The Visions of England Part 10

Then sometimes on the soul, far off, how far!

Came back the shouting crowds, the cannon-roar, The latticed palace glittering like a star, The buoyant Thames, the green, sweet English sh.o.r.e, The heartful prayers, the fireside blaze and bliss, The little faces bright, and woman's last, last kiss.

--O yet, for all their misery, happy souls!

Happy in faith and love and fort.i.tude:-- For you, one thought of England dear controls All shrinking of the flesh at death so rude!

Though long at rest in that far Arctic grave, True sailor hero hearts, van of our bravest brave.

And one by one the North King's searching lance Touch'd, and they stiffen'd at their task, and died; And their stout leader glanced a farewell glance; 'G.o.d is as close by sea as land,' he cried, 'In His own light not nearer than this gloom,'-- And look'd as one who o'er the mountains sees his home.

Home!--happy sound of vanish'd happiness!

--But when the unwilling sun crept up again, And loosed the sea from winter and duresse, The seal-wrapt race that roams the Lapland main Saw in Arzina, wondering, fearing more, The tatter'd s.h.i.+ps, in snows entomb'd and vaulted o'er:

And clomb the decks, and found the gallant crew, As forms congeal'd to stone, where frozen fate Took each man in his turn, and gently slew:-- Nor knew the heroic chieftain, as he sate, English through every fibre, in his place, The smile of duty done upon the steadfast face.

Sir Hugh Willoughby, in the _Bona Esperanza_, with two other vessels, sailed May 10, 1553, saluting the palace of Greenwich is they pa.s.sed. By September 18 he, with one consort, reached the harbour of Arzina, where all perished early in 1554. His will, dated in January of that year, was found when the s.h.i.+ps were discovered by the Russians soon after.

Willoughby has been taken here as the representative of the great age of British naval adventure and exploration.

_Arzina_ is placed near the western headland of the White Sea, east of the Waranger Fiord, and west of Nova Zembla and the mouth of the Petchora.

CROSSING SOLWAY

May 16: 1568

Blow from the North, thou bitter North wind, Blow over the western bay, Where Nith and Eden and Esk run in And fight with the salt sea spray, And the sun s.h.i.+nes high through the sailing sky In the freshness of blue Mid-may.

Blow North-North-West, and hollow the sails Of a Queen who slips over the sea As a hare from the hounds; and her covert afar; And now she can only flee; And death before and the sisterly sh.o.r.e That smiles perfidiously.

O Mid-may freshness about her cheek And piercing her poor attire, The sting of defeat thou canst not allay, The fever of heart and the fire, The death-despair for the days that were, And famine of vain desire!

--On Holyrood stairs an iron-heel'd clank Came up in the gloaming hour: And iron fingers have bursten the bar Of the palace innermost bower: And fiend-like on her the Douglas and Ker And spectral Ruthven glower.

She hears the shriek as the Morton horde Hurry the victim beneath; And she feels their dead man's grasp on her skirt In the frenzy-terror of death; And the dastard King at her bosom cling With a serpent's poison-breath.

O fair girl Queen, well weep for the friend To his faith too faithful and thee; For a brother's hypocrite tears; for the flight To the Castle set by the sea;-- Where thy father's tomb lay and gaped in the gloom 'Twere better for thee to be!

O better at rest where the crooning dove May sing requiem o'er thy bed, Sweet Robin aflame with love's sign on his breast With quick light footstep tread; While over the sod the Birds of G.o.d Their guardian feathers outspread!

Too womanly sweet, too womanly frail, Alone in thy faith and thy need; In the homeless home, in the poisonous air Of spite and libel and greed; Mid perfidy's net thy pathway is set, And thy feet in the pitfalls bleed.

--O lightnings, not lightnings of Heaven, that flare Through the desolate House in the Field!

Craft that the Fiend had envied in vain; Till the terrible Day unreveal'd,-- Till the Angels rejoice at the Verdict-voice, And Mary's pardon is seal'd!

As a bird from the mesh of the fowler freed With wild wing shatters the air, From shelter to shelter, betray'd, she flees, Or lured to some treacherous lair, And the vulture-cry of the enemy nigh, And the heavens dark with despair!

Bright lily of France, by the storm stricken low, A sunbeam thou seest through the shade Where Order and Peace are throned 'neath the smile Of a royal sisterly Maid:-- For hope in the breast of the girl has her nest, Ever trusting, and ever betray'd.

Brave womanly heart that, beholding the sh.o.r.e, Beholds her own grave unaware,-- Though the days to come their shame should unveil Yet onward she still would dare!

Though the meadows smile with statesmanly guile, And the cuckoo's call is a snare!

Turn aside, O Queen, from the cruel land, From the greedy sh.o.r.e turn away; From shame upon shame:--But most shame for those On their pa.s.sionate captive who play With a subtle net, hope enwoven with threat, Hung out to tempt her astray!

Poor scape-goat of crimes, where,--her part what it may,-- So tortured, so hunted to die, Foul age of deceit and of hate,--on her head Least stains of gore-guiltiness lie; To the hearts of the just her blood from the dust Not in vain for mercy will cry.

Poor scape-goat of nations and faiths in their strife So cruel,--and thou so fair!

Poor girl!--so, best, in her misery named,-- Discrown'd of two kingdoms, and bare; Not first nor last on this one was cast The burden that others should share.

--When the race is convened at the great a.s.size And the last long trumpet-call, If Woman 'gainst Man, in her just appeal, At the feet of the Judge should fall, O the cause were secure;--the sentence sure!

--But she will forgive him all!--

O keen heart-hunger for days that were; Last look at a vanis.h.i.+ng sh.o.r.e!

In two short words all bitterness summ'd, That _Has been_ and _Nevermore_!

Nor with one caress will Mary bless, Nor look on the babe she bore!

Blow, bitter wind, with a cry of death, Blow over the western bay: The suns.h.i.+ne is gone from the desolate girl, And before is the doomster-day, And the saw-dust red with the heart's-blood shed In the shambles of Fotheringay.

Mary of Scotland is one of the five or six figures in our history who rouse an undying personal interest. Volumes have been and will be written on her:--yet if we put aside the distorting mists of national and political and theological partisans.h.i.+p, the common laws of human nature will give an easy clue to her conduct and that of her enemies.

Her flight from Scotland, as the turning-point in Mary's unhappy and pathetic career, has been here chosen for the moment whence to survey it.

_On Holyrood stairs_; Riccio was murdered on March 9, 1566. Mary's exclamation when she heard of his death next day, _No more tears_; _I will think upon a revenge_, is the sufficient explanation,--in a great degree should be the sufficient justification, with those who still hold her an accomplice in the death of Darnley and the marriage with Bothwell,--(considering the then lawless state of Scotland, the complicity of the leading n.o.bles, the hopelessness of justice)--of her later conduct whilst Queen.

_The friend_; In Riccio's murder the main determinant was his efficiency in aiding Mary towards a Roman Catholic reaction, which might have deprived a large body of powerful n.o.bles of the church lands. The death of Riccio (Mary's most faithful friend) prevented this: the death of Darnley became necessary to secure the position gained.

_A brother's hypocrite tears_; Murray, in whose interest Riccio was murdered, and whose privity to the murder (as afterwards to that of Darnley) is reasonably, though indirectly, proved, affected to shed tears on seeing his sister. Next day she learned the details of the plot, and her half-brother's share in it.

_The flight_; Mary then fled by a secret pa.s.sage from Holyrood Palace through the Abbey Church, the royal tombs which had been broken open by the revolutionary mob of 1559.

_The Castle_; Dunbar.

_Till the terrible Day unreveal'd_; See _Appendix_ A.

SIDNEY AT ZUTPHEN

October 2: 1586

1

Where Guelderland outspreads Her green wide water-meads Laced by the silver of the parted Rhine; Where round the horizon low The waving millsails go, And poplar avenues stretch their pillar'd line; That morn a clinging mist uncurl'd Its folds o'er South-Fen town, and blotted out the world.

2

There, as the gray dawn broke, Cloked by that ghost-white cloke, The fifty knights of England sat in steel; Each man all ear, for eye Could not his nearest spy; And in the mirk's dim hiding heart they feel, --Feel more than hear,--the signal sound Of tramp and hoof and wheel, and guns that bruise the ground.