The Armada III

The wings of the south-west wind are widened; the breath of hisfervent lips,More keen than a sword's edge, fiercer than fire, falls full on theplunging ships.The pilot is he of their northward flight, their stay and theirsteersman he;A helmsman clothed with the tempest, and girdled with strength toconstrain the sea.And the host of them trembles and quails, caught fast in his handas a bird in the toils;For the wrath and the joy that fulfil him are mightier than man's,whom he slays and spoils.And vainly, with heart divided in sunder, and labour of waveringwill,The lord of their host takes counsel with hope if haply their starshine still,If haply some light be left them of chance to renew and redeem thefray;But the will of the black south-wester is lord of the councils ofwar to-day.One only spirit it quells not, a splendour undarkened of chance ortime;Be the praise of his foes with Oquendo for ever, a name as a starsublime.But here what aid in a hero's heart, what help in his hand may be?For ever the dark wind whitens and blackens the hollows and heightsof the sea,And galley by galley, divided and desolate, founders; and nonetakes heed,Nor foe nor friend, if they perish; forlorn, cast off in theiruttermost need,They sink in the whelm of the waters, as pebbles by children fromshoreward hurled,In the North Sea's waters that end not, nor know they a bourn butthe bourn of the world.Past many a secure unavailable harbour, and many a loud stream'smouth,Past Humber and Tees and Tyne and Tweed, they fly, scourged on fromthe south,And torn by the scourge of the storm-wind that smites as a harpersmites on a lyre,And consumed of the storm as the sacrifice loved of their God isconsumed with fire,And devoured of the darkness as men that are slain in the fires ofhis love are devoured,And deflowered of their lives by the storms, as by priests is thespirit of life deflowered.For the wind, of its godlike mercy, relents not, and hounds themahead to the north,With English hunters at heel, till now is the herd of them past theForth,All huddled and hurtled seaward; and now need none wage war uponthese,Nor huntsmen follow the quarry whose fall is the pastime sought ofthe seas.Day upon day upon day confounds them, with measureless mists thatswell,With drift of rains everlasting and dense as the fumes of ascendinghell.The visions of priest and of prophet beholding his enemies bruisedof his rodBeheld but the likeness of this that is fallen on the faithful, thefriends of God.Northward, and northward, and northward they stagger and shudderand swerve and flit,Dismantled of masts and of yards, with sails by the fangs of thestorm-wind split.But north of the headland whose name is Wrath, by the wrath or theruth of the sea,They are swept or sustained to the westward, and drive through therollers aloof to the lee.Some strive yet northward for Iceland, and perish: but some throughthe storm-hewn straitsThat sunder the Shetlands and Orkneys are borne of the breath whichis God's or fate's:And some, by the dawn of September, at last give thanks as forstars that smile,For the winds have swept them to shelter and sight of the cliffs ofa Catholic isle.Though many the fierce rocks feed on, and many the mercilessheretic slays,Yet some that have laboured to land with their treasure aretrustful, and give God praise.And the kernes of murderous Ireland, athirst with a greedeverlasting of blood,Unslakable ever with slaughter and spoil, rage down as a raveningflood,To slay and to flay of their shining apparel their brethren whomshipwreck spares;Such faith and such mercy, such love and such manhood, such handsand such hearts are theirs.Short shrift to her foes gives England, but shorter doth Ireland tofriends; and worseFare they that came with a blessing on treason than they that comewith a curse.Hacked, harried, and mangled of axes and skenes, three thousandnaked and deadBear witness of Catholic Ireland, what sons of what sires at herbreasts are bred.Winds are pitiful, waves are merciful, tempest and storm are kind:The waters that smite may spare, and the thunder is deaf, and thelightning is blind:Of these perchance at his need may a man, though they know it not,yet find grace;But grace, if another be hardened against him, he gets not at thisman's face.For his ear that hears and his eye that sees the wreck and the wailof men,And his heart that relents not within him, but hungers, are like asthe wolf's in his den.Worthy are these to worship their master, the murderous Lord oflies,Who hath given to the pontiff his servant the keys of the pit andthe keys of the skies.Wild famine and red-shod rapine are cruel, and bitter with bloodare their feasts;But fiercer than famine and redder than rapine the hands and thehearts of priests.God, God bade these to the battle; and here, on a land by hisservants trod,They perish, a lordly blood-offering, subdued by the hands of theservants of God.These also were fed of his priests with faith, with the milk of hisword and the wine;These too are fulfilled with the spirit of darkness that guidedtheir quest divine.And here, cast up from the ravening sea on the mild land's mercifulbreast,This comfort they find of their fellows in worship; this guerdon istheirs of their quest.Death was captain, and doom was pilot, and darkness the chart oftheir way;Night and hell had in charge and in keeping the host of the foes ofday.Invincible, vanquished, impregnable, shattered, a sign to her foesof fear,A sign to the world and the stars of laughter, the fleet of theLord lies here.Nay, for none may declare the place of the ruin wherein she lies;Nay, for none hath beholden the grave whence never a ghost shallrise.The fleet of the foemen of England hath found not one but athousand graves;And he that shall number and name them shall number by name and bytale the waves.