Book IX

Now like a white-cliffed fortress England shoneAmid the mirk of chaos; for the hugeEmpire of Spain was but the dusky vanOf that dread night beyond all nights and days,Night of the last corruption of a worldFast-bound in misery and iron, with chainsOf priest and king and feudal servitude,Night of the fettered flesh and ravaged soul,Night of anarchic chaos, darkening the deep,Swallowing up cities, kingdoms, empires, gods,With vaster gloom approaching, till the sunOf love was blackened, the moon of faith was blood.All round our England, our small struggling star,Fortress of freedom, rock o' the world's desire,Bearing at last the hope of all mankind,The thickening darkness surged, and close at handThose first fierce cloudy fringes of the storm,The Armada sails, gathered their might; and SpainCrouched close behind them with her screaming firesAnd steaming shambles, Spain, the hell-hag, crouched,Still grasping with red hand the cross of ChristBy its great hilt, pointing it like a dagger,Spear-head of the ultimate darkness, at the throatOf England. Under Philip's feet at lastWrithed all the Protestant Netherlands, dim coastsRight over against us, whence his panopliesMight suddenly whelm our isle. But all night long,On many a mountain, many a guardian height,From Beachy Head to Skiddaw, little groupsOf seamen, torch and battle-lanthorn nigh,Watched by the brooding unlit beacons, piledOf sun-dried gorse, funereal peat, rough logs,Reeking with oil, 'mid sharp scents of the sea,Waste trampled grass and heather and close-cropped thyme,High o'er the thundering coast, among whose rocksFar, far below, the pacing coastguards gazedSteadfastly seaward through the loaded dusk.And through that deepening gloom when, as it seemed,All England held her breath in one grim doubt,Swift rumours flashed from North to South as runsThe lightning round a silent thunder-cloud;And there were muttering crowds in the London streets,And hurrying feet in the brooding Eastern ports.All night, dark inns, gathering the country-side,Reddened with clashing auguries of war.All night, in the ships of Plymouth Sound, the soulOf Francis Drake was England, and all nightHer singing seamen by the silver quaysPolished their guns and waited for the dawn.

But hour by hour that night grew deeper. SpainWatched, cloud by cloud, her huge Armadas grow,Watched, tower by tower, and zone by zone, her fleetsGrapple the sky with a hundred hands and dragWhole sea-horizons into her menacing ranks,Joining her powers to the fierce night, while PhilipStill strove, with many a crafty word, to lullThe fears of Gloriana, till his plotsWere ripe, his armaments complete; and stillGreat Gloriana took her woman's way,Preferring ever tortuous intrigueTo battle, since the stakes had grown so great;Now, more than ever, hoping against hopeTo find some subtler means of victory;Yet not without swift impulses to strike,Swiftly recalled. Blind, yet not blind, she smiledOn Mary of Scotland waiting for her throne,A throne with many a strange dark tremor thrilledNow as the rumoured murderous mines belowConverged towards it, mine and countermine,Till the live earth was honeycombed with death.Still with her agate smile, still she delayed,Holding her pirate admiral in the leashTill Walsingham, nay, even the hunchback Burleigh,That crafty king of statesmen, seeing at lastThe inevitable thunder-crash at hand.Grew heart-sick with delay and ached to shatterThe tense tremendous hush that seemed to oppressAll hearts, compress all brows, load the broad nightWith more than mortal menace.

Only onceThe night was traversed with one lightning flash,One rapier stroke from England, at the heartOf Spain, as swiftly parried, yet no lessA fiery challenge; for Philip's hate and scornGrowing with his Armada's growth, he luredWith promises of just and friendly tradeA fleet of English corn-ships to relieveHis famine-stricken coast. There as they layWithin his ports he seized them, one and all,To fill the Armada's maw.

Whereat the Queen,Passive so long, summoned great Walsingham,And, still averse from open war, despiteThe battle-hunger burning in his eyes,With one strange swift sharp agate smile she hissed,"Unchain El Draque!"

A lightning flash indeedWas this; for he whose little Golden HyndeWith scarce a score of seamen late had scourgedThe Spanish Main; he whose piratic neckScarcely the Queen's most wily statecraft savedFrom Spain's revenge: he, privateer to the eyesOf Spain, but England to all English hearts,Gathered together, in all good jollity,All help and furtherance himself could wish,Before that moon was out, a pirate fleetWhereof the like old ocean had not seen--Eighteen swift cruisers, two great battleships,With pinnaces and store-ships and a forceOf nigh three thousand men, wherewith to singeThe beard o' the King of Spain.By night they gatheredIn marvellous wind-whipt inns nigh Plymouth Sound,Not secretly as, ere the Golden HyndeBurst thro' the West, that small adventurous crewGathered beside the Thames, tossing the phrase"Pieces of eight" from mouth to mouth, and singingGreat songs of the rich Indies, and those tallEnchanted galleons, red with blood and gold,Superb with rubies, glorious as clouds,Clouds in the sun, with mighty press of sailDragging the sunset out of the unknown world,And staining all the grey old seas of TimeWith rich romance; but these, though privateers,Or secret knights on Gloriana's quest,Recked not if round the glowing magic doorOf every inn the townsfolk grouped to hearThe storm-scarred seamen toasting Francis Drake,Nor heeded what blithe urchin faces pressedOn each red-curtained magic casement, brightWith wild reflection of the fires within,The fires, the glasses, and the singing lipsLifting defiance to the powers of Spain.