Theodore Watts-Dunton: Poet, Novelist, Critic

The novelty of these forms is not a fortuitous eccentricity, but an extremely valuable experiment in a new kind of dramatic poetry. It is remarkable that in this new and difficult form the poet has achieved in Rhona Boswell a feat of characterization quite without parallel under such conditions. Rhona is so vivid that it is hardly fair to hang her portrait on the same wall as those of the ordinary heroines of poetry. But if, for the sake of comparison, Rhona be set beside Tennyson’s Maud, the difference is startling. Maud does not tingle with personality. She is a type, an abstraction, a common denominator of ‘creamy English girls.’ Rhona, on the other hand, is nervously alive with personality. One makes pictures of her in one’s brain – pictures that never become blurred, pictures that do not run into other pictures of other poetic heroines. How much of this is due to the poetic form? Could Rhona have lived so intensely in a novel or a play? I do not think so. At any rate, she lives with incomparable vitality in this lyrical drama-novel, and therefore the poetic vehicle in which she rushes upon our vision is well worth the study of critics and craftsmen. Mr. Kernahan has called attention to the baldness of the enlinking prose narrative. Perhaps this defect could be remedied by using a more poetic and more romantic prose like that of the opening of ‘Aylwin,’ which would lead the imagination insensibly from one situation or mood to another.

In connection with the opening sonnets of ‘The Coming of Love,’ a very interesting point of criticism presents itself. These sonnets, in which Mr. Watts-Dunton tells the story of the girl who lived in the Casket lighthouse, appeared in the ‘Athenæum’ a week after Mr. Swinburne and he returned from a visit to the Channel Islands. They record a real incident. Some time afterwards Mr. Swinburne published in the ‘English Illustrated Magazine’ his version of the story, a splendid specimen of his sonorous rhythms.

Mr. Watts-Dunton’s version of the story may interest the reader: —

LOVE BRINGS WARNING OF NATURA MALIGNA(THE POET SAILING WITH A FRIEND PAST THE CASKET LIGHTHOUSE)Amid the Channel’s wiles and deep decoys,Where yonder Beacons watch the siren-sea,A girl was reared who knew nor flower nor treeNor breath of grass at dawn, yet had high joys:The moving lawns whose verdure never cloysWere hers. At last she sailed to Alderney,But there she pined. ‘The bustling world,’ said she,‘Is all too full of trouble, full of noise.’The storm-child, fainting for her home, the storm,Had winds for sponsor – one proud rock for nurse,Whose granite arms, through countless years, disperseAll billowy squadrons tide and wind can form:The cold bright sea was hers for universeTill o’er the waves Love flew and fanned them warm.But love brings Fear with eyes of augury: —Her lover’s boat was out; her ears were dinnedWith sea-sobs warning of the awakened windThat shook the troubled sun’s red canopy.Even while she prayed the storm’s high revelryWoke petrel, gull – all revellers winged and finned —And clutched a sail brown-patched and weather-thinned,And then a swimmer fought a white, wild sea.‘My songs are louder, child, than prayers of thine,’The Mother sang. ‘Thy sea-boy waged no strifeWith Hatred’s poison, gangrened Envy’s knife —With me he strove, in deadly sport divine,Who lend to men, to gods, an hour of life,Then give them sleep within these arms of mine!’

Two poems more absolutely unlike could not be found in our literature than these poems on the same subject by two intimate friends. It seems impossible that the two writers could ever have read each other’s work or ever have known each other well. The point which I wish to emphasize is that two poets or two literary men may be more intimate than brothers, they may live with each other constantly, they may meet each other every day, at luncheon, at dinner, they may spend a large portion of the evening in each other’s society; and yet when they sit down at their desks they may be as far asunder as the poles. From this we may perhaps infer that among the many imaginable divisions of writers there is this one: there are men who can collaborate and men who cannot.

Many well-known writers have expressed their admiration of this poem. I may mention that the other day I came across a little book called ‘Authors that have Influenced me,’ and found that Mr. Rider Haggard instanced the opening section of ‘The Coming of Love,’ ‘Mother Carey’s Chicken,’ as being the piece of writing that had influenced him more than all others. I think this is a compliment, for the originality of invention displayed in ‘King Solomon’s Mines’ and ‘She’ sets Rider Haggard apart among the story-tellers of our time, and I agree with Mr. Andrew Lang in thinking that the invention of a story that is new and also good is a rare achievement.

I can find no space to give as much attention as I should like to give to Mr. Watts-Dunton’s miscellaneous sonnets. Some of them have had a great vogue: for instance, ‘John the Pilgrim.’ Like all Mr. Watts-Dunton’s sonnets, it lends itself to illustration, and Mr. Arthur Hacker, A.R.A., as will be seen, has done full justice to the imaginative strength of the subject. It is no exaggeration to say that there is a simple grandeur in this design which Mr. Hacker has seldom reached elsewhere, the sinister power of Natura Benigna being symbolized by the desert waste and nature’s mockery by the mirage: —

Beneath the sand-storm John the Pilgrim prays;But when he rises, lo! an Eden smiles,Green leafy slopes, meadows of chamomiles,Claspt in a silvery river’s winding maze:‘Water, water! Blessed be God!’ he says,And totters gasping toward those happy isles.Then all is fled! Over the sandy pilesThe bald-eyed vultures come and stand at gaze.‘God heard me not,’ says he, ‘blessed be God!’And dies. But as he nears the pearly strand,Heav’n’s outer coast where waiting angels stand,He looks below: ‘Farewell, thou hooded clod,Brown corpse the vultures tear on bloody sand:God heard my prayer for life – blessed be God!’

This sonnet is a miracle of verbal parsimony: it has been called an epic in fourteen lines, yet its brevity does not make it obscure, or gnarled, or affected; and the motive adumbrates the whole history of religious faith from Job to Jesus Christ, from Moses to Mahomet. The rhymes in this sonnet illustrate my own theory as to the rhymer’s luck, good and ill. To have written this little epic upon four rhymes would not have been possible, even for Mr. Watts-Dunton, had it not been for the luck of ‘chamomiles’ and ‘isles,’ ‘chamomiles’ giving the picture of the flowers, and ‘isles’ giving the false vision of the mirage. The same thing is notable in the case of another amazing tour de force, ‘The Bedouin Child’ (see p. 448), where the same verbal parsimony is exemplified. Without the fortunate rhyme-words ‘pashas,’ ‘camel-maws,’ and ‘claws’ in the octave, the picture could not have been given in less than a dozen lines.

The kinship between Mr. Watts-Dunton’s poetry and that of Coleridge has been frequently discussed. It has the same romantic glamour and often the same music, as far as the music of decasyllabic lines can call up the music of the ravishing octosyllabics of ‘Christabel.’ This at least I know, from his critical remarks on Coleridge, – he owns the true wizard of romance as master. I do not think that any one of his sonnets affords me quite the unmixed delight which I find in the sonnet on Coleridge, and his friend George Meredith is here in accord with me, for he wrote to the author as follows: ‘The sonnet is pure amber for a piece of descriptive analogy that fits the poet wonderfully, and one might beat about through volumes of essays and not so paint him. There is Coleridge! But whence the source of your story – if anything of such aptness could have been other than dreamed after a draught of Xanadu – I cannot tell. It is new to me.’

After that flash of critical divination, it is fitting to present the reader with the ‘pure amber’ itself: —

I see thee pine like her in golden storyWho, in her prison, woke and saw, one day,The gates thrown open – saw the sunbeams play,With only a web ’tween her and summer’s glory;Who, when that web – so frail, so transitory,It broke before her breath – had fallen away,Saw other webs and others rise for ayeWhich kept her prisoned till her hair was hoary.Those songs half-sung that yet were all divine —That woke Romance, the queen, to reign afresh —Had been but preludes from that lyre of thine,Could thy rare spirit’s wings have pierced the meshSpun by the wizard who compels the flesh,But lets the poet see how heav’n can shine.

Here again the verbal parsimony is notable. I defy any one to find anything like it except in Dante, the great master of verbal parsimony. There are only six adjectives in the whole sonnet. Every word is cunningly chosen, not for ornament, but solely for clarity of meaning. The metrical structure is subtly moulded so as to suspend the rising imagery until the last word of the octave, and then to let it glide, as a sunbeam glides down the air, to its lovely dying fall. Metrical students will delight in the double rhymes of the octave, which play so great a part in the suspensive music.

I have frequently thought that one of the most daring things, as well as one of the wisest, done by the editor of the ‘Athenæum,’ was that of printing Rhona’s letters, bristling with Romany words, with a glossary at the foot of the page, and printing them without any of the context of the poem to shed light upon it and upon Rhona. It certainly showed immense confidence in his contributor to do that; and yet the poems were a great success. The best thing said about Rhona has been said by Mr. George Meredith: “I am in love with Rhona, not the only one in that. When I read her love-letter in the ‘Athenæum,’ I had the regret that the dialect might cause its banishment from literature. Reading the whole poem through, I see that it is as good as salt to a palate. We are the richer for it, and that is a rare thing to say of any poem now printed.” And, discussing ‘The Coming of Love,’ Meredith wrote: ‘I will not speak of the tours de force except to express a bit of astonishment at the dexterity which can perform them without immolating the tender spirit of the work.’ Indeed, the technical mastery of Mr. Watts-Dunton’s poetry is so consummate that it is concealed from the reader. There is no sense of difficulty overcome, no parade of artifice. Yet the metrical structure of the very poem which seems the simplest is actually the subtlest. ‘Rhona’s Love Letter’ is written in an extremely complex rhyme-pattern, each stanza of eight lines being built on two rhymes, like the octave of a sonnet. But so cunningly are the Romany words woven into a naïve, unconscious charm that the reader forgets the rhyme-scheme altogether, and does not realize that this spontaneous sweetness and bubbling humour are produced by the most elaborate art.

I have emphasized the originality of Mr. Watts-Dunton’s poetry. There can be no doubt that he is the most original poet since Coleridge, not merely in verbal, metrical, and rhythmical idiosyncrasy, but in the deeper quality of imaginative energy. By ‘the most original poet’ I do not mean the greatest poet: the student of poetry will know at once what I mean. Poe’s ‘Raven’ is more ‘original’ than Shelley’s ‘Epipsychidion,’ but it is not so great. In my article on Blake in Chambers’s ‘Cyclopædia of English Literature,’ I pointed out that there are greater poets than Blake (or Donne) but none more original. There are many poets who possess that ordinary kind of imagination which is mainly a perpetual matching of common ideas with common metaphors. But few poets have the rarer kind of imagination which creates not only the metaphor but also the idea, and then fuses both into one piece of beauty. Now Mr. Watts-Dunton has this supreme gift. He uses the symbol to suggest ideas which cannot be suggested otherwise. His theory of the universe is optimistic, but his optimism is interwoven with sombre threads. He sees the dualism of Nature, and he shows her alternately as malignant and as benignant. Indeed, he has concentrated his spiritual cosmogony into the two great sonnets, ‘Natura Maligna’ and ‘Natura Benigna,’ which I have already quoted.

All the critics were delighted with the humour of Rhona Boswell. Upon this subject Mr. Watts-Dunton makes some pregnant remarks in the introduction to the later editions of the poem: —

“But it is with regard to the humour of gypsy women that Gorgio readers seem to be most sceptical. The humourous endowment of most races is found to be more abundant and richer in quality among the men than among the women. But among the Romanies the women seem to have taken humour with the rest of the higher qualities.

A question that has been most frequently asked me in connection with my two gypsy heroines has been: Have gypsy girls really the esprit and the humourous charm that you attribute to them? My answer to this question shall be a quotation from Mr. Groome’s delightful book, ‘Gypsy Folk-Tales.’ Speaking of the Romany chi’s incomparable piquancy, he says: —

‘I have known a gypsy girl dash off what was almost a folk-tale impromptu. She had been to a pic-nic in a four-in-hand with “a lot o’ real tip-top gentry”; and “Reia,” she said to me afterwards, “I’ll tell you the comicalest thing as ever was. We’d pulled up to put the brake on, and there was a púro hotchiwitchi (old hedge-hog) come and looked at us through the hedge; looked at me hard. I could see he’d his eye upon me. And home he’d go, that old hedgehog, to his wife, and ‘Missus,’ he’d say, ‘what d’ye think? I seen a little gypsy gal just now in a coach and four horses’; and ‘Dabla,’ she’d say, ‘sawkumni ’as varde kenaw’” [‘Bless us! every one now keeps a carriage’].’

Now, without saying that this impromptu folklorist was Rhona Boswell, I will at least aver, without fear of contradiction from Mr. Groome, that it might well have been she. Although there is as great a difference between one Romany chi and another as between one English girl and another, there is a strange and fascinating kinship between the humour of all gypsy girls. No three girls could possibly be more unlike than Sinfi Lovell, Rhona Boswell, and the girl of whom Mr. Groome gives his anecdote; and yet there is a similarity between the fanciful humour of them all. The humour of Rhona Boswell must speak for itself in these pages – where, however, the passionate and tragic side of her character and her story dominates everything.”

Chapter XXVII

“CHRISTMAS AT THE ‘MERMAID’”

Second in importance to ‘The Coming of Love’ among Mr. Watts-Dunton’s poems is the poem I have already mentioned – the poem which Mr. Swinburne has described as ‘a great lyrical epic’ – “Christmas at the ‘Mermaid.’” The originality of this wonderful poem is quite as striking as that of ‘The Coming of Love.’ No other writer would have dreamed of depicting the doomed Armada as being led to destruction by a golden skeleton in the form of one of the burnt Incas, called up by ‘the righteous sea,’ and squatting grimly at the prow of Medina’s flag-ship. Here we get ‘The Renascence of Wonder’ indeed. Some Aylwinians put it at the head of all his writings. The exploit of David Gwynn is accepted by Motley and others as historic, but it needed the co-operation of the Golden Skeleton to lift his narrative into the highest heaven of poetry. Extremely unlike ‘The Coming of Love’ as it is in construction, it is built on the same metrical scheme; and it illustrates equally well with ‘The Coming of Love’ the remarks I have made upon a desideratum in poetic art – that is to say, it is cast in a form which gives as much scope to the dramatic instinct at work as is given by a play, and yet it is a form free from the restrictions by which a play must necessarily be cramped. The poem was written, or mainly written, during one of those visits which, as I have already said, Mr. Watts-Dunton used to pay to Stratford-on-Avon. The scene is laid, however, in London, at that famous ‘Mermaid’ tavern which haunts the dreams of all English poets: —

“With the exception of Shakespeare, who has quitted London for good, in order to reside at New Place, Stratford-on-Avon, which he has lately rebuilt, all the members of the ‘Mermaid’ Club are assembled at the ‘Mermaid’ Tavern. At the head of the table sits Ben Jonson dealing out wassail from a large bowl. At the other end sits Raleigh, and at Raleigh’s right hand, the guest he had brought with him, a stranger, David Gwynn, the Welsh seaman, now an elderly man, whose story of his exploits as a galley-slave in crippling the Armada before it reached the Channel had, years before, whether true or false, given him in the low countries a great reputation, the echo of which had reached England. Raleigh’s desire was to excite the public enthusiasm for continuing the struggle with Spain on the sea, and generally to revive the fine Elizabethan temper, which had already become almost a thing of the past, save, perhaps, among such choice spirits as those associated with the ‘Mermaid’ club.”

It opens with a chorus: —

Christmas knows a merry, merry place,Where he goes with fondest face,Brightest eye, brightest hair:Tell the Mermaid where is that one place:Where?

Then Ben Jonson rises, fills the cup with wassail and drinks to Shakespeare, and thus comments upon his absence: —

That he, the star of revel, bright-eyed Will,With life at golden summit, fled the townAnd took from Thames that light to dwindle downO’er Stratford farms, doth make me marvel still.

Then he calls upon Shakespeare’s most intimate friend – the mysterious Mr. W. H. of the sonnets – to give them reminiscences of Shakespeare with a special reference to the memorable evening when he arrived at Stratford on quitting London for good and all.

To the sixth edition of the poem Mr. Watts-Dunton prefixed the following remarks, and I give them here because they throw light upon his view of Shakespeare’s friend: —

“Since the appearance of this volume, there has been a great deal of acute and learned discussion as to the identity of that mysterious ‘friend’ of Shakespeare, to whom so many of the sonnets are addressed. But everything that has been said upon the subject seems to fortify me in the opinion that ‘no critic has been able to identify’ that friend. Southampton seems at first to fit into the sacred place; so does Pembroke at first. But, after a while, true and unbiassed criticism rejects them both. I therefore feel more than ever justified in ‘imagining the friend for myself.’ And this, at least, I know, that to have been the friend of Shakespeare, a man must needs have been a lover of nature; – he must have been a lover of England, too. And upon these two points, and upon another – the movement of a soul dominated by friendship as a passion – I have tried to show Shakespeare’s probable influence upon his ‘friend of friends.’ It would have been a mistake, however, to cast the sonnets in the same metrical mould as Shakespeare’s.”

Shakspeare’s friend thus records what Shakespeare had told him about his return to Stratford: —

As down the bank he strolled through evening dew,Pictures (he told me) of remembered evesMixt with that dream the Avon ever weaves,And all his happy childhood came to view;He saw a child watching the birds that flewAbove a willow, through whose musky leavesA green musk-beetle shone with mail and greavesThat shifted in the light to bronze and blue.These dreams, said he, were born of fragrance fallingFrom trees he loved, the scent of musk recalling,With power beyond all power of things beholdenOr things reheard, those days when elves of duskCame, veiled the wings of evening feathered golden,And closed him in from all but willow musk.And then a child beneath a silver sallow —A child who loved the swans, the moorhen’s ‘cheep’ —Angled for bream where river holes were deep —For gudgeon where the water glittered shallow,Or ate the ‘fairy cheeses’ of the mallow,And wild fruits gathered where the wavelets creepRound that loved church whose shadow seems to sleepIn love upon the stream and bless and hallow;And then a child to whom the water-fairiesSent fish to ‘bite’ from Avon’s holes and shelves,A child to whom, from richest honey-dairies,The flower-sprites sent the bees and ‘sunshine elves’;Then, in the shifting vision’s sweet vagaries,He saw two lovers walking by themselves —Walking beneath the trees, where drops of rainWove crowns of sunlit opal to decoyYoung love from home; and one, the happy boy,Knew all the thoughts of birds in every strain —Knew why the cushat breaks his fond refrainBy sudden silence, ‘lest his plaint should cloy’ —Knew when the skylark’s changing note of joySaith, ‘Now will I return to earth again’ —Knew every warning of the blackbird’s shriek,And every promise of his joyful song —Knew what the magpie’s chuckle fain would speak;And, when a silent cuckoo flew along,Bearing an egg in her felonious beak,Knew every nest threatened with grievous wrong.He heard her say, ‘The birds attest our troth!’Hark to the mavis, Will, in yonder mayFringing the sward, where many a hawthorn sprayRound summer’s royal field of golden clothShines o’er the buttercups like snowy froth,And that sweet skylark on his azure way,And that wise cuckoo, hark to what they say:‘We birds of Avon heard and bless you both.’And, Will, the sunrise, flushing with its glory,River and church, grows rosier with our story!This breeze of morn, sweetheart, which moves caressing,Hath told the flowers; they wake to lovelier growth!They breathe – o’er mead and stream they breathe – the blessing.‘We flowers of Avon heard and bless you both!’

When Mr. ‘W. H.’ sits down, the friend and brother of another great poet, Christopher Marlowe, who had been sitting moody and silent, oppressed by thoughts of the dead man, many of whose unfriends were at the gathering, recites these lines ‘On Seeing Kit Marlowe Slain at Deptford’: —

’Tis Marlowe falls! That last lunge rent asunderOur lyre of spirit and flesh, Kit Marlowe’s life,Whose chords seemed strung by earth and heaven at strife,Yet ever strung to beauty above or under!Heav’n kens of Man, but oh! the stars can blunder,If Fate’s hand guided yonder villain’s knifeThrough that rare brain, so teeming, daring, rifeWith dower of poets – song and love and wonder.Or was it Chance? Shakspeare, who art supremeO’er man and men, yet sharest Marlowe’s sightTo pierce the clouds that hide the inhuman heightWhere man and men and gods and all that seemAre Nature’s mutterings in her changeful dream —Come, spell the runes these bloody rivulets write!

After they have all drunk in silence to the memory of Marlowe, Marlowe’s friend speaks: —

Where’er thou art, ‘dead Shepherd,’ look on me;The boy who loved thee loves more dearly now,He sees thine eyes in yonder holly-bough;Oh, Kit, my Kit, the Mermaid drinks to thee!

Then Raleigh rises, and the great business of the evening begins with the following splendid chorus: —

Raleigh(Turning to David Gwynn)Wherever billows foamThe Briton fights at home:His hearth is built of water —ChorusWater blue and green;RaleighThere’s never a wave of oceanThe wind can set in motionThat shall not own our England —ChorusOwn our England queen. 19RaleighThe guest I bring to-nightHad many a goodly fightOn seas the Don hath found —ChorusHath found for English sails;RaleighAnd once he dealt a blowAgainst the Don to showWhat mighty hearts can move —ChorusCan move in leafy Wales.RaleighStand up, bold Master Gwynn,Who hast a heart akinTo England’s own brave hearts —ChorusBrave hearts where’er they beat;RaleighStand up, brave Welshman, thou,And tell the Mermaid howA galley-slave struck hard —ChorusStruck hard the Spanish fleet.Christmas knows a merry, merry place,Where he goes with fondest face,Brightest eye, brightest hair:Tell the Mermaid where is that one place:Where?

Upon being thus called forth the old sea-dog rises, and tells a wonderful story indeed, the ‘story of how he and the Golden Skeleton crippled the Great Armada sailing out’: —

‘A galley lie’ they called my tale; but heWhose talk is with the deep kens mighty tales:The man, I say, who helped to keep you freeStands here, a truthful son of truthful Wales.Slandered by England as a loose-lipped liar,Banished from Ireland, branded rogue and thief,Here stands that Gwynn whose life of torments direHeaven sealed for England, sealed in blood and fire —Stands asking here Truth’s one reward, belief!And Spain shall tell, with pallid lips of dread,This tale of mine – shall tell, in future days,How Gwynn, the galley-slave, once fought and bledFor England when she moved in perilous ways;But say, ye gentlemen of England, sprungFrom loins of men whose ghosts have still the sea —Doth England – she who loves the loudest tongue —Remember mariners whose deeds are sungBy waves where flowed their blood to keep her free?I see – I see ev’n now – those ships of SpainGathered in Tagus’ mouth to make the spring;I feel the cursed oar, I toil again,And trumpets blare, and priests and choir-boys sing;And morning strikes with many a crimson shaft,Through ruddy haze, four galleys rowing out —Four galleys built to pierce the English craft,Each swivel-gunned for raking fore and aft,Snouted like sword-fish, but with iron snout.And one we call the ‘Princess,’ one the ‘Royal,’‘Diana’ one; but ’tis the fell ‘Basana’Where I am toiling, Gwynn, the true, the loyal,Thinking of mighty Drake and Gloriana;For by their help Hope whispers me that I —Whom ten hours’ daily travail at a stretchHas taught how sweet a thing it is to die —May strike once more where flags of England fly,Strike for myself and many a haggard wretch.True sorrow knows a tale it may not tell:Again I feel the lash that tears my back;Again I hear mine own blaspheming yell,Answered by boatswain’s laugh and scourge’s crack;Again I feel the pang when trying to chokeRather than drink the wine, or chew the breadWherewith, when rest for meals would break the stroke,They cram our mouths while still we sit at yoke;Again is Life, not Death, the shape of dread.By Finisterre there comes a sudden gale,And mighty waves assault our trembling galleyWith blows that strike her waist as strikes a flail,And soldiers cry, ‘What saint shall bid her rally?’Some slaves refuse to row, and some imploreThe Dons to free them from the metal tetherBy which their limbs are locked upon the oar;Some shout, in answer to the billows’ roar,‘The Dons and we will drink brine-wine together.’‘Bring up the slave,’ I hear the captain cry,‘Who sank the golden galleon “El Dorado,”The dog can steer.’‘Here sits the dog,’ quoth I,‘Who sank the ship of Commodore Medrado!’With hell-lit eyes, blistered by spray and rain,Standing upon the bridge, saith he to me:‘Hearken, thou pirate – bold Medrado’s bane! —Freedom and gold are thine, and thanks of Spain,If thou canst take the galley through this sea.’‘Ay! ay!’ quoth I. The fools unlock me straight!And then ’tis I give orders to the Don,Laughing within to hear the laugh of Fate,Whose winning game I know hath just begun.I mount the bridge when dies the last red streakOf evening, and the moon seems fain for nightOh then I see beneath the galley’s beakA glow like Spanish auto’s ruddy reek —   Oh then these eyes behold a wondrous sight!A skeleton, but yet with living eyes —A skeleton, but yet with bones like gold —Squats on the galley-beak, in wondrous wise,And round his brow, of high imperial mould,A burning circle seems to shake and shine,Bright, fiery bright, with many a living gem,Throwing a radiance o’er the foam-lit brine:‘’Tis God’s Revenge,’ methinks. ‘Heaven sends for signThat bony shape – that Inca’s diadem.’At first the sign is only seen of me,But well I know that God’s Revenge hath comeTo strike the Armada, set old ocean free,And cleanse from stain of Spain the beauteous foam.Quoth I, ‘How fierce soever be the levinSpain’s hand can hurl – made mightier still for wrongBy that great Scarlet One whose hills are seven —Yea, howsoever Hell may scoff at Heaven —Stronger than Hell is God, though Hell is strong.’‘The dog can steer,’ I laugh; ‘yea, Drake’s men knowHow sea-dogs hold a ship to Biscay waves.’Ah! when I bid the soldiers go below,Some ’neath the hatches, some beside the slaves,And bid them stack their muskets all in pilesBeside the foremast, covered by a sail,The captives guess my plan – I see their smilesAs down the waist the cozened troop defiles,Staggering and stumbling landsmen, faint and pale.I say, they guess my plan – to send beneathThe soldiers to the benches where the slavesSit, armed with eager nails and eager teeth —Hate’s nails and teeth more keen than Spanish glaives,Then wait until the tempest’s waxing mightShall reach its fiercest, mingling sea and sky,Then seize the key, unlock the slaves, and smiteThe sea-sick soldiers in their helpless plight,Then bid the Spaniards pull at oar or die.Past Ferrol Bay each galley ’gins to stoop,Shuddering before the Biscay demon’s breath.Down goes a prow – down goes a gaudy poop:‘The Don’s “Diana” bears the Don to death,’Quoth I, ‘and see the “Princess” plunge and wallowDown purple trough, o’er snowy crest of foam:See! see! the “Royal,” how she tries to followBy many a glimmering crest and shimmering hollow,Where gull and petrel scarcely dare to roam.’Now, three queen-galleys pass Cape Finisterre;The Armada, dreaming but of ocean-storms,Thinks not of mutineers with shoulders bare,Chained, bloody-wealed and pale, on galley-forms,Each rower murmuring o’er my whispered plan,Deep-burnt within his brain in words of fire,‘Rise, every man, to tear to death his man —Yea, tear as only galley-captives can,When God’s Revenge sings loud to ocean’s lyre.’Taller the spectre grows ’mid ocean’s din;The captain sees the Skeleton and pales:I give the sign: the slaves cry, ‘Ho for Gwynn!’‘Teach them,’ quoth I, ‘the way we grip in Wales.’And, leaping down where hateful boatswains shake,I win the key – let loose a storm of slaves:‘When captives hold the whip, let drivers quake,’They cry; ‘sit down, ye Dons, and row for Drake,Or drink to England’s Queen in foaming waves.’We leap adown the hatches; in the darkWe stab the Dons at random, till I seeA spark that trembles like a tinder-spark,Waxing and brightening, till it seems to beA fleshless skull, with eyes of joyful fire:Then, lo: a bony shape with lifted hands —A bony mouth that chants an anthem dire,O’ertopping groans, o’ertopping Ocean’s quire —A skeleton with Inca’s diadem stands!It sings the song I heard an Indian sing,Chained by the ruthless Dons to burn at stake,When priests of Tophet chanted in a ring,Sniffing man’s flesh at roast for Christ His sake.The Spaniards hear: they see: they fight no more;They cross their foreheads, but they dare not speak.Anon the spectre, when the strife is o’er,Melts from the dark, then glimmers as before,Burning upon the conquered galley’s beak.And now the moon breaks through the night, and showsThe ‘Royal’ bearing down upon our craft —Then comes a broadside close at hand, which strowsOur deck with bleeding bodies fore and aft.I take the helm; I put the galley near:We grapple in silver sheen of moonlit surge.Amid the ‘Royal’s’ din I laugh to hearThe curse of many a British mutineer,The crack, crack, crack of boatswain’s biting scourge.‘Ye scourge in vain,’ quoth I, ‘scourging for lifeSlaves who shall row no more to save the Don’;For from the ‘Royal’s’ poop, above the strife,Their captain gazes at our Skeleton!‘What! is it thou, Pirate of “El Dorado”?He shouts in English tongue. And there, behold!Stands he, the devil’s commodore, Medrado.‘Ay! ay!’ quoth I, ‘Spain owes me one strappadoFor scuttling Philip’s ship of stolen gold.’‘I come for that strappado now,’ quoth I.‘What means yon thing of burning bones?’ he saith.‘’Tis God’s Revenge cries, “Bloody Spain shall die!”The king of El Dorado’s name is Death.Strike home, ye slaves; your hour is coming swift,’I cry; ‘strong hands are stretched to save you now;Show yonder spectre you are worth the gift.’But when the ‘Royal,’ captured, rides adrift,I look: the skeleton hath left our prow.When all are slain, the tempest’s wings have fled,But still the sea is dreaming of the storm:Far down the offing glows a spot of red,My soul knows well it hath that Inca’s form.‘It lights,’ quoth I, ‘the red cross banner of SpainThere on the flagship where Medina sleeps —Hell’s banner, wet with sweat of Indian’s pain,And tears of women yoked to treasure train,Scarlet of blood for which the New World weeps.’There on the dark the flagship of the DonTo me seems luminous of the spectre’s glow;But soon an arc of gold, and then the sun,Rise o’er the reddening billows, proud and slow;Then, through the curtains of the morning mist,That take all shifting colours as they shake,I see the great Armada coil and twistMiles, miles along the ocean’s amethyst,Like hell’s old snake of hate – the winged snake.And, when the hazy veils of Morn are thinned,That snake accursed, with wings which swell and puffBefore the slackening horses of the wind,Turns into shining ships that tack and luff.‘Behold,’ quoth I, ‘their floating citadels,The same the priests have vouched for musket-proof,Caracks and hulks and nimble caravels,That sailed with us to sound of Lisbon bells —Yea, sailed from Tagus’ mouth, for Christ’s behoof.For Christ’s behoof they sailed: see how they goWith that red skeleton to show the wayThere sitting on Medina’s stem aglow —A hundred sail and forty-nine, men say;Behold them, brothers, galleon and galeasse —Their dizened turrets bright of many a plume,Their gilded poops, their shining guns of brass,Their trucks, their flags – behold them, how they pass —With God’s Revenge for figurehead – to Doom!’

Then Ben Jonson, the symposiarch, rises and calls upon Raleigh to tell the story of the defeat of the Great Armada. I can give only a stanza or two and the chorus: —