Collected Poems Volume I Part 42

The wave's heart, exalted, Leaps forward to meet us, The sun on the sea-wave Lies white as the moon: The soft sapphire-vaulted Deep heaven smiles to greet us, Free sons of the free-wave All singing one tune.

_The same sun is o'er us, The same Love shall find us, The same and none other, Wherever we be; With the same goal before us, The same home behind us, England, our mother, Queen of the sea._

At last a faint-flushed April Dawn arose With milk-white arms up-binding golden clouds Of fragrant hair behind her lovely head; And lo, before the bright black plunging prows The whole sea suddenly shattered into shoals Of rolling porpoises. Everywhere they tore The glittering water. Like a moving crowd Of black bright rocks washed smooth by foaming tides, They thrilled the unconscious fancy of the crews With subtle, wild, and living hints of land.

And soon Columbus' happy signals came, The signs that saved him when his mutineers Despaired at last and clamoured to return,-- And there, with awe triumphant in their eyes, They saw, lazily tossing on the tide, A drift of seaweed, and a berried branch, Which silenced them as if they had seen a Hand Writing with fiery letters on the deep, Then a black cormorant, vulture of the sea, With neck outstretched and one long ominous _honk_, Went hurtling past them to its unknown bourne.

A mighty white-winged albatross came next; Then flight on flight of clamorous clanging gulls; And last, a wild and sudden shout of "Land!"

Echoed from crew to crew across the waves.

Then, dumb upon the rigging as they hung Staring at it, a menace chilled their blood.

For like _Il Gran Nemico_ of Dante, dark, Ay, coloured like a thunder-cloud, from North To South, in front, there slowly rose to sight A country like a dragon fast asleep Along the West, with wrinkled, purple wings Ending in ragged forests o'er its spine; And with great craggy claws out-thrust, that turned (As the dire distances dissolved their veils) To promontories bounding a huge bay.

There o'er the hushed and ever shallower tide The staring s.h.i.+ps drew nigh and thought, "Is this The Dragon of our Golden Apple Tree, The guardian of the fruit of our desire Which grows in gardens of the Hesperides Where those three sisters weave a white-armed dance Around it everlastingly, and sing Strange songs in a strange tongue that still convey Warning to heedful souls?" Nearer they drew, And now, indeed, from out a soft blue-grey Mingling of colours on that coast's deep flank There crept a garden of enchantment, height O'er height, a garden sloping from the hills, Wooded as with Aladdin's trees that bore All-coloured cl.u.s.tering gems instead of fruit; Now vaster as it grew upon their eyes, And like some Roman amphitheatre Cirque above mighty cirque all round the bay, With jewels and flowers ablaze on women's b.r.e.a.s.t.s Innumerably confounded and confused; While lovely faces flushed with l.u.s.t of blood, Rank above rank upon their tawny thrones In soft barbaric splendour lapped, and lulled By the low thunderings of a thousand lions, Luxuriously smiled as they bent down Over the scarlet-splashed and steaming sands To watch the white-limbed gladiators die.

Such fears and dreams for Francis Drake, at least, Rose and dissolved in his nigh fevered brain As they drew near that equatorial sh.o.r.e; For rumours had been borne to him; and now He knew not whether to impute the wrong To his untrustful mind or to believe Doughty a traitorous liar; yet there seemed Proof and to spare. A thousand shadows rose To mock him with their veiled indicative hands.

And each alone he laid and exorcised But for each doubt he banished, one returned From darker depths to mock him o'er again.

So, in that bay, the little fleet sank sail And anch.o.r.ed; and the wild reality Behind those dreams towered round them on the hills, Or so it seemed. And Drake bade lower a boat, And went ash.o.r.e with sixteen men to seek Water; and, as they neared the embowered beach, Over the green translucent tide there came, A hundred yards from land, a drowsy sound Immeasurably repeated and prolonged, As of innumerable elfin drums Dreamily mustering in the tropic bloom.

This from without they heard, across the waves; But when they glided into a flowery creek Under the sharp black shadows of the trees-- Jaca and Mango and Palm and red festoons Of garlanded Liana wreaths--it ebbed Into the murmur of the mighty fronds, Prodigious leaves whose veinings bore the fresh Impression of the finger-prints of G.o.d.

There humming-birds, like flakes of purple fire Upon some pa.s.sing seraph's plumage, beat And quivered in blinding blots of golden light Between the embattled cactus and cardoon; While one huge whisper of primeval awe Seemed to await the cool green eventide When G.o.d should walk His Garden as of old.

Now as the boats were plying to and fro Between the s.h.i.+ps and that enchanted sh.o.r.e, Drake bade his comrades tarry a little and went Apart, alone, into the trackless woods.

Tormented with his thoughts, he saw all round Once more the battling image of his mind, Where there was nought of man, only the vast Unending silent struggle of t.i.tan trees, Large internecine twistings of the world, The hushed death-grapple and the still intense Locked anguish of Laoc.o.o.ns that gripped Death by the throat for thrice three hundred years, Once, like a subtle mockery overhead, Some black-armed chattering ape swung swiftly by, But he strode onward, thinking--"Was it false, False all that kind outreaching of the hands?

False? Was there nothing certain, nothing sure In those divinest aisles and towers of Time Wherein we took sweet counsel? Is there nought Sure but the solid dust beneath our feet?

Must all those lovelier fabrics of the soul, Being so divinely bright and delicate, Waver and s.h.i.+ne no longer than some poor Prismatic aery bubble? Ay, they burst, And all their glory shrinks into one tear No bitterer than some idle love-lorn maid Sheds for her dead canary. G.o.d, it hurts, This, this hurts most, to think how we must miss What might have been, for nothing but a breath, A babbling of the tongue, an argument, Or such a poor contention as involves The thrones and dominations of this earth,-- How many of us, like seed on barren ground, Must miss the flower and harvest of their prayers, The living light of friends.h.i.+p and the grasp Which for its very meaning once implied Eternities of utterance and the life Immortal of two souls beyond the grave?"

Now, wandering upward ever, he reached and clomb The slope side of a fern-fringed precipice, And, at the summit, found an opening glade, Whence, looking o'er the forest, he beheld The sea; and, in the land-locked bay below, Far, far below, his elfin-tiny s.h.i.+ps, All six at anchor on the crawling tide!

Then onward, upward, through the woods once more He plunged with bursting heart and burning brow; And, once again, like madness, the black shapes Of doubt swung through his brain and chattered and laughed, Till he upstretched his arms in agony And cursed the name of Doughty, cursed the day They met, cursed his false face and courtier smiles, "For oh," he cried, "how easy a thing it were For truth to wear the garb of truth! This proves His treachery!" And there, at once, his thoughts Tore him another way, as thus, "And yet If he were false, is he not subtle enough To hide it? Why, this proves his innocence-- This very courtly carelessness which I, Black-hearted evil-thinker as I am, In my own clumsier spirit so misjudge!

These children of the court are b.u.t.terflies Fluttering hither and thither, and I--poor fool-- Would fix them to a stem and call them flowers, Nay, bid them grasp the ground like towering oaks And shadow all the zenith;" and yet again The madness of distrustful friends.h.i.+p gleamed From his fierce eyes, "Oh villain, d.a.m.ned villain, G.o.d's murrain on his heart! I know full well He hides what he can hide! He wears no fault Upon the gloss and frippery of his breast!

It is not that! It is the hidden things, Unseizable, the things I do not know, Ay, it is these, these, these and these alone That I mistrust."

And, as he walked, the skies Grew full of threats, and now enormous clouds Rose mammoth-like above the ensanguined deep, Trampling the daylight out; and, with its death Dyed purple, rushed along as if they meant To obliterate the world. He took no heed.

Though that strange blackness brimmed the branching aisles With horror, he strode on till in the gloom, Just as his winding way came out once more Over a precipice that o'erlooked the bay, There, as he went, not gazing down, but up, He saw what seemed a ponderous granite cliff, A huge ribbed sh.e.l.l upon a lonely sh.o.r.e Left by forgotten mountains when they sank Back to earth's breast like billows on a sea.

A tall and whispering crowd of tree-ferns waved Mysterious fringes round it. In their midst He flung himself at its broad base, with one Sharp s.h.i.+vering cry of pain, "Show me Thy ways, O G.o.d, teach me Thy paths! I am in the dark!

Lighten my darkness!"

Almost as he spoke There swept across the forest, far and wide, Gathering power and volume as it came, A sound as of a rus.h.i.+ng mighty wind; And, overhead, like great black gouts of blood Wrung from the awful forehead of the Night The first drops fell and ceased. Then, suddenly, Out of the darkness, earth with all her seas, Her little s.h.i.+ps at anchor in the bay (Five ebony s.h.i.+ps upon a sheet of silver, Drake saw not that, indeed, Drake saw not that!), Her woods, her boughs, her leaves, her tiniest twigs.

Leapt like a hunted stag through one immense Lightning of revelation into the murk Of Erebus: then heaven o'er rending heaven Shattered and crashed down ruin over the world.

But, in that deeper darkness, Francis Drake Stood upright now, and with blind outstretched arms Groped at that strange forgotten cliff and sh.e.l.l Of mystery; for in that flash of light aeons had pa.s.sed; and now the Thing in front Made his blood freeze with memories that lay Behind his Memory. In the gloom he groped, And with dark hands that knew not what they knew, As one that shelters in the night, unknowing, Beneath a stranded s.h.i.+pwreck, with a cry He touched the enormous rain-washed belted ribs And bones like battlements of some Mastodon Embedded there until the trump of doom.

After long years, long centuries, perchance, Triumphantly some other pioneer Would stand where Drake now stood and read the tale Of ages where he only felt the cold Touch in the dark of some huge mystery; Yet Drake might still be nearer to the light Who now was whispering from his great deep heart, "Show me Thy ways, O G.o.d, teach me Thy paths!"

And there by some strange instinct, oh, he felt G.o.d's answer there, as if he grasped a hand Across a gulf of twice ten thousand years; And he regained his lost magnificence Of faith in that great Harmony which resolves Our discords, faith through all the ruthless laws Of nature in their lovely pitilessness, Faith in that Love which outwardly must wear, Through all the sorrows of eternal change, The splendour of the indifference of G.o.d.

All round him through the heavy purple gloom Sloped the soft rush of silver-arrowed rain, Loosening the skies' hard anguish, as with tears.

Once more he felt his unity with all The vast composure of the universe, And drank deep at the fountains of that peace Which comprehends the tumult of our days.

But with that peace the power to act returned; And, with his back against the Mastodon, He stared through the great darkness tow'rds the sea.

The rain ceased for a moment: only the slow Drip of the dim droop-feathered palms all round Deepened the hush.

Then, out of the gloom once more The whole earth leapt to sight with all her woods, Her boughs, her leaves, her tiniest twigs distinct For one wild moment; but Drake only saw The white flash of her seas and there, oh there That land-locked bay with those five elfin s.h.i.+ps, Five elfin ebony s.h.i.+ps upon a sheet Of wrinkled silver! Then, as the thunder followed, One thought burst through his brain-- _One s.h.i.+p was gone!_ Over the grim precipitous edge he hung, An eagle waiting for the lightning now To swoop upon his prey. One iron hand Gripped a rough tree-root like a bunch of snakes; And, as the rain rushed round him, far away He saw to northward yet another flash, A scribble of G.o.d's finger in the sky Over a waste of white stampeding waves.

His eye flashed like a falchion as he saw it, And from his lips there burst the sea-king's laugh; For there, with a fierce joy he knew, he knew Doughty, at last--an open mutineer!

An open foe to fight! Ay, there she went,-- His _Golden Hynde_, his little _Golden Hynde_ A wild deserter scudding to the North.

And, almost ere the lightning, Drake had gone Cras.h.i.+ng down the face of the precipice, By a narrow water-gully, and through the huge Forest he tore the straight and perilous way Down to the sh.o.r.e; while, three miles to the North, Upon the wet p.o.o.p of the _Golden Hynde_ Doughty stood smiling. Scarce would he have smiled Knowing that Drake had seen him from that tower Amidst the thunders; but, indeed, he thought He had escaped unseen amidst the storm.

Many a day he had worked upon the crew, Fanning their fears and doubts until he won The more part to his side. And when they reached That coast, he showed them how Drake meant to sail Southward, into that unknown Void; but he Would have them suddenly slip by stealth away Northward to Darien, showing them what a life Of roystering glory waited for them there, If, laying aside this empty quest, they joined The merry feasters round those island fires Which over many a dark-blue creek illumed Buccaneer camps in scarlet logwood groves, Fringing the Gulf of Mexico, till dawn Summoned the Black Flags out to sweep the sea.

But when Drake reached the flower-embowered boat And found the men awaiting his return There, in a sheltering grove of bread-fruit trees Beneath great eaves of leaf.a.ge that obscured Their sight, but kept the storm out, as they tossed Pieces of eight or rattled the bone dice, His voice went through them like a thunderbolt, For none of them had seen the _Golden Hynde_ Steal from the bay; and now the billows burst Like cannon down the coast; and they had thought Their boat could not be launched until the storm Abated. Under Drake's compelling eyes, Nevertheless, they poled her down the creek Without one word, waiting their chance. Then all Together with their brandished oars they thrust, And on the fierce white out-draught of a wave They shot up, up and over the toppling crest Of the next, and plunged cras.h.i.+ng into the trough Behind it: then they settled at their thwarts, And the fierce water boiled before their blades As, with Drake's iron hand upon the helm, They soared and crashed across the rolling seas.

Not for the Spanish prize did Drake now steer, But for that little s.h.i.+p the _Marygold_, Swiftest of sail, next to the _Golden Hynde_, And, in the hands of Francis Drake, indeed Swiftest of all; and ere the seamen knew What power, as of a wind, bore them along, Anchor was up, their hands were on the sheets, The sails were broken out, the _Marygold_ Was flying like a storm-cloud to the North, And on her p.o.o.p an iron statue still As death stood Francis Drake.

One hour they rushed Northward, with green seas was.h.i.+ng o'er the deck And buffeted with splendour; then they saw The _Golden Hynde_ like some wing-broken gull With torn mismanaged plumes beating the air In peril of utter s.h.i.+pwreck; saw her fly Half-mast, a feeble signal of distress Despite all Doughty's curses; for her crew Wild with divisions torn amongst themselves Most gladly now surrendered in their hearts, As close alongside grandly onward swept The _Marygold_, with canvas trim and taut Magnificently drawing the full wind, Her gunners waiting at their loaded guns Bare-armed and silent; and that iron soul Alone, upon her silent quarter-deck.

There they hauled up into the wind and lay Rocking, while Drake, alone, without a guard, Boarding the runaway, dismissed his boat Back to the _Marygold_. Then his voice out-rang Trumpet-like o'er the trembling mutineers, And clearly, as if they were but busied still About the day's routine. They hid their shame, As men that would propitiate a G.o.d, By flying to fulfil his lightest word; And ere they knew what power, as of a wind, Impelled them--that half wreck was trim and taut, Her sails all drawing and her bows afoam; And, creeping past the _Marygold_ once more, She led their Southward way! And not till then Did Drake vouchsafe one word to the white face Of Doughty, as he furtively slunk nigh With some new lie upon his fear-parched lips Thirsting for utterance in his crackling laugh Of deprecation; and with one ruffling puff Of pigeon courage in his blinded soul-- "I am no sea-dog--even Francis Drake Would scarce misuse a gentleman."

Then Drake turned And summoned four swart seamen out by name.

His words went like a cold wind through their flesh As with a pa.s.sionless voice he slowly said, "Take ye this fellow: bind him to the mast Until what time I shall decide his fate."

And Doughty gasped as at the world's blank end,-- "Nay, Francis," cried he, "wilt thou thus misuse A gentleman?" But as the seamen gripped His arms he struggled vainly and furiously To throw them off; and in his impotence Let slip the whole of his treacherous cause and hope In empty wrath,--"Fore G.o.d," he foamed and snarled, "Ye shall all smart for this when we return!

Unhand me, dogs! I have Lord Burleigh's power Behind me. There is nothing I have done Without his warrant! Ye shall smart for this!

Unhand me, I say, unhand me!"

And in one flash Drake saw the truth, and Doughty saw his eyes Lighten upon him; and his false heart quailed Once more; and he suddenly suffered himself Quietly, strangely, to be led away And bound without a murmur to the mast.

And strangely Drake remembered, as those words, "Ye shall all smart for this when we return,"

Yelped at his faith, how while the Dover cliffs Faded from sight he leaned to his new friend Doughty and said: "I blame them not who stay!

I blame them not at all who cling to home, For many of us, indeed, shall not return, Nor ever know that sweetness any more."

And when they had reached their anchorage anew, Drake, having now resolved to bring his fleet Beneath a more compact control, at once Took all the men and the chief guns and stores From out the Spanish prize; and sent Tom Moone To set the hulk afire. Also he bade Unbind the traitor and ordered him aboard The pinnace _Christopher_. John Doughty, too, He ordered thither, into the grim charge Of old Tom Moone, thinking it best to keep The poisonous leaven carefully apart Until they had won well Southward, to a place Where, finally committed to their quest, They might arraign the traitor without fear Or favour, and acquit him or condemn.

But those two brothers, doubting as the false Are d.a.m.ned to doubt, saw murder in his eyes, And thought "He means to sink the smack one night."

And they refused to go, till Drake abruptly Ordered them straightway to be slung on board With ropes.

The daylight waned; but ere the sun Sank, the five s.h.i.+ps were plunging to the South; For Drake would halt no longer, least the crows Also should halt betwixt two purposes.

He took the tide of fortune at the flood; And onward through the now subsiding storm, Ere they could think what power as of a wind Impelled them, he had swept them on their way.

Far, far into the night they saw the blaze That leapt in crimson o'er the abandoned hulk Behind them, like a mighty hecatomb Marking the path of some t.i.tanic will.

Many a night and day they Southward drove.

Sometimes at midnight round them all the sea Quivered with witches' oils and water snakes, Green, blue, and red, with lambent tongues of fire.

Mile upon mile about the blurred black hulls A cauldron of tempestuous colour coiled.

On every mast mysterious meteors burned, And from the sh.o.r.es a bellowing rose and fell As of great b.e.s.t.i.a.l G.o.ds that walked all night Through some wild h.e.l.l unknown, too vast for men; But when the silver and crimson of the dawn Broke out, they saw the tropic sh.o.r.es anew, The fair white foam, and, round about the rocks, Weird troops of tusked sea-lions; and the world Mixed with their dreams and made them stranger still.

And, once, so fierce a tempest scattered the fleet That even the hardiest souls began to think There was a Jonah with them; for the seas Rose round them like green mountains, peaked and rigged With heights of Alpine snow amongst the clouds; And many a league to Southward, when the s.h.i.+ps Gathered again amidst the sinking waves Four only met. The s.h.i.+p of Thomas Drake Was missing; and some thought it had gone down With all hands in the storm. But Francis Drake Held on his way, learning from hour to hour To merge himself in immortality; Learning the secrets of those pitiless laws Which dwarf all mortal grief, all human pain, To something less than nothing by the side Of that eternal travail dimly guessed, Since first he felt in the miraculous dark The great bones of the Mastodon, that hulk Of immemorial death. He learned to judge The pa.s.sing pageant of this outward world As by the touch-stone of that memory; Even as in that country which some said Lay now not far, the great Tezcucan king, Resting his jewelled hand upon a skull, And on a smouldering glory of jewels throned There in his temple of the Unknown G.o.d Over the host of Aztec princes, clad In golden hauberks gleaming under soft Surcoats of green or scarlet feather-work, Could in the presence of a mightier power Than life or death, give up his guilty sons, His only sons, to the sacrificial sword.

And hour by hour the soul of Francis Drake, Unconscious as an oak-tree of its growth, Increased in strength and stature as he drew Earth, heaven, and h.e.l.l within him, more and more.

For as the dream we call our world, with all Its hues is but a picture in the brain, So did his soul enfold the universe With gradual sense of superhuman power, While every visible shape within the vast Horizon seemed the symbol of some, thought Waiting for utterance. He had found indeed G.o.d's own Nirvana, not of empty dream, But of intensest life. Nor did he think Aught of all this; but, as the rustic deems The colours that he carries in his brain Are somehow all outside him while he peers Unaltered through two windows in his face, Drake only knew that as the four s.h.i.+ps plunged Southward, the world mysteriously grew More like a prophet's vision, hour by hour, Fraught with dark omens and significances, A world of hieroglyphs and sacred signs Wherein he seemed to read the truth that lay Hid from the Roman augurs when of old They told the future from the flight of birds.

How vivid with disaster seemed the flight Of those blood-red flamingoes o'er the dim Blue steaming forest, like two terrible thoughts Flas.h.i.+ng, unapprehended, through his brain!

And now, as they drove Southward, day and night, Through storm and calm, the sh.o.r.es that fleeted by Grew wilder, grander, with his growing soul, And pregnant with the approaching mystery.

And now along the Patagonian coast They cruised, and in the solemn midnight saw Wildernesses of s.h.a.ggy barren marl, Petrified seas of lava, league on league, Craters and bouldered slopes and granite cliffs With ragged rents, grim gorges, deep ravines, And precipice on precipice up-piled Innumerable to those dim distances Where, over valleys hanging in the clouds, Gigantic mountains and volcanic peaks Catching the wefts of cirrus fleece appeared To smoke against the sky, though all was now Dead as that frozen chaos of the moon, Or some huge pa.s.sion of a slaughtered soul Prostrate under the marching of the stars.

At last, and in a silver dawn, they came Suddenly on a broad-winged estuary, And, in the midst of it, an island lay, There they found shelter, on its leeward side, And Drake convened upon the _Golden Hynde_ His dread court-martial. Two long hours he heard Defence and accusation, then broke up The conclave, and, with burning heart and brain, Feverishly seeking everywhere some sign To guide him, went ash.o.r.e upon that isle, And lo, turning a rugged point of rock, He rubbed his eyes to find out if he dreamed, For there--a Crusoe's wonder, a miracle, A sign--before him stood on that lone strand Stark, with a stern arm pointing out his way And jangling still one withered skeleton, The grim black gallows where Magellan hanged His mutineers. Its base was white with bones Picked by the gulls, and crumbling o'er the sand A dread sea-salt, dry from the tides of time.

There, on that lonely sh.o.r.e, Death's finger-post Stood like some old forgotten truth made strange By the long lapse of many memories, All starting up in resurrection now As at the trump of doom, heroic ghosts Out of the cells and graves of his deep brain Reproaching him. "_Were this man not thy friend, Ere now he should have died the traitor's death.

What wilt thou say to others if they, too, Prove false? Or wilt thou slay the lesser and save The greater sinner? Nay, if thy right hand Offend thee, cut it off!_" And, in one flash, Drake saw his path and chose it.

With a voice Low as the pa.s.sionless anguished voice of Fate That comprehends all pain, but girds it round With iron, lest some random cry break out For man's misguidance, he drew all his men Around him, saying, "Ye all know how I loved Doughty, who hath betrayed me twice and thrice, For I still trusted him: he was no felon That I should turn my heart away from him.

He is the type and image of man's laws; While I--am lawless as the soul that still Must sail and seek a world beyond the worlds, A law behind earth's laws. I dare not judge!

But ye--who know the mighty goal we seek, Who have seen him sap our courage, hour by hour, Till G.o.d Himself almost appeared a dream Behind his technicalities and doubts Of aught he could not touch or handle: ye Who have seen him stir up jealousy and strife Between our seamen and our gentlemen, Even as the world stirs up continual strife, Bidding the man forget he is a man With G.o.d's own patent of n.o.bility; Ye who have seen him strike this last sharp blow-- Sharper than any enemy hath struck,-- He whom I trusted, he alone could strike-- So sharply, for indeed I loved this man.

Judge ye--for see, I cannot. Do not doubt I loved this man!

But now, if ye will let him have his life, Oh, speak! But, if ye think it must be death, Hold up your hands in silence!" His voice dropped, And eagerly he whispered forth one word Beyond the scope of Fate-- "I would not have him die!" There was no sound Save the long thunder of eternal seas,-- Drake bowed his head and waited.

Suddenly, One man upheld his hand; then, all at once, A brawny forest of brown arms arose In silence, and the great sea whispered _Death_.

There, with one big swift impulse, Francis Drake Held out his right sun-blackened hand and gripped The hand that Doughty proffered him; and lo, Doughty laughed out and said, "Since I must die, Let us have one more hour of comrades.h.i.+p, One hour as old companions. Let us make A feast here, on this island, ere I go Where there is no more feasting." So they made A great and solemn banquet as the day Decreased; and Doughty bade them all unlock Their sea-chests and bring out their rich array.

There, by that wondering ocean of the West, In crimson doublets, lined and slashed with gold, In broidered lace and double golden chains Embossed with rubies and great cloudy pearls They feasted, gentlemen adventurers, Drinking old malmsey, as the sun sank down.

Now Doughty, fronting the rich death of day, And flouris.h.i.+ng a silver pouncet-box With many a courtly jest and rare conceit, There as he sat in rich attire, out-braved The rest. Though darker-hued, yet richer far, His murrey-coloured doublet double-piled Of Genoa velvet, puffed with ciprus, shone; For over its grave hues the gems that bossed His golden collar, wondrously relieved, Blazed l.u.s.trous to the West like stars. But Drake Was clad in black, with midnight silver slashed, And, at his side, a great two-handed sword.

At last they rose, just as the sun's last rays Rested upon the heaving molten gold Immeasurable. The long slow sigh of the waves That creamed across the lonely time-worn reef All round the island seemed the very voice Of the Everlasting: black against the sea The gallows of Magellan stretched its arm With the gaunt skeleton and its rusty chain Creaking and swinging in the solemn breath Of eventide like some strange pendulum Measuring out the moments that remained.

There did they take the holy sacrament Of Jesus' body and blood. Then Doughty and Drake Kissed each other, as brothers, on the cheek; And Doughty knelt. And Drake, without one word, Leaning upon the two-edged naked sword Stood at his side, with iron lips, and eyes Full of the sunset; while the doomed man bowed His head upon a rock. The great sun dropped Suddenly, and the land and sea were dark; And as it were a sign, Drake lifted up The gleaming sword. It seemed to sweep the heavens Down in its arc as he smote, once, and no more.