Classic Poem

Three times, great England, thou in arms hast braved
Despots who aimed at universal sway
O'er Europe's field; three times thy might hath saved
The nations when they prostrate lay;
Alone wast thou when countless sails of Spain,
Like storm-clouds from the hidden main,
Clomb the slow winds to ravage thee;
When Toleration, latest child of man,
The modern age, whose story then began,
Were perilled in thy jeopardy.

Alone wast thou when Louis let his hordes
Of polished demons o'er the fainting lands;
The south and centre shrunk beneath their sword,
And held forth supplicating hands:
Alone wast thou when first Napoleon flamed
Mid Alpine wastes before untamed:
When the volcano burst the snow,
And streams of fire displaced the glacial rest,
Old manners passed, old kings were dispossessed:
alone serene and great wast thou.

II

The idea of empire from the Caesars came;
It haunteth still the earth: by might to reign
On freedom's neck; — this was the Roman's claim;
This thought inspired Charlemagne
Miraculous tradition! now it serves
To grasp the earth with iron nerves,
To civilize, to cultivate:
Anon, it vaunts not any good to bear,
Its aim confessed to spoil, to crush, to tear,
Its sinews are but strength and hate.

Its bands its hireling armies, it invades
The homes which freedom labours to increase;
Its lying conclaves work in noisome shades,
Its bloodhounds bay the flocks of peace.
And now the Bourbons, come to royal state,
The old tradition fulminate;
Begins their tyranny at home
From Richelieu and more subtle Mazarin,
Then iron arms are stretched the world to win,
And Paris is the modern Rome.

Louis, third Bourbon, what a work was thine!
To burn the world for carnivals of light,
To slaughter nations that the town might dine;
Augustus of the world polite!
Around thee wait thy wondrous valetaille,
Europe is governed by Versailles!
Luxembourg, Catinat, Vendome,
Bind victory on thy banners, Vauban rings
With forts thy kingdom, dexterous Louvois wings
Thy legions o'er the world to roam.

First to transform the vague mobility
Of Gallic nature into something fixed;
Creator of the France which now we see,
Of weakness and of strength commixed,
Towards foes an armed Meduse with eyes that burn,
While inward poisons slowly turn
To snakes her tresses bright: behold
E'en now she spreads in world-wide victory,
While seeds of revolution secretly
Within her fated form unfold.

Deal forth thy miracles! Almost in vain
Doth William league the nations in thy way;
King of noblesse; yet, hark, the winds complain
O'er tilth and homestead made a prey;
And sees not, while it fawns, thy tinsel train
In purblind alley, filthy lane,
The night-lamps swinging o'er the breath
Of million faces, white and fierce with want?
These shall arise from travail grim and gaunt,
And drive thy race to cursed death.

For hunger gnaws the land; her children swoon,
Her grass-fed hinds stand weakly 'neath the trees,
While bickering chariot of some mighty one
Whirls in the white dust along the leas
And tyrannous oppression strikes the right
Of man in man with cruel blight:
And most unnatural is grown
The aspect of the time, and fraught with fear,
Hollow submissions, compacts insincere,
Domestic wrongs still let alone.

Could then thy royal looks so ill discern
The rising signs of that dark working sky,
That thou to foreign wars thy strength must turn,
Regardless of the evils nigh?
Oh shame of kings, hadst thou no lands to till,
That thou abroad must spoil and kill?
Placed in the forehead of that age
Which broke from night with energy divine,
Could then thy royal looks no more design
Than aggrandisive war to wage?

Yet thou didst fare in triumph, adding still
Province to province, till the century
Which closed with death of William, did fulfil
Thy haughty mandates utterly;
And saw thy flaming sceptre carried far
Into receding fields of war;
Thy tyrannous exactions wrung
From distant realms: thy empire hugely raised;
An empire which the coming age displaced,
And wide its shivered fragments flung.

For thou wast doomed, mature in empiry,
To see thy visioned grandeur flit in air:
Wouldst thou with Albion's flag divide the sea?
La Hogue remands thee to despair:
Or wouldst thou taste the sweets of triumph won?
The eighteenth age is now begun;
And where is thy Turenne? oh, where
Luxembourg, for thy need is sore? Behold
This age brings forth reversal of things old,

III

Oh, Marlborough, name traduced by little men,
But by the great revered; capacious soul,
'twas thine o'er warring elements to reign,
And chaos into order roll:
Thine to maintain our great tradition brought
From out the glorious past, and taught
To tyranny in blood and fire:
England's tradition, that no man shall do
Tyrannic deed unchecked; this creed so true
Pass ever on to son from sire!

Do thou, great England, bid the mists depart
By slander blown, that hide thy son from thee;
And clasp thy hero closer to thy heart;
Forgive, if aught for pardon be;
So he forgave who stood most injured in
The hero's hesitating sin;
When none discerned where safety lay,
And the grim headsman in the unsettled rage
Of faction, raving through the lawless age,
Awaited him who missed the way.

Yes, he forgave who unto death pursued
The self-same walk, who banded in the path
Of France the nations of the northern blood,
And in mid battle poured their wrath:
No foot stern William found so firm to tread
The devious paths in which he led;
No hand to hold the force allied;
Who best, they asked him, should supply his need;
Who best to counsels and to arms succeed;
He pointed them to thee, and died.

Rise then our hero, lift thy regal front
Above the obscuring dusty cloud; alike
Are grains of dust; their multitude is wont
A cloud upon the eyes to strike:
So hast thou been obscured by atomies
Which whirl their sameness in our eyes:
'tis sad to know that once he fell
At mercy of a momentary need;
Yet grant his greatness its eternal meed;
This is our duty, this is well.

IV

He found our England scorned of Europe's kings,
He left her arbiter of Europe's fate:
An angel's patience and an angel's wings,
As swift to fly, as calm to wait:
A lion's heart; his eyes of lofty sway,
And full of watchful knowledge, play
O'er courts and camps; the varied scene,
Splendid and agitated, owns the grace
Of that wide brow, that most majestic face,
Composed and steadfastly serene.

In stricter league the powers to join, to assuage
Their jealousies by over-mastering tact,
This his first office; then, the war to wage
Like martial music, act on act.
At his command the smouldering war outburns,
Gigantic grown, at once returns
From old Batavia to the banks
Of Danube: lo, that march sublime he heads
O'er which old history still exults; he spreads
Through realms unknown his steady ranks.
The Schelenburg and Blenheim! Greater name
We write not on our scroll since Agincourt;
Then was the keynote struck of war and fame —
And crushed an army consular:
The music of the faultless battle rung
Through every nation, every tongue;
England had trembled from afar,
Her army gulphed in German forest dim:
The sound of triumph rose, an empire's hymn;
Its splendour rose, a lurid star.

The faultless battle rose, and changed and fell
Beneath thy master hand from side to side
Of that wide field; more subtly changeable
Conflict did hero never guide:
Who knows not how the sidelong wave doth pour
Its bulk upon its space of shore?
So poured thy host successively
Not over subject sands, but bristling fosse
And rampart huge: the rivers wide they cross,
And scale in fire the summits high.

Why do we muse on battles long ago,
Why summon discord from an ancient grave?
It is because a people's life doth grow
Resurgent from the buried brave:
It is because a people's very life
Is only known in deadly strife;
Because in days of lethargy
Its high resolves from this a people draws —
The grand remembrance of the righteous cause,
And of the rightful victory.

Therefore shall England ever feel the pride
Of those vast triumphs which she shared with thee,
Marlborough, when skill supreme her force did guide,
When wisdom framed her policy:
As often as the wounded victors rose
From the slain bodies of their foes,
So oft by thee prevailed the right;
Thou, only soldier that did never fail,
Thou, sounder of the battle's dreadful scale,
Thou, darter of the thundrous light.

V

For year by year from thy resistless hands
Some bolt of battle fell until the foe,
From false Bavaria through the Netherlands,
Fled in successive overthrow:
Until the Gallic soil profaned lay
By legions marching on their way
Toward the spoiler's capital;
And Louis in his evil day beheld
His vast ambitions on his head repelled,
And vengeance on the wicked fall.

Count out the tale of battle, Villeroy,
Boufflers, Vendome, or Villars; chiefs of fame,
Victors o'er all beside; your victor joy
Pales in disaster at his name.
Sent forth successive to the scene of war,
Ye could not check, ye could not bar:
Count out the tale: — Guard well thy lines,
Oh Villeroy, along the gentle Meuse:
Great cities are thy forts; with mighty thews
Thy army their defence combines.

Behold that army hurled from point to point,
Dashed from defences where they had defied
Our utmost; like a snake torn joint from joint,
And struggling o'er the champaign wide.
Re-form them, and the marsh of Ramillies
Next year thy heavy columns sees
Pressed earthwards in their helpless mass,
Crushed by the cannonade, like herd at bay
Hounded together, bloodily to pay
Their passage from that fell morass.

Thou next, Vendome; of many a victor day
The wreath hath been thine own; thine utmost now
Thy king demands; thine utmost now essay,
The chief of all his captains thou.
He comes: behold the gathered hosts again
Traversing Holland's watered plain,
Amid the gentle slopes that guard
The bounds of France; again they join the fray;
The dust of marching men, the smoke-wreaths sway
Above the ring of Oudenarde.

There, circling round and round the Gallic host,
Our squadrons hemmed them still in narrower room;
The combat did but swell when light was lost,
Thick-volleyed flashes pierced the gloom:
That amphitheatre of death appeared
A vast volcano, while careered,
But half illumed, the thund'rous pall,
And the black shapes of war were instant seen:
Fly, Vendome, fly beneath night's friendly screen,
The shameful rout is past recall.

Shall Lille foreclose the sacred soil of France,
High lifted up upon the midnight sky
Above the clustered fires that still advance,
The trenches opened still more nigh?
Nay, Boufflers; though the assault more carnage shows
Than the red night of Badajos;
Though Vendome strive the garrison
To succour, hovering round in dyke and fen,
Cold with the coming winter; all in vain;
The mighty frontier fort is won.

Now, Louis, draw thy latest army round;
" Send Villars, " the unconquered; he may show
The vengeful fires that spring from holy ground;
And Villars moves to meet the foe.
Strong his position, mighty his array,
Alas, the dawn is Malplaquet!
Oh victors, Marlborough and Eugene,
Through those wide-shattered ranks may prophet eye
The fair unbounded fields of France descry,
Yea, Paris is defenceless seen.

VI.

Nought shall prevent our hero; quick he forms
His project vast; high glories are in store,
Oh England; Villars' arm nor winter's storms
An instant shall delay the war: —
What? — dares a common hand to interpose,
Ere victor with the vanquished close?
To take thy master from thy head,
Oh patient England, when the hour was near
In which it seemed that all thy toil severe
By such a spoil should be repaid?

Patience of heaven! the tale is old; 'twas so:
Men basely use their greatest even now:
Still works the fool the hero's overthrow,
The ox and ass together plough:
Home, warrior, home; thy glorious toils resign,
For thankless enemies combine,
As hounds the nobler lion bay:
The passions of the factions so are seethed,
Utrecht shall sell the meed by arms bequeathed,
And tongues thy mighty deeds unsay.

Home, warrior, home; uplift thy awful face,
Time-worn and battle-furrowed, in the rout;
Attest thine innocence in lordly place,
With words pathetic silence doubt:
Give calumny the lie, bid placemen quail,
If virtue may to this prevail;
Then sink with decent majesty;
Gather thy darkness from their wretched light,
Too great with them to wage resentful fight,
And in retirement sternly die.

What comfort may we find save this, that now,
As ever she hath been, was England stayed
Upon her adversary's overthrow;
Content her generous peace she made;
She would not subjugate, she would but strive
Unchecked ambition back to drive;
Then, like her hero, satisfied,
Too proud to exact the utmost and too just
To found dominion on ambitious lust,
In acquiescence calm who died.

Yet thee, the greatest of that age of men,
Shall earth forget not; nay, she shall require
In after time thy work unfinished, when
Outflames once more tyrannic fire:
When kingly lust of empire drives the Gaul
His neighbour nations to enthral,
When famine wastes the fields of spring,
When Revolution bursts in myriad force; —
In that Red Sea the rider and his horse
Are cast, and struggle perishing.