"The sands and yeasty surges mix
In caves about the dreary bay,
And on thy ribs the limpet sticks,

And in thy heart the scrawl shall play."
"Fool," he answer'd, "death is sure

To those that stay and those that roam,
But I will nevermore endure

To sit with empty hands at home.

"My mother clings about my neck,

My sisters crying, 'Stay for shame;'
My father raves of death and wreck,

They are all to blame, they are all to blame.

"God help me! save I take my part

Of danger on the roaring sea,

A devil rises in my heart,

Far worse than any death to me."

[From Idylls of the King: Guinevere]

ARTHUR'S FAREWELL

He paused, and in the pause she crept an inch
Nearer, and laid her hands about his feet.
Far off a solitary trumpet blew.

Then waiting by the doors the warhorse neigh’d
As at a friend's voice, and he spake again:

"Yet think not that I come to urge thy crimes, I did not come to curse thee, Guinevere,

I, whose vast pity almost makes me die

To see thee, laying there thy golden head,

My pride in happier summers, at my feet.

The wrath which forced my thoughts on that fierce law, The doom of treason and the flaming death,

(When first I learnt thee hidden here) is past.

The pang-which while I weigh'd thy heart with one
Too wholly true to dream untruth in thee,
Made my tears burn-is also past-in part.

And all is past, the sin is sinn'd, and I,

Lo! I forgive thee, as Eternal God

Forgives: do thou for thine own soul the rest.
But how to take last leave of all I loved?
O golden hair, with which I used to play
Not knowing! O imperial-moulded form,
And beauty such as never woman wore,
Until it came a kingdom's curse with thee—
I cannot touch thy lips, they are not mine,
But Lancelot's: nay, they never were the King's.
I cannot take thy hand; that too is flesh,

And in the flesh thou hast sinn'd; and mine own flesh,
Here looking down on thine polluted, cries

'I loathe thee:' yet not less, O Guinevere,
For I was ever virgin save for thee,

My love thro' flesh hath wrought into my life
So far, that my doom is, I love thee still.
Let no man dream but that I love thee still.
Perchance, and so thou purify thy soul,
And so thou lean on our fair father Christ,
Hereafter in that world where all are pure
We two may meet before high God, and thou
Wilt spring to me, and claim me thine, and know
I am thine husband-not a smaller soul,

Nor Lancelot, nor another.

Leave me that,

I charge thee, my last hope. Now must I hence.
Thro' the thick night I hear the trumpet blow:
They summon me their King to lead mine hosts
Far down to that great battle in the west,
Where I must strike against the man they call
My sister's son-no kin of mine, who leagues

With Lords of the White Horse, heathen, and knights,
Traitors and strike him dead, and meet myself
Death, or I know not what mysterious doom.

And thou remaining here wilt learn the event;
But hither shall I never come again,

Never lie by thy side; see thee no more-
Farewell!"

And while she grovell'd at his feet,

She felt the King's breath wander o'er her neck,
And in the darkness o'er her fallen head,
Perceived the waving of his hands that blest.

THE REVENGE

A BALLAD OF THE FLEET

I

At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay,

And a pinnace, like a flutter'd bird, came flying from far away:
"Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted fifty-three!"
Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: "Fore God I am no coward;
But I cannot meet them here, for my ships are out of gear,
And the half my men are sick. I must fly, but follow quick.
We are six ships of the line; can we fight with fifty-three?"

II

Then spake Sir Richard Grenville: "I know you are no coward; You fly them for a moment to fight with them again.

But I've ninety men and more that are lying sick ashore.

I should count myself the coward if I left them, my Lord Howard, To these Inquisition dogs and the devildoms of Spain."

III

So Lord Howard past away with five ships of war that day,
Till he melted like a cloud in the silent summer heaven;

But Sir Richard bore in hand all his sick men from the land
Very carefully and slow,

Men of Bideford in Devon,

And we laid them on the ballast down below;

For we brought them all aboard,

And they blest him in their pain, that they were not left to Spain, To the thumbscrew and the stake, for the glory of the Lord.

IV

He had only a hundred seamen to work the ship and to fight, And he sailed away from Flores till the Spaniard came in sight, With his huge sea-castles heaving upon the weather bow.

"Shall we fight or shall we fly?

Good Sir Richard, tell us now,

For to fight is but to die!

There 'll be little of us left by the time this sun be set.”
And Sir Richard said again: "We be all good English men.
Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the devil,
For I never turn'd my back upon Don or devil yet."

V

Sir Richard spoke and he laugh'd, and we roar'd a hurrah, and so
The little Revenge ran on sheer into the heart of the foe,
With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below;
For half of their fleet to the right and half to the left were seen,
And the little Revenge ran on thro' the long sea-lane between.

VI

Thousands of their soldiers look'd down from their decks and laugh'd,

Thousands of their seamen made mock at the mad little craft
Running on and on, till delay'd

By their mountain-like San Philip that, of fifteen hundred tons,
And up-shadowing high above us with her yawning tiers of guns,
Took the breath from our sails, and we stay'd.

VII

And while now the great San Philip hung above us like a cloud Whence the thunderbolt will fall

Long and loud,

Four galleons drew away

From the Spanish fleet that day,

And two upon the larboard and two upon the starboard lay,
And the battle-thunder broke from them all.

VIII

But anon the great San Philip, she bethought herself and went
Having that within her womb that had left her ill content;
And the rest they came aboard us, and they fought us hand to
hand,

For a dozen times they came with their pikes and musqueteers,
And a dozen times we shook 'em off as a dog that shakes his ears,
When he leaps from the water to the land.

IX

And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea,

But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fiftythree.

Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons came,

Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-thunder and flame;

Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and her shame.

For some were sunk and many were shatter'd, and so could fight us

no more

God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the world before?

X

For he said "Fight on! fight on!"

Tho' his vessel was all but a wreck;

And it chanced that, when half of the short summer night was

gone,

With a grisly wound to be drest he had left the deck,

But a bullet struck him that was dressing it suddenly dead,
And himself he was wounded again in the side and the head,
And he said "Fight on! fight on!"

XI

And the night went down, and the sun smiled out far over the

summer sea,

And the Spanish fleet with broken sides lay round us all in a ring;

But they dared not touch us again, for they fear'd that we still could sting,

So they watch'd what the end would be.

And we had not fought them in vain,

But in perilous plight were we,

Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain,

And half of the rest of us maim'd for life

In the crash of the cannonades and the desperate strife;