The Visions of England Part 17

That day was thine, great Chief, from sea to sea: The whole land's welcome seem'd The welcome of one man! a realm by thee

Deliver'd!--But the crowning hour of fame, The zenith of a name Is ours once only: and he, too just, too stern, Too little Englishman, A nation's grat.i.tude did not care to earn,

On wider aims, not worthier, set:--A soul Immured in self-control; Saving the thankless in their own despite:-- Then turning with a gasp Of joy, to his own land by native right;

Changing the Hall of Rufus and the Keep Of Windsor's terraced steep For Guelderland horizons, silvery-blue; The green deer-twinkling glades, And long, long, avenues of the stately Loo.

'William,' says his all too zealous panegyrist, 'never became an Englishman. He served England, it is true; but he never loved her, and he never obtained her love. To him she was always a land of exile, visited with reluctance and quitted with delight. . . . Her welfare was not his chief object. Whatever patriotic feeling he had was for Holland.

. . . In the gallery of Whitehall he pined for the familiar House in the Wood at the Hague, and never was so happy as when he could quit the magnificence of Windsor for his humbler seat at Loo:' (Macaulay: _Hist_.

ch. vii)

_One labouring breath_; William throughout life was tortured by asthma.

_Demon's russet coast_; Torbay.--_Capital of the garden-West_; Exeter.--_Gracious spire_; Salisbury.--_Hall of Rufus_; The one originally built by William II at Westminster.

THE CHILDLESS MOTHER

1700-1702

Oft in midnight visions Ghostly by my bed Stands a Father's image, Pale discrowned head:-- --I forsook thee, Father!

Was no child to thee!

Child-forsaken Mother, Now 'tis so with me.

Oft I see the brother, Baby born to woe, Crouching by the church-wall From the bloodhound-foe.

Evil crown'd of evil, Heritage of strife!

Mine, an heirless sceptre: His, an exile life!

--O my vanish'd darlings, From the cradle torn!

Dewdrop lives, that never Saw their second morn!

Buds that fell untimely,-- Till one blossom grew; As I watch'd its beauty, Fading whilst it blew.

Thou wert more to me, Love, More than words can tell: All my remnant suns.h.i.+ne Died in one farewell.

Midnight-mirk before me Now my life goes by, For the baby faces As in vain I cry.

O the little footsteps On the nursery floor!

Lispings light and laughter I shall hear no more!

Eyes that gleam'd at waking Through their silken bars; Starlike eyes of children, Now beyond the stars!

Where the murder'd Mary Waits the rising sign, They are laid in darkness, Little lambs of mine.

Only this can comfort: Safe from earthly harms Christ the Saviour holds them In His loving arms:--

Spring eternal round Him, Roses ever fair:-- Will His mercy set them All beside me there?

Will their Angels guide me Through the golden gate?

--Wait a little, children!

Mother, too, must wait!

_I forsook thee_; Marlborough, desirous to widen the breach between Anne and William III, influenced her to write to her Father, 'supplicating his forgiveness, and professing repentance for the part she had taken.'

_Now 'tis so_; Anne 'was said to attribute the death of her children to the part she had taken in dethroning her father:' (Lecky, _History of the Eighteenth Century_).

_The brother_; The infant son of James, known afterwards as the 'Old Pretender,' or as James III. He was carried as an infant from the Palace (Dec. 1688) to Lambeth, where he was in great peril of discovery. The story is picturesquely told by Macaulay.

_One blossom_; The Duke of Gloucester, who grew up to eleven years, dying in July 1700. After his death Anne signed, in private letters, 'your unfortunate' friend.

Anne's character, says the candid Lecky, 'though somewhat peevish and very obstinate, was pure, generous, simple, and affectionate; and she displayed, under bereavements far more numerous than fall to the share of most, a touching piety that endeared her to her people.'

_Where the murder'd Mary_; 'Above and around, in every direction,' says Dean Stanley, describing the vault beneath the monument of Mary of Scotland in Henry the Seventh's Chapel,--'crus.h.i.+ng by the acc.u.mulated weight of their small coffins the receptacles of the ill.u.s.trious dust beneath, lie the eighteen children of Queen Anne, dying in infancy or stillborn, ending with William Duke of Gloucester, the last hope of the race:' (_Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey_, ch. iii).

BLENHEIM

August 13: 1704

Oft hast thou acted thy part, My country, worthily thee!

Lifted up often thy load Atlantean, enormous, with glee:-- For on thee the burden is laid to uphold World-justice; to keep the balance of states; On thee the long cry of the tyrant-oppress'd, The oppress'd in the name of liberty, waits:-- Ready, aye ready, the blade In its day to draw forth, unafraid; Thou dost not blench from thy fate!

By thy high heart, only, secure; by thy magnanimity, great.

E'en so it was on the morn When France with Spain, in one realm Welded, one thunderbolt, stood, With one stroke the world to o'erwhelm.

--They have pa.s.s'd the great stream, they have stretch'd their white camp Above the protecting mora.s.s and the dell, Blenheim to Lutzingen, where the long wood In summer-thick leaf.a.ge rounds o'er the fell: --England! in nine-fold advance Cast thy red flood upon France; Over marsh over beck ye must go, Wholly together! or, Danube to Rhine, all slides to the foe!

As the lava thrusts onward its wall, One ma.s.s down the valley they tramp; Fascine-fill the marsh and the stream; Like hornets they swarm up the ramp, Lancing a breach through the long palisade, Where the rival swarms of the stubborn foe, While the sun goes high and goes down o'er the fight, Sting them back, blow answering blow:-- O life-blood lavish as rain On war's red Aceldama plain!

While the volleying death-rattle rings, And the peasant pays for the pride and the fury-ambition of kings!

And as those of Achaia and Troia By the camp on the sand, so they In the aether-amber of evening Kept even score in the fray; Rank against rank, man match'd with man, In backward, forward, struggle enlaced, Grappled and moor'd to the ground where they stood As wrestlers wrestling, as lovers embraced:-- And the lightnings insatiable fly, As the lull of the tempest is nigh, And each host in its agony reels, And the musket falls hot from the hand, enflamed by the death that it deals.

But, as when through the vale the rain-clouds Darker and heavier flow, Above them the dominant summit Stands clad in calmness and snow; So thou, great Chief, awaiting the turn Of the purple tide:--And the moment has come!

And the signal-word flies out with a smile, And they charge the foe in his fastness, home:-- As one long wave when the wind Urges an ocean behind, One line, they sweep on the foe, And France from our battle recoils, and Victory edges the blow.

As a rock by blue lightning divided Down the hillside scatters its course, So in twain their army is parted By the sabres sabring in force: They have striven enough for honour! . . . and now Crumble and shatter, and sheer o'er the bank Where torrent Danube hisses and swirls Slant and hurry in rankless rank:-- There are sixty thousand the morn 'Gainst the Lions marching in scorn; But twenty, when even is here, Broken and brave and at bay, the Lilied banner uprear.

--So be it!--All honour to him Who s.n.a.t.c.h'd the world, in his day, From an overmastering King, A colossal imperial sway!

Calm adamantine endurant chief, Fit forerunner of him, whose crowning stroke, Rousing his Guards on the Flandrian plain, Unva.s.sall'd Europe from despot yoke!

He who from Ganges to Rhine Traced o'er the world his red line Irresistible; while in the breast Reign'd devotedness utter, and self for England suppress'd!

O names that enhearten the soul, Blenheim and Waterloo!

In no vain wors.h.i.+p of glory The poet turns him to you!

O sung by worthier song than mine, If the day of a nation's weakness rise, Of the little counsels that dare not dare, Of a land that no more on herself relies,-- O breath of our great ones that were, Burn out this taint in the air!

The old heart of England restore, Till the blood of the heroes awake, and shout in her bosom once more!

--Morning is fresh on the field Where the war-sick champions lie, By the wreckage of stiffening dead, The anguish that yearns but to die.

Ah note of human agony heard The paean of victory over and through!

Ah voice of duty and justice stern That, at e'en this price, commands them to do!

And a vision of Glory goes by, Veil'd head and remorseful eye, A triumph of Death!--And they cried 'Only less dark than defeat is the morning of conquest';--and sigh'd.