The Visions of England Part 16

The last ten years of Milton's life were pa.s.sed at his house situate in the (then) 'Artillery Walk,' Bunhill, near Aldersgate. He is described as a spare figure, of middle stature or a little less, who walked, generally clothed in a gray camblet overcoat, in the streets between Bunhill and Little Britain.

_Vergil_; placed first as most like Milton in consummate art and permanent exquisiteness of phrase. It is to him, also, (if to any one), that Milton is metrically indebted.--The other poets cla.s.sed as 'Imperial' are Homer, Sappho, Archilochus, Dante, Shakespeare. The supremacy in rank which the writer has here ventured to limit to these seven poets, (though with a strong feeling of diffidence in view of certain other h.e.l.lenic and Roman claims), is a.s.signed to Sappho and Archilochus, less on account of the scanty fragments, though they be 'more golden than gold,' which have reached us, than in confidence that the place collateral with Homer, given them by their countrymen (who criticized as admirably as they created), was, in fact, justified by their poetry.

_The dream_; Dante's political wishes and speculations, wholly opposed to Milton's, are, however, like his in their impracticable originality.

_Theophany_; Vision of the G.o.ds.

WHITEHALL GALLERY

February 11: 1655

As when the King of old 'Mid Babylonian gold, And picture-woven walls, and lamps that gleam'd Unholy radiance, sate, And with some smooth slave-mate Toy'd, and the wine laugh'd round, and music stream'd Voluptuous undulation, o'er the hall,-- Till on the palace-wall

Forth came a hand divine And wrote the judgment-sign, And Babylon fell!--So now, in that his place Of Tudor-Stuart pride, The golden gallery wide, 'Mid venal beauty's lavish-arm'd embrace, And hills of gambler-gold, a G.o.dless King Moved through the revelling

With quick brown falcon-eye And lips of gay reply; Wise in the wisdom not from Heaven!--as one Who from his exile-days Had learn'd to scorn the praise Of truth, the crown by martyr-virtue won: Below ambition:--Grant him regal ease!

The rest, as fate may please!

--O royal heir, restored Not by the bitter sword, But when the heart of these great realms in free, Full, triple, unison beat The Martyr's son to greet, Her ancient law and faith and flag with thee Rethroned,--not thus!--in this inglorious hall Of harem-festival,

Not thus!--For even now, The blaze is on thy brow Scored by the shadowy hand of him whose wing Knows neither haste nor rest; Who from the board each guest In season calling,--knight and kerne and king,-- Where Arthur lies, and Alfred, signs the way;-- --We know him, and obey.

Lord Macaulay's lively description of this scene (_Hist_. Ch iv) should be referred to. 'Even then,' he says, 'the King had complained that he did not feel well.'

_Tudor-Stuart_; This famous Gallery was of sixteenth-century date.

_When the heart_; The weariness of England under the triple yoke of Puritanism, the Independents, and the Protector, has been already noticed: (Note on p. 125).

'The Restoration,' says Professor Seeley, in an able essay on current perversions of seventeenth-century-history, 'was not a return to servitude, but the precise contrary. It was a great emanc.i.p.ation, an exodus out of servitude into liberty . . . As to the later Stuarts, I regard them as pupils of Cromwell: . . . it was their great ambition to appropriate his methods,' (and, we may add, to follow his foreign policy in regard to France and Holland), for the benefit of the old monarchy.

They failed where their model had succeeded, and the distinction of having enslaved England remained peculiar to Cromwell.'

THE BALLAD OF KING MONMOUTH

1685

_Fear not_, _my child, though the days be dark_, _Never fear_, _he will come again_, _With the long brown hair_, _and the banner blue_, _King Monmouth and all his men_!

The summer-smiling bay Has doff'd its vernal gray; A peac.o.c.k breast of emerald shot with blue: Is it peace or war that lands On these pale quiet sands, As round the pier the boats run-in their silent crew?

Bent knee, and forehead bare; That moment was for prayer!

Then swords flash out, and--Monmouth!--is the cry: The crumbling cliff o'erpast, The hazard-die is cast, 'Tis James 'gainst James in arms! Soho! and Liberty!

--_Fear not, my child, though he come with few_; _Alone will he come again_; _G.o.d with him, and his right hand more strong_ _Than a thousand thousand men_!

They file by Colway now; They rise o'er Uplyme brow; And faithful Taunton hails her hero-knight: And girlhood's agile hand Weaves for the patriot band The crown-emblazon'd flag, their gathering star of fight.

--Ah flag of shame and woe!

For not by these who go, Scythe-men and club-men, foot and hunger-worn, These levies raw and rude, Can England be subdued, Or that ancestral throne from its foundations torn!

Yet by the dour deep trench Their mettle did not blench, When mist and midnight closed o'er sad Sedgemoor; Though on those hearts of oak The tall cuira.s.siers broke, And Afric's tiger-bands sprang forth with sullen roar:

Though the loud cannon plane Death's lightning-riven lane, Levelling that unskill'd valour, rude, unled: --Yet happier in their fate Than whom the war-fiends wait To rend them limb from limb, the gibbet-withering dead!

--_Yet weep not, my child, though the dead be dead_, _And the wounded rise not again_!

_For they are with G.o.d who for England fought_, _And they bore them as Englishmen_.

Stout hearts, and sorely tried!

--But he, for whom they died, Skulk'd like the wolf in Cranborne, torn and gaunt:-- Till, dragg'd and bound, he knelt To one no prayers could melt, Nor bond of blood, nor fear of fate, from vengeance daunt.

--O hill of death and gore, Fast by the tower'd sh.o.r.e, What wealth of precious blood is thine, what tears!

What calmly fronted scorn; What pangs, not vainly borne!

For heart beats hot with heart, and human grief endears!

--_Then weep not, my child, though the days be dark_; _Fear not; He will come again_, _With Arthur and Harold and good Saint George_, _King Monmouth and all his men_!

Monmouth's invasion forms one of the most brilliant,--perhaps the most brilliant,--of Lord Macaulay's narratives. But many curious details are added in the _History_ by Mr. G Roberts (1844).

The belief, which this poem represents, that 'King Monmouth,' as he was called in the West, would return, lasted long. He landed in Lyme Bay, June 11, 1685, between the Cobb (Harbour-pier) and the beginning of the Ware cliffs: marching north, after a few days, by the road which left the ruins of Colway House on the right and led over Uplyme to Axminster.

_Soho_; the watch-word on Monmouth's side at Sedgemoor; his London house was in the Fields, (now Square), bearing that name.

_Faithful Taunton_; here the Puritan spirit was strong; and here Monmouth was persuaded to take the t.i.tle of king (June 20), symbolized by the flag which the young girls of Taunton presented to him. It bore a crown with the cypher J B.--Monmouth's own name being James.

_Dour deep trench_; Sedgemoor lies in a marshy district near Bridgewater, much intersected by trenches or 'Rhines.' One, the Busses Rhine, lay between the two armies as they fought, July 6. Monmouth was caught hiding in Cranborne Chase, July 8; executed, after a vain attempt to move the heart of his uncle the king, July 15, on Tower Hill.

_Afric's tiger-bands_; Kirke savage troops from Tangier.

WILLELMUS VAN Na.s.sAU

Yes! we confess it! 'mong the sons of Fate, Earth's great ones, thou art great!

As that tall peak which from her silver cone Of maiden snow unstain'd All but the bravest scares, and reigns alone

In glacier isolation: Thus wert thou, With that pale steadfast brow, Gaunt aquiline: Thy whole life one labouring breath, Yet the strong soul untamed; France bridled, England saved, thy task ere death!

--O day of triumph, when thy bloodless host From Devon's russet coast Through the fair capital of the garden-West, And that, whose gracious spire Like childhood's prayer springs heaven-ward unrepress'd,

To Thames march'd legion-like, and at their tread The sullen despot fled, And Law and Freedom fair,--so late restored, And to so-perilous life, While Stuart craft replaced the Usurper's sword,--

Broke forth, as suns.h.i.+ne from the breaking sky, When vernal storm-wings fly!