose eyes Flame the red mandates of remorseless might; A gloom of lurid light That holds no commerce with the crystal skies; Like those rank fires that o'er the fen-land flee, Or on the mast-head sign the wrath to be.

As o'er that ancient weird Arlesian plain Where Zeus hail'd boulder-stones on the giant crew, And changed to stone, or slew, No bud may burgeon in Spring's gracious rain, No blade of grass or grain: —So bare, so scourged, a prey to chaos cast The wisest despot leaves his realm at last! Though for the land he toil'd with iron will, Earnest to reach persuasion's goal through power, The fruit without the flower! And pray'd and wrestled to charm good from ill; Waking perchance, or not, in death,—to find Man fights a losing fight who fights mankind!

And as who in the Theban avenue, Sphinx ranged by Sphinx, goes awestruck, nor may read That ancient awful creed Closed in their granite calm:—so dim the clue, So tangled, tracking through That labyrinthine soul which, day by day Changing, yet kept one long imperious way: Strong in his weakness; confident, yet forlorn; Waning and waxing; diamond-keen, or dull, As that star Wonderful, Mira, for ever, dying and reborn:— Blissful or baleful, yet a Power throughout, Throned in dim altitude o'er the common rout.

Alas, great Chief! The pity of it!—For he Lay on his unlamented bier; his life Wreck'd on that futile strife To wed things alien by heaven's decree, Sword-sway with liberty:— Coercing, not protecting;—for the Cause Smiting with iron heel on England's laws: —Intolerant tolerance! Soul that could not trust Its finer instincts; self-compell'd to run The blood-path once begun, And murder mercy with a sad 'I must!' Great lion-heart by guile and coarseness marr'd; By his own heat a hero warp'd and scarr'd.

Despot despite himself!—And when the cry Moan'd up from England, dungeon'd in that drear Sectarian atmosphere, With glory he gilt her chains; in Spanish sky Flaunting the Red Cross high;— Wars, just or unjust, ill or well design'd, Urged with the will that masters weak mankind. —God's hammer Thou!—not hero!—Forged to break The land,—salve wounds with wounds, heal force by force; Sword-surgeon keen and coarse:— To all who worship power for power's own sake,— Strength for itself,—Success, the vulgar test,— Fit idol of bent knee, and servile breast!

—O in the party plaudits of the crowd Glorious, if this be glory!—o'er that shout A small still voice breathes out With subtle sweetness silencing the loud Hoarse vaunting of the proud,— A song of exaltation for the vale, And how the mountain from his height shall fail! How God's true heroes, since this earth began, Go sackcloth-clad through scourge and sword and scorn, Crown'd with the bleeding thorn, Down-trampled by man's heel as foes to man, And whispering Eli, Eli! as they die,— Martyrs of truth and Saint Humility.

These conquer in their fall: Persuasion flies Wing'd, from their grave: The hearts of men are turn'd To worship what they burn'd: Owning the sway of Love's long-suffering eyes, Love's sweet self-sacrifice; The might of gentleness; the subduing force Of wisdom on her mid-way measured course Gliding;—not torrent-like with fury spilt, Impetuous, o'er Himalah's rifted side, To ravage blind and wide, And leave a lifeless wreck of parching silt;— Gliding by thorpe and tower and grange and lea In tranquil transit to the eternal sea.

—Children of Light!—If, in the slow-paced course Of vital change, your work seem incomplete, Your conquest-hour defeat, Won by mild compromise, by the invisible force That owns no earthly source; Yet to all time your gifts to man endure, God being with you, and the victory sure! For though o'er Gods the Giants in the course May lord it, Strength o'er Beauty; yet the Soul Immortal, clasps the goal; Fair Wisdom triumphs by her inborn force: —Thus far on earth! . . . But, ah!—from mortal sight The crowning glory veils itself in light!

Envoy

—Seal'd of that holy band, Rest here, beneath the foot-fall hushing sod, Wrapt in the peace of God, While summer burns above thee; while the land Disrobes; till pitying snow Cover her bareness; till fresh Spring-winds blow, And the sun-circle rounds itself again:— Whilst England cries in vain For thy wise temperance, Lucius!—But thine ear The violent-impotent fever-restless cry, The faction-yells of triumph, will not hear: —Only the thrush on high And wood-dove's moaning sweetness make reply.

Lucius Cary, second Viscount Falkland, may perhaps be defined as at once the most poetically chivalrous and the most philosophically moderate amongst all who took part in the pre-restoration struggles. He was killed in the royal army at the first battle of Newbury, Sep. 20, 1643, aged but 33 years, and buried, without mark or memorial, in the church of Great Tew (North Oxfordshire), the manor of which he owned.

English Eastern; The common brake-fern and its allies seem to betray tropical sympathies by their late appearance and sensitiveness to autumnal frost.

That Arlesian plain; Now named the Crau. It lies between Aries and the sea—a bare and malarious tract of great size covered with shingle and boulders. Aeschylus describes it as a 'snow-shower of round stones,' which Zeus rained down in aid of Heracles, who was contending with the Ligurians.

Mira; A star in the Whale, conspicuous for its singular and rapid changes of apparent size.

The Cause; After passing through several phases this word, in Cromwell's mouth, with the common logic of tyranny, became simply a synonym for personal rule.

Smiting with iron heel; The terrorism of the Protector's government, and the almost universal hatred which it inspired, are powerfully painted by Hallam. 'To govern according to law may sometimes be an usurper's wish, but can seldom be in his power. The protector abandoned all thought of it. . . . All illusion was now (1655) gone, as to the pretended benefits of the civil war. It had ended in a despotism, compared to which all the illegal practices of former kings, all that had cost Charles his life and crown, appeared as dust in the balance.'

The blood-path; The trials under which Gerard and Vowel were executed in 1654, Slingsby and Hewit in 1658, are the most flagrant instances of Cromwell's perversion of justice, and contempt for the old liberties of England. But they do not stand alone.

Guile and coarseness; 'A certain coarse good nature and affability that covered the want of conscience, honour, and humanity: quick in passion, but not vindictive, and averse to unnecessary crimes,' is the deliberate summing-up of Hallam,—in the love of liberty inferior to none of our historians, and eminent above all for courageous impartiality,—iustissimus unus.

With glory he gilt; See Appendix C.

Success, the vulgar test; See Matthew Arnold's finely discriminative Essay on Falkland.



MARSTON MOOR

July 2: 1644

O, summer-high that day the sun His chariot drove o'er Marston wold: A rippling sea of amber wheat That floods the moorland vale with gold.

With harvest light the valley laughs, The sheaves in mellow sunshine sleep; —Too rathe the crop, too red the swathes Ere night the scythe of Death shall reap!

Then thick and fast o'er all the moor The crimson'd sabre-lightnings fly; And thick and fast the death-bolts dash, And thunder-peals to peals reply.

Where Evening arched her fiery dome Went up the roar of mortal foes:— Then o'er a deathly peace the moon In silver silence sailing rose.

Sweet hour, when heaven is nearest home, And children's kisses close the day! O disaccord with nature's calm, Unholy requiem of the fray!

White maiden Queen that sail'st above, Thy dew-tears on the fallen fling,— The blighted wreaths of civil strife, The war that can no triumph bring!

—O pale with that deep pain of those Who cannot save, yet must foresee,— Surveying all the ills to flow From that too-victor victory;

When 'gainst the unwisely guided King The dark self-centred Captain stood, And law and right and peace went down In that red sea of brothers' blood;—

O long, long, long the years, fair Maid, Before thy patient eye shall view The shrine of England's law restored, Her homes their native peace renew!

That day; The actual fight lay between 7 and 9 p.m.

Too-victor victory; At Naseby, says Hallam,—and the remark, (though Charles was not personally present), is equally true of Marston Moor—'Fairfax and Cromwell triumphed, not only over the king and the monarchy, but over the parliament and the nation.'

Unwisely guided; 'Never would it have been wiser, in Rupert,' remarks Ranke, 'to avoid a decisive battle than at that moment. But he held that the king's letter not only empowered, but instructed him to fight.'

Red sea; 'The slaughter was deadly, for Cromwell had forbidden quarter being given': (Ranke, ix: 3).



THE FUGITIVE KING

August 7: 1645

Cold blue cloud on the hill-tops, Cold buffets of hill-side rain:— As a bird that they hunt on the mountains, The king, he turns from Rhos lane: A writing of doom on his forehead, His eyes wan-wistful and dim; For his comrades seeking a shelter: But earth has no shelter for him!

Gray silvery gleam of armour, White ghost of a wandering king! No sound but the iron-shod footfall And the bridle-chains as they ring: Save where the tears of heaven, Shed thick o'er the loyal hills, Rush down in the hoarse-tongued torrent, A roar of approaching ills.

But now with a sweeping curtain, In solid wall comes the rain, And the troop draw bridle and hide them In the bush by the stream-side plain. King Charles smiled sadly and gently; ''Tis the Beggar's Bush,' said he; 'For I of England am beggar'd, And her poorest may pity me.'

—O safe in the fadeless fir-tree The squirrel may nestle and hide; And in God's own dwelling the sparrow Safe with her nestlings abide:— But he goes homeless and friendless, And manlike abides his doom; For he knows a king has no refuge Betwixt the throne and the tomb.

And the purple-robed braes of Alban, The glory of stream and of plain, The Holyrood halls of his birthright Charles ne'er will look on again:— And the land he loved well, not wisely, Will almost grudge him a grave: Then weep, too late, in her folly, The dark Dictator's slave!

This incident occurred during the attempt made by Charles, in the dark final days of his struggle, to march from South Wales with the hope of joining Montrose in Scotland. He appears to have halted for the night of Aug. 6, 1645, at Old Radnor and 'the name of Rails Yat, (Royal gate) still points out the spot where, on the following morning, he left the Rhos Lane for the road which brought him to shelter at Beggar's Bush': a name which is reported to be still preserved.



THE CAPTIVE CHILD

September 8: 1650

Child in girlhood's early grace, Pale white rose of royal race, Flower of France, and England's flower, What dost here at twilight hour Captive bird in castle-hold, Picture-fair and calm and cold, Cold and still as marble stone In gray Carisbrook alone? —Fold thy limbs and take thy rest, Nestling of the silent nest!

Ah fair girl! So still and meek, One wan hand beneath her cheek, One on the holy texts that tell Of God's love ineffable;— Last dear gift her father gave When, before to-morrow's grave, By no unmanly grief unmann'd, To his little orphan band In that stress of anguish sore He bade farewell evermore.

Doom'd, unhappy King! Had he Known the pangs in store for thee, Known the coarse fanatic rage That,—despite her flower-soft age, Maidenhood's first blooming fair,— Fever-struck in the imprison'd air As rosebud on the dust-hill thrown Cast a child to die alone,— He had shed, with his last breath, Bitterer tears than tears of death!

As in her infant hour she took In her hand the pictured book Where Christ beneath the scourger bow'd, Crying 'O poor man!' aloud, And in baby tender pain Kiss'd the page, and kiss'd again, While the happy father smiled On his sweet warm-hearted child; —So now to him, in Carisbrook lone, All her tenderness has flown.

Oft with a child's faithful heart She has seen him act his part; Nothing in his life so well Gracing him as when he fell; Seen him greet his bitter doom As the mercy-message Home; Seen the scaffold and the shame, The red shower that fell like flame; Till the whole heart within her died, Dying in fancy by his side.

—Statue-still and statue-fair Now the low wind may lift her hair, Motionless in lip and limb; E'en the fearful mouse may skim O'er the window-sill, nor stir From the crumb at sight of her; Through the lattice unheard float Summer blackbird's evening note;— E'en the sullen foe would bless That pale utter gentleness.

—Eyes of heaven, that pass and peep, Do not question, if she sleep! She has no abiding here, She is past the starry sphere; Kneeling with the children sweet At the palm-wreathed altar's feet; —Innocents who died like thee, Heaven-ward through man's cruelty, To the love-smiles of their Lord Borne through pain and fire and sword.

Elizabeth, second daughter of Charles I. and Henrietta Maria, was born on Innocents' Day, 1635. The incident accounted in Stanza iv occurred in 1637. She had been taken on a visit to Hampton Court to her mother, who wished her to be present at her own vesper-service, when Elizabeth, not yet two years old, became very restless. To quiet her a book of devotion was shown to her.' The King, when the Queen drew his attention, said, 'She begins young!'

This tale is told by Mrs. Green, in her excellent Princesses of England, (London, 1853),—a book deserving to be better known,—on the authority of the Envoy Con.

The first grief of a very happy and promising childhood may have been the loss of her sister Anne in 1640. But by 1642, the evils of the time began to press upon Princess Elizabeth; her mother's departure from England, followed by her own capture by order of the Parliament; her confinement under conditions of varying severity; and the final farewell to her father, Jan. 29, 1649.

From that time her life was overshadowed by the sadness of her father's death, her own isolation, and her increasing feebleness of health. She seems to have been a singularly winning and intelligent girl, and she hence found or inspired affection in several of the guardians successively appointed to take charge of her. But if she had not been thus marked by beauty of nature, our indignant disgust would hardly be less at the brutal treatment inflicted by the Puritan-Independent authorities upon this child:—at the refusal of her prayer to be sent to her elder sister Mary, in Holland; at the captivity in Carisbrook; at the isolation in which she was left to die.—Yet it is not she who most merits pity!

In this poem, written before the plan of the book had been formed, I find that some slight deviation from the best authorities has been made. Elizabeth's young brother Henry, Duke of Gloster, shared her prison: and although her own physician, Mayerne, had been dismissed, yet some medical attendance was supplied.—Henry Vaughan has described the patience of the young sufferer in two lovely lines:

Thou didst not murmur, nor revile, And drank'st thy wormwood with a smile.

—Olor Iscanus; 1651.



THE WRECK OF THE ADMIRAL

A TALE OF PRINCE RUPERT

September 30: 1651

Seventy league from Terceira they lay In the mid Atlantic straining; And inch upon inch as she settles they know The leak on the Admiral gaining.

Below them 'tis death rushes greedily in; But their signal unheeded is waving, For the shouts by their billow-toss'd consort unheard Are lost in the tempest's wild raving.

For Maurice in vain o'er the bulwark leant forth, While Rupert to rescue was crying; And the voice of farewell on his face is flung back With the scud on the billow-top flying!

But no time was for tears, save for duty no thought, When brother is parting from brother; For Rupert the brave and his high-hearted crew, They must die, as they lived, by each other.

Unregarded the boat, for none care from their post To steal off while the Prince is beside them, All, all, side by side with his comrades to share Till the death-plunge at last shall divide them.

Ah, sharp in his bosom meanwhile is the smart, He alone for his king is contending! And the brightness and blaze of his youth in its prime Must here in mid-waves have their ending!

—The seas they break over, the seas they press in From fo'csle to binnacle streaming; And a ripple runs over the Admiral's deck, With blue cold witch-fire gleaming.

O then in a noble rebellion they rise; They may die, but the Prince shall o'erlive them! With a loving rough force to the boat he is thrust, And he must be saved and forgive them!

Now their flame-pikes they lift, the last signal for life, Flaring wild in the wild rack above them:— And each breast has one prayer for the Mercy on high, And one for the far-off who love them.

O high-beating hearts that are still'd in the deep Unknown treasure-caverns of Ocean! There, where storms cannot vex, the three hundred are laid In their silent heroic devotion.

Rupert, nephew to Charles through his sister Elizabeth, wife to the Elector Palatine, after the ruin of his uncle's cause, carried on the struggle at sea. The incident here treated occurred on one of his last voyages, when cruising in the Atlantic near the Canaries: it is told at full length in E. Warburton's narrative of Rupert's life.

Brother is parting from brother; Maurice, a year younger than himself,—then in the companion ship Swallow, in which Rupert, by the devoted determination of his comrades, was ultimately saved. Maurice was not long after drowned in the West Indies.

Flame-pikes; Two 'fire-pikes,' it is stated, were burned as a signal just before the flag-ship sank. Three hundred and thirty-three was the estimate of the number drowned.



THE RETURN OF LAW

1660

At last the long darkness of anarchy lifts, and the dawn o'er the gray In rosy pulsation floods; the tremulous amber of day: In the golden umbrage of spring-tide, the dewy delight of the sward, The liquid voices awake, the new morn with music reward. Peace in her car goes up; a rainbow curves for her road; Law and fair Order before her, the reinless coursers of God;— Round her the gracious maids in circling majesty shine; They are rich in blossoms and blessings, the Hours, the white, the divine!

Hands in sisterly hands they unite, eye calling on eye; Smiles more speaking than words, as the pageant sweeps o'er the sky. Plenty is with them, and Commerce; all gifts of all lands from her horn Raining on England profuse; and, clad in the beams of the morn, Her warrior-guardian of old the red standard rears in its might; And the Love-star trembles above, and passes, light into light.

Many the marvels of earth, the more marvellous wonders on high, Worlds past number on worlds, blank lightless abysses of sky; But thou art the wonder of wonders, O Man! Thy impalpable soul, Atom of consciousness, measuring the Infinite, grasping the whole: Then, on the trivialest transiencies fix'd, or plucking for fruit Dead-sea apples and ashes of sin, more brute than the brute. Yet in thy deepest depths, filth-wallowing orgies of night, Lust remorseless of blood, yet, allow'd an inlet for light: As where, a thousand fathom beneath us, midnight afar Glooms in some gulph, and we gaze, and, behold! one flash of one star! For, ever, the golden gates stand open, the transit is free For the human to mix with divine; from himself to the Highest to flee. Lo on its knees by the bedside the babe:—and the song that we hear Has been heard already in Heaven! the low-lisp'd music is clear:— For, fresh from the hand of the Maker, the child still breathes the light air Of the House Angelic, the meadow where souls yet unbodied repair, Lucid with love, translucent with bliss, and know not the doom In the Marah valley of life laid up for the sons of the womb. —I speak not of grovelling hearts, souls blind and begrimed from the birth, But the spirits of nobler strain, the elect of the children of earth:— For the needle swerves from the pole; they cannot do what they would; In their truest aim is falsehood, and ill out-balancing good. Faith's first felicities fade; the world-mists thicken and roll, 'Neath the heavens arching their heaven; o'er-hazing the eye of the soul. Then the vision is pure no longer; refracted above us arise The phantasmal figures of passion; earth's mirage exhaled to the skies. And they go as the castled clouds o'er the verge when the tempest is laid, Towering Ambition, and Glory, and Self as Duty array'd:— Idols no less than that idol whom lustful Ammon of yore With the death-scream of children, a furnace of blood, was fain to adore! So these, in the shrine of the soul, for a Moloch sacrifice cry, The conscience of candid childhood, the pure directness of eye:— Till the man yields himself to himself, accepting his will as his fate, And the light from above within him is darkness; the darkness how great!

O Land whom the Gods,—loving most,—most sorely in wisdom have tried, England! since Time was Time, thrice swept by the conqueror tide, Why on thyself thrice turn, thrice crimson thy greenness in gore, With the slain of thy children, as sheep, thy meadows whitening-o'er? Race impatiently patient; tenacious of foe as of friend; Slow to take flame; but, enflamed, that burns thyself out to the end: Slow to return to the balance, once moved; not easily sway'd From the centre, and, star-like, retracing thy orbit through sunlight and shade! —Without hate, without party affection, we now look back on the fray, Through the mellowing magic of time the phantoms emerging to day! Grasping too much for self, unjust to his rival in strife, Each foe with good conscience and honour advances; war to the knife! Lo, where with feebler hand the Stuart essays him to guide The disdainful coursers of Henry, the Tudor car in its pride! For he saw not the past was past; nor the swirl and inrush of the tide, A nation arising in manhood; its will would no more be denied. They would share in the labour and peril of State; they must perish or win; 'Tis the instinct of Freedom that cries; a voice of Nature within! Narrow the cry and sectarian oft: true sons of their age; Justice avenged unjustly; yet more in sorrow than rage; Till they drank the poison of power, the Circe-cup of command, And the face of Liberty fail'd, and the sword was snatch'd from her hand. Now Law 'neath the scaffold cowers, and,—shame engendering shame,— The hell-pack of war is laid close on the land for ruin and flame. For as things most holy are worst, from holiness when they decline, So Law, in the name of law once outraged, demon-divine, Swoops back as Anarchy arm'd, and maddens her lovers of yore, Changed from their former selves, and clothed in the chrisom of gore. Then Falkland and Hampden are gone; and darker counsels arise; Vane with his tortuous soul, through over-wisdom unwise; Pym, deep stately designer, the subtle in simple disguised, Artist in plots, projector of panics he used, and despised! —But as, in the mountain world, where the giants each lift up their horn To the skies defiant and pale, and our littleness measure and scorn, Frowning-out from their far-off summits: and eye and mind may not know Which is hugest, where all are huge: But, as from the region we go Receding, the Titan of Titans comes forth, and above him the sky Is deepest: and lo!—'tis the White One, the Monarch!—He mounts, as we fly! Or as over the sea the gay ships and the dolphins glisten and flit, And then that Leviathan comes, and takes his pastime in it; And wherever he ploughs his dark road, they must sink or follow him still, For his is the bulkiest strength, the proud and paramount will! —Thou wast great, O King! (for we grudge not the style thou didst yearn- for in vain, But a river of blood was between and an ineffaceable stain), Great with an earth-born greatness; a Titan of awe, not of love; 'Twas strength and subtlety balanced; the wisdom not from above. For he leant o'er his own deep soul, oracular; over the pit As the Pythia throned her of old, where the rock in Delphi was split; And the vapour and echo within he mis-held for divine; and the land Heard and obey'd, unwillingly willing, the voice of command. —Soaring enormous soul, that to height o'er the highest aspires; All that the man can seize being nought to what he desires! And as, in a palace nurtured, the child to courtesy grows, Becoming at last what it acts; so man on himself can impose, Drill and accustom himself to humility, till, like an art, The lesson the fingers have learn'd appears the command of the heart; Whilst pride, as the snake at the charmer's command, coils low in its place, And he wears to himself and his fellows the mask that is almost a face. Truest of hypocrites, he!—in himself entangled, he thinks Earth uprising to Heaven, while earth-ward the heavenly sinks: Conscience, we grant it, his guide; but conscience drugg'd and deceived; Conscience which all that his self-belief whisper'd as duty believed. And though he sought earnest for God, in life-long wrestle and prayer, Yet the sky by a veil was darken'd, a phantom flitting in air; For a cloud from that seething cavernous heart fumed out in his youth, And whatever he will'd in the strength of the soul was imaged as truth:— Grew with his growth: And now 'tis Ambition, disguised in success; And he walks with the step assured, that cares not its issue to guess, Clear in immediate purpose: and moulding his party at will, He thrones it o'er obstinate sects, his ideal constrain'd to fulfil. Cool in his very heat, self-master, he masters the realm: God and His glory the flag; but King Oliver lord of the helm! As he needs, steers crooked or straight: with his eye controlling the proud, While blandness runs from his tongue, as the candidate fawns on the crowd; Sagest of Titans, he stands; dark, ponderous, muddy-profound, Greatness untemper'd, untuned; no song, but a chaos of sound:— Yet the key-note is ever beneath: 'Mere humble instruments! See! Poor weak saints, at the best: but who has triumph'd as we?' Thanks the Lord for each massacre-mercy, His glory, for His is the Cause: Catlike he bridles, and purrs about God: but within are the claws, The lion-strength is within!—Vane, Ludlow, Hutchinson, knew, When the bauble of Law disappear'd, and the sulky senate withdrew: When the tyrannous Ten sword-silenced the land, and the necks of the strong By the heel of their great Dictator were bruised, wrong trampling on wrong. Least willing of despots! and fain the fair temple of Law to restore, Sheathing the sword in the sceptre: But lo! as in legends of yore, Once drawn, once redden'd, it may not return to the scabbard!—and straight On that iron-track'd path he had framed to the end he is goaded by Fate. And yet, as a temperate man, to flavour some exquisite dish, Without stint pours forth the red wine, thus only can compass his wish; Upon Erin the death-mark he brands, the Party and Cause to secure; Not bloodthirsty by birth; just, liquor 'twas needful to pour; Only the wine of man's blood! . . . But the horrible sacrament thrill'd Right through the heart of a nation; nor yet is the memory still'd; E'en yet the dim spectre returns, the ghost of the murderous years, Blood flushing out in hatred; or blood transmuted to tears! —Ah strange drama of Fate! what motley pageantries rise On the stage of this make-shift world! what irony silenced in sighs! For as when the Switzer looks down on the dell, from the pass and the snow, Sees the peace of the fields, the white farms, the clear equable streamlet below, And before him the world unknown, the blaze of the shadowless Line, Riches ill-purchased in exile, the toiling plantation and mine; And the horn floats up the faint music of youth from his forefathers' fold, And he sighs for the patient life, the peace more golden than gold:— So He now looks back on the years, and groans 'neath the load he must bear, Loving this England that loathed him, and none the burden to share! Gagging not gaining souls: to the close he wonders in vain Why he cannot win hearts: why 'tis only the will that resigns to his reign. As that great image in Dura, the land perforce must obey, Unloved, unlovely,—and not the feet only of iron and clay,— Atlas of this wide realm! in himself he summ'd up the whole; Its children the Cause had devour'd: the sword was childless and sole.

—Ah strange drama of Fate! what motley pageantries rise On the stage of this make-shift world! what irony silenced in sighs! In the strait beneath Etna for as the waves ebb, and Scylla betrays The monster below, foul scales of the serpent and slime,—could we gaze On Tyranny stript of her tinsel, what vision of dool and dismay! Terror in confidence clothed, and anarchy biding her day: Selfishness hero-mask'd; stage-tricks of the shabby-sublime; Impotent gaspings at good; and the deluge after her time!

—Is it war that thunders o'er England, and bursts the millennial oak From his base like a castle uprooted, and shears with impalpable stroke The sails from the ocean, the houses of men, while the Conqueror lay On the morn of his crowning mercy, and life flicker'd down with the day? Is it war on the earth, or war in the skies, or Nature who tolls Her passing-bell as from earth they go up, her imperial souls? —He rests:—'Tis a lion-sleep: and the sternness of Truth is reproved: The sleep of a leader of men; unhuman, to watch him unmoved! In the stillness of pity and awe we remember his troublesome years, For man is the magnet to man, and mortal failure has tears. —He rests:—On the massive brows, as a rock by the sunrise is crown'd, His passionate love for the land, in a glory-coronal bound! And Mercy dawns fast o'er the dead, from the bier as we turn and depart, England for England's sake clasp'd firm as a child to his heart. —He rests:—And the storm-clouds have fled, and the sunshine of Nature repress'd Breaks o'er the realm in smiles, and the land again has her rest. He rests: the great spirit is hid where from heaven the veil is unroll'd, And justice merges in love, and the dross is purged from the gold.

The general point of view from which this subject is here approached is given in the following passages:—'The whole nation,' says Macaulay (1659), 'was sick of government by the sword, and pined for government by the law.' Hence, when Charles landed, 'the cliffs of Dover were covered by thousands of gazers, among whom scarcely one could be found who was not weeping with delight . . . Every where flags were flying, bells and music sounding, wine and ale flowing in rivers to the health of him whose return was the return of peace, of law, and of freedom.' Nor was this astonishing: the name of the Commonwealth, a greater than Macaulay remarks, 'was grown infinitely odious: it was associated with the tyranny of ten years, the selfish rapacity of the Rump, the hypocritical despotism of Cromwell, the arbitrary sequestrations of committee-men, the iniquitous decimations of military prefects, the sale of British citizens for slavery in the West Indies, the blood of some shed on the scaffold without legal trial, . . . the persecution of the Anglican Church, the bacchanalian rant of sectaries, the morose preciseness of puritans . . . It is universally acknowledged that no measure was ever more national, or has ever produced more testimonies of public approbation, than the restoration of Charles II. . . . For the late government, whether under the parliament or the protector, had never obtained the sanction of popular consent, nor could have subsisted for a day without the support of the army. The King's return seemed to the people the harbinger of a real liberty, instead of that bastard Commonwealth which had insulted them with its name' (Hallam: Const. Hist. ch. x and xi).

Peace in her car; It will be seen that the Rospigliosi Aurora, Guido's one inspired work, has been here before the writer's memory.

On thyself thrice turn; The civil wars of the Barons, the Roses, and the Commonwealth.

He saw not; Ranke's dispassionate summary of the attempted 'arrest of five members,' which has been always held one of the King's most arbitrary steps, as it was, perhaps, the most fatal, illustrates the view here taken: 'The prerogative of the Crown, in the sense of the early kings' (unconditional right of arrest, in cases of treason), 'and the privilege of Parliament, in the sense of coming times, were directly contradictory to each other': (viii: 10).

Till they drank the poison; A sentence weighty with his judicial force may be here quoted from Hallam:—'The desire of obtaining or retaining power, if it be ever sought as a means, is soon converted into an end.' The career of the Long Parliament supports this judgment: of it 'it may be said, I think, with not greater severity than truth, that scarce two or three public acts of justice, humanity, or generosity, and very few of political wisdom and courage, are recorded of them from their quarrel with the King to their expulsion by Cromwell': (Const. Hist. ch. x: Part i).

The chrisom; Name for the white cloth in which babes were veiled immediately after Baptism.

Artist in plots; See Ranke (viii: 5) for Pym's skilful use of a supposed plot, (the main element in which was known by himself to be untrue), in older to terrify the House and ensure the destruction of Stafford; and Hallam (ch. ix).—Admiration of Pym may be taken as a proof that a historian is ignorant of, or faithless to, the fundamental principles of the Constitution:—as the worship of Cromwell is decisive against any man's love of liberty, whatever his professions.

O King; 'Cromwell, like so many other usurpers, felt his position too precarious, or his vanity ungratified, without the name which mankind have agreed to worship.' The conversations recorded by Whitelock are conclusive on this point: 'and, though compelled to decline the crown, he undoubtedly did not lose sight of the object for the short remainder of his life' (Hallam).

The sky by a veil; See Appendix D.

And he walks; 'He said on one occasion, He goes furthest who knows not whither he is going': (Ranke: xii: 1).

Purrs about God; Examples, (the tone of which justifies this phrase, and might deserve a severer), may be found by the curious in the frailties of poor human nature, passim, in Cromwell's 'Letters and Speeches,' for which, (although not always edited with precise accuracy), we are indebted to Mr. T. Carlyle. But the view which he takes of his 'hero,' whether in regard of many particular facts alleged or neglected, or of the general estimate of Cromwell as a man,—as it appears to the author plainly untenable in face of proved historical facts, is here rejected.

The familiar figure of the Tyrant, too long known to the world,—with the iron, the clay, and the little gold often interfused also in the statue,—has been always easily recognisable by unbiassed eyes in Oliver Cromwell. His tyranny was substantially that of his kind, before his time and since, in its actions, its spirit, its result. Fanaticism and Paradox may come with their apparatus of rhetoric to blur, as they whitewash, the lineaments of their idol. Such eulogists may 'paint an inch thick': yet despots,—political, military, ecclesiastical,—will never be permanently acknowledged by the common sense of mankind as worthy the great name of Hero.

The tyrannous Ten; The Major-Generals, originally ten, (but the number varied), amongst whom, in 1655, the Commonwealth was divided. They displayed 'a rapacity and oppression beyond their master's' (Hallam): a phrase amply supported by the hardly-impeachable evidence of Ludlow.

The horrible sacrament; See Appendix D.

Why he cannot win hearts; 'In the ascent of this bold usurper to greatness . . . he had encouraged the levellers and persecuted them; he had flattered the Long Parliament and betrayed it; he had made use of the sectaries to crush the Commonwealth; he had spurned the sectaries in his last advance to power. These, with the Royalists and Presbyterians, forming in effect the whole people . . . were the perpetual, irreconcilable enemies of his administration' (Hallam ch. x).

Stage-tricks; See the curious regal imitations and adaptations of the Protector during his later years, in matters regarding his own and his family's titles and state, or the marriage of his daughters.

Mortal failure; See Appendix D.



THE POET'S EUTHANASIA

November: 1674

Cloked in gray threadbare poverty, and blind, Age-weak, and desolate, and beloved of God; High-heartedness to long repulse resign'd, Yet bating not one jot of hope, he trod The sunless skyless streets he could not see; By those faint feet made sacrosanct to me.

Yet on that laureate brow the sign he wore Of Phoebus' wrath; who,—for his favourite child, When war and faction raised their rancorous roar, Leagued with fanatic frenzy, blood-defiled, To the sweet Muses and himself untrue,— Around the head he loved thick darkness threw.

—He goes:—But with him glides the Pleiad throng Of that imperial line, whom Phoebus owns His ownest: for, since his, no later song Has soar'd, as wide-wing'd, to the diadem'd thrones That, in their inmost heaven, the Muses high Set for the sons of immortality.

Most loved, most lovely, near him as he went, Vergil: and He, supremest for all time, In hoary blindness:—But the sweet lament Of Lesbian love, the Parian song sublime, Follow'd:—and that stern Florentine apart Cowl'd himself dark in thought, within his heart

Nursing the dream of Church and Caesar's State, Empire and Faith:—while Fancy's favourite child, The myriad-minded, moving up sedate Beckon'd his countryman, and inly smiled:— Then that august Theophany paled from view, To higher stars drawn up, and kingdoms new.

The last ten years of Milton's life were passed at his house situate in the (then) 'Artillery Walk,' Bunhill, near Aldersgate. He is described as a spare figure, of middle stature or a little less, who walked, generally clothed in a gray camblet overcoat, in the streets between Bunhill and Little Britain.

Vergil; placed first as most like Milton in consummate art and permanent exquisiteness of phrase. It is to him, also, (if to any one), that Milton is metrically indebted.—The other poets classed as 'Imperial' are Homer, Sappho, Archilochus, Dante, Shakespeare. The supremacy in rank which the writer has here ventured to limit to these seven poets, (though with a strong feeling of diffidence in view of certain other Hellenic and Roman claims), is assigned to Sappho and Archilochus, less on account of the scanty fragments, though they be 'more golden than gold,' which have reached us, than in confidence that the place collateral with Homer, given them by their countrymen (who criticized as admirably as they created), was, in fact, justified by their poetry.

The dream; Dante's political wishes and speculations, wholly opposed to Milton's, are, however, like his in their impracticable originality.

Theophany; Vision of the Gods.



WHITEHALL GALLERY

February 11: 1655

As when the King of old 'Mid Babylonian gold, And picture-woven walls, and lamps that gleam'd Unholy radiance, sate, And with some smooth slave-mate Toy'd, and the wine laugh'd round, and music stream'd Voluptuous undulation, o'er the hall,— Till on the palace-wall

Forth came a hand divine And wrote the judgment-sign, And Babylon fell!—So now, in that his place Of Tudor-Stuart pride, The golden gallery wide, 'Mid venal beauty's lavish-arm'd embrace, And hills of gambler-gold, a godless King Moved through the revelling

With quick brown falcon-eye And lips of gay reply; Wise in the wisdom not from Heaven!—as one Who from his exile-days Had learn'd to scorn the praise Of truth, the crown by martyr-virtue won: Below ambition:—Grant him regal ease! The rest, as fate may please!

—O royal heir, restored Not by the bitter sword, But when the heart of these great realms in free, Full, triple, unison beat The Martyr's son to greet, Her ancient law and faith and flag with thee Rethroned,—not thus!—in this inglorious hall Of harem-festival,

Not thus!—For even now, The blaze is on thy brow Scored by the shadowy hand of him whose wing Knows neither haste nor rest; Who from the board each guest In season calling,—knight and kerne and king,— Where Arthur lies, and Alfred, signs the way;— —We know him, and obey.

Lord Macaulay's lively description of this scene (Hist. Ch iv) should be referred to. 'Even then,' he says, 'the King had complained that he did not feel well.'

Tudor-Stuart; This famous Gallery was of sixteenth-century date.

When the heart; The weariness of England under the triple yoke of Puritanism, the Independents, and the Protector, has been already noticed: (Note on p. 125).

'The Restoration,' says Professor Seeley, in an able essay on current perversions of seventeenth-century-history, 'was not a return to servitude, but the precise contrary. It was a great emancipation, an exodus out of servitude into liberty . . . As to the later Stuarts, I regard them as pupils of Cromwell: . . . it was their great ambition to appropriate his methods,' (and, we may add, to follow his foreign policy in regard to France and Holland), for the benefit of the old monarchy. They failed where their model had succeeded, and the distinction of having enslaved England remained peculiar to Cromwell.'



THE BALLAD OF KING MONMOUTH

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.

—Ah flag of shame and woe! For not by these who go, Scythe-men and club-men, foot and hunger-worn, These levies raw and rude, Can England be subdued, Or that ancestral throne from its foundations torn!

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!

—Then weep not, my child, though the days be dark; Fear not; He will come again, With Arthur and Harold and good Saint George, King Monmouth and all his men!

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.



WILLELMUS VAN NASSAU

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

Deliver'd!—But the crowning hour of fame, The zenith of a name Is ours once only: and he, too just, too stern, Too little Englishman, A nation's gratitude did not care to earn,

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.



THE CHILDLESS MOTHER

1700-1702

Oft in midnight visions Ghostly by my bed Stands a Father's image, Pale discrowned 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.

Thou wert more to me, Love, More than words can tell: All my remnant sunshine Died in one farewell. Midnight-mirk before me Now my life goes by, For the baby faces As in vain I cry.

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).

The brother; The infant son of James, known afterwards as the 'Old Pretender,' or as James III. He was carried as an infant from the Palace (Dec. 1688) to Lambeth, where he was in great peril of discovery. The story is picturesquely told by Macaulay.

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.

E'en so it was on the morn When France with Spain, in one realm Welded, one thunderbolt, stood, With one stroke the world to o'erwhelm. —They have pass'd the great stream, they have stretch'd their white camp Above the protecting morass and the dell, Blenheim to Lutzingen, where the long wood In summer-thick leafage rounds o'er the fell: —England! in nine-fold advance Cast thy red flood upon France; Over marsh over beck ye must go, Wholly together! or, Danube to Rhine, all slides to the foe!