Classic Poem

O do you hear the argument, far up above the skies?
The voice of old Saint Peter, in expostulation rise?
Growing shrill, and ever shriller, at the thing that's being done;
More in sorrow than in anger, like our old Jack Robertson?
Old Saint Peter's had his troubles — heaps of troubles, great and small,
Since he kept the gates of Heaven — but this last one covers all!
It is not a crowing rooster — that's a sight and sound he's useter,
Simulated by some impish spirit that he knows full well;
It is simply Drake, of Devon, who is breaking out of Heaven,
With a crew of pirate brethren, to come down once more to Hell!

O do you hear the distant sound, that seems to come and go,
As thunder does in summer time, when faraway and low,
Or the " croon " beneath the church bells, when they're pealing from the tower —
And the church bells are the battle-call in this dark, anxious hour?
Do you feel the distant throbbing? Do you feel it go and come?
Like a war hymn on horizons, or a centuries-mellowed drum!
Hear it sobbing, hear it throbbing, like some not unhappy sobbing —
By the peaceful Devon landscape and the fair Devonian home!
By the land those spirits meet in — and it's Drake's Drum, spirit-beaten,
By perhaps the Rose of Sharon — and it's calling Drake to come?

O do you feel a cooling hand upon your fevered brow?
That dulls your ears to Hell's Own Din — or that worse Silence , now?
In the starlight in the Channel, while Destruction lurks below,
Or that Nether-Hell, the Stoke-hole, where you cannot see or know?
Do you feel a soothing presence, keeping sanity in one
Going mad, in Satan's Nightmare, where the gun-crew works the gun?
It is Raleigh! — Admiral-Poet, who had dreams though few may know it —
Who had dreams of England's greatness, otherwise than by the sea.
Sorrowful but all-forgiving, bringing courage to the living —
Raleigh's Spirit, not from London, but his Vanished Colony.

O do you feel a stony calm that you had never known
With comrades in the firing-line or " Sentry Go " alone,
When it's Hellfire all around you, and it's freezing slush below,
Or you pace in rain and darkness, with Old Death and " Sentry Go " —
Feel a cold determination that makes all but Now a blank,
That's half foreign to your nature, and half foreign to your rank?
It is Wellington, where French is, who has broken Heaven's trenches,
With his purple-blooded captains (who used purple language then )
Come to strengthen with his spirit all the coolness you inherit —
He who took the scum of Europe, and who trained them to be Men.