CHARLES EDWARD AT ROME

1785

O sunset, of the rise
Unworthy!—that, so brave, so clear, so gay;
This, prison’d in low-hanging earth-mists gray,
And ever-darken’d skies:—
Sad sunset of a royal race in gloom,
Accomplishing to the end the dolorous Stuart doom!

Ghost of a king, he sate
In Rome, the city of ghosts and thrones outworn,
Drowsing his thoughts in wine;—a life forlorn;
Pageant of faded state;
Aged before old age, and all that Past,
Like a forgotten thing of shame, behind him cast.

Yet if by chance the cry
Of the sharp pibroch through the palace thrill’d,
He felt the pang of high hope unfulfill’d:—
And once, when one came by

With the dear name of Scotland on his lips,
The heart broke forth behind that forty-years’ eclipse,

Triumphant in its pain:—
Then the old days of Holyrood halls return’d
The leaden lethargy from his soul he spurn’d,
And was the Prince again:—
All Scotland waking in him; all her bold
Chieftains and clans:—and all their tale, and his, he told:

—Told how, o’er the boisterous seas
From faithless France he danced his way
Where Alban’s thousand islands lay,
The kelp-strown ridge of the lone Hebrides:—
How down each strath they stream’d as springtide rills,
When he to Finnan vale
Came from Glenaladale,
And that snow-handful grew an avalanche of the hills.

There Lochiel, Glengarry there,
Macdonald, Cameron: souls untried
In war, but stout in mountain-pride
All odds against all worlds to laugh and dare:
Unpurchaseable faith of chief and clan!
Enough! Their Prince has thrown
Himself upon his own!
By hearts not heads they count, and manhood measures man!

—Torrent from Lochaber sprung,
Through Badenoch bare and Athole turn’d,
The fettering Forth o’erpast and spurn’d,
Then on the smiling South in fury flung;

Now gather head with all thine affluent force,
Draw forth the wild mellay!
At Gladsmuir is the fray;
Scotland ’gainst England match’d: White Rose against White Horse!

Cluster’d down the slope they go,
Red clumps of ragged valour, down,
While morn-mists yet the hill-top crown:—
Clan Colla! on!—the Camerons touch the foe!
One touch!—the battle breaks, the fight is fought,
As summit-boulders glide
Riddling the forest-side,
And in one moment’s crash an army melts to nought!

—Ah gay nights of Holyrood!
Star-eyes of Scotland’s fairest fair,
Sun-glintings of the golden hair,
Life’s tide at full in that brief interlude!
Then as a bark slips from her natural coast
Deep into seas unknown,
Scotland went forth alone,
Unfriended, unallied; a handful ’gainst a host.

By the Bolder moorlands bare,
By faithless Solway’s glistening sands,
And where Caer Luel’s dungeon stands,
Huge keep of ancient Urien, huge, foursquare:—
Preston, and loyal Lancashire; . . . and then
From central Derby down,
To strike the royal town,
And to his German realm the usurper thrust again!

—O the lithesome mountaineers,
Wild hearts with kingly boyhood high,
And victory in each forward eye,
While stainless honour his white banner rears!
Then all the air with mountain-music thrill’d,
The bonnets o’er the brow,—
My gallant clans! . . . and now
The voices closed in earth, in death the pibroch still’d!

—As beneath Ben Aille’s crest
The west wind weaves its roof of gray,
And all the glory of the day
Blooms off from loch and copse and green hill-breast;
So, when that craven council spoke retreat,
The fateful shameful word
They heard,—and scarcely heard!
At Scotland’s name how should the blood refuse to beat?

—O soul-piercing stroke of shame!
O last, last, chance,—and wasted so!
Work wanting but the final blow,—
And, then, the hopeless hope, the crownless name,
The heart’s desire defeated!—What boots now
That ice-brook-temper’d will,
Indomitable still
As on through snow and storm their path the dalesmen plough?

—Yet again the tartans hail
One smile of Scotland’s ancient face;
One favour waits the faithful race,—
One triumph more at Falkirk crowns the Gael!

And O! what drop of Scottish blood that runs
Could aught, save do or die,
And Bannockburn so nigh?
What cause to higher height could animate her sons?

Up the gorse-embattled brae,
With equal eager feet they dash,
And on the moorland summit clash,
Friend mix’d with foe in stormy disarray:
Once more the Northern charge asserts its right,
As with the driving rain
They drive them down the plain:
That star alone before Drummossie gilds the night.

—Ah! No more!—let others tell
The agony of the mortal moor;
Death’s silent sheepfold dotted o’er
With Scotland’s best, sleet-shrouded as they fell!
There on the hearts, once mine, the snow-wreaths drift;
Night’s winter dews at will
In bitter tears distil,
And o’er the field the stars their squadrons coldly shift.

Faithful in a faithless age!
Yet happier, in that death-dew drench’d,
In each rude hand the claymore clench’d,
Than who, to soothe a nation’s craven rage,
To the red scaffold went with steady eye,
And the red martyr-grave,
For one, who could not save!
Who only lives to weep the weight of life, and die!

—He ended, with such grief
As fits and honours manhood:—Then, once more

Weaving that long romantic lay, told o’er
The names of clan and chief
Who perill’d all for him, and died;—and how
In islets, caves, and clefts, and bare high mountain-brow

The wanderer hid, and all
His Odyssey of woes!—Then, agonized
Not by the wrongs he suffer’d and despised,
But for the Cause’s fall,—
The faces, loved and lost, that for his sake
Were raven-torn and blanch’d, high on the traitor’s stake,

As on Drummossie drear
They fell,—as a dead body falls,—so he;
Swoon-senseless at that killing memory
Seen across year on year:
O human tears! O honourable pain!
Pity unchill’d by age, and wounds that bleed again!

—Ah, much enduring heart!
Ah soul, miscounsell’d oft and lured astray,
In that long life-despair, from wisdom’s way
And thy young hero-part!—
—And yet—Dilexit multum!—In that cry
Love’s gentler judgment pleads; thine epitaph a sigh!

The sad old age of Prince Charles is described by Lord Mahon [Stanhope] in his able History: ch. xxx: and some additional details will be found in Chambers’ narrative of the expedition. During later life, an almost entire silence seems to have been maintained by the Prince upon his earlier days and his royal claims. But the bagpipe was occasionally heard in the Roman Palace, and a casual visit, which Lord Mahon fixes in 1785, drew forth the recital which is the subject of this poem. The prince fainted as he recalled what his Highland followers had gone through, and his daughter rushing in exclaimed to the visitor, ‘Sir! what is this! You must have been

speaking to my father about Scotland and the Highlanders! No one dares to mention these subjects in his presence:’ (Mahon: ch. xxvi).

St. 2 Drowsing His thoughts; The habit of intemperance, common in that century to many who had not Charles Edward’s excuses, appear to have been learned during the long privations which accompanied his wanderings, between Culloden and his escape to France.

St. 5 Hebrides; Charles landed at Erisca, an islet between Barra and South Uist, in July 1745.

St. 7 Fettering Forth; ‘Forth,’ according to the proverb, ‘bridles the wild Highlandman.’—Charles passed it at the Ford of Frew, about eight miles above Stirling.—At Gladsmuir; or Preston Pans; Sep. 21, 1745.—White Horse; The armorial bearing of Hanover.

St. 8 Clan Colla; general name for the sept of the Macdonalds.

St. 10 Caer Luel; Urien ap Urbgen is an early hero of Strathclyde or Alcluith, the British kingdom lying between Dumbarton and Carlisle, then Caer Luel.

St. 12 Ben Aille; a mountain over Loch Ericht in the central Highlands.

St. 13 Ice-brook-temper’d; ‘It is a sword of Spain, the ice-brook’s temper’: (Othello: A. 5: S. 2).

St. 14 At Falkirk; Jan 17, 1746. ‘On the eve after his victory Charles again encamped on Bannockburn.’

St. 16 The mortal moor; named Culloden and Drummossie: Ap. 16, 1746. The cold at that time was very severe.

St. 17 A nation’s craven rage; See Appendix F.

St. 21 Love’s gentler judgment; We may perhaps quote on his behalf Vergil’s beautiful words

. . . utcumque ferent ea facta minores,
Vincet amor patriae laudumque inmensa cupido.

—It is also pleasant to record that over the coffin of Charles in S. Peter’s, Rome, a monument was placed by George the Fourth, upon which, by a graceful and gallant ‘act of oblivion,’ are inscribed the names of James the Third, Charles the Third, and Henry the Ninth, ‘Kings of England.’

On the simple monument set up by his brother Henry in S. Pietro, Frascati, it may be worth notice that Charles is only described as Paterni iuris et regiae | dignitatis successor et heres:—the title, King, (given to his Father in the inscription), not being assigned to Charles, or assumed by the Cardinal.

TRAFALGAR

October 21: 1805

Heard ye the thunder of battle
Low in the South and afar?
Saw ye the flash of the death-cloud
Crimson o’er Trafalgar?
Such another day never
England will look on again,
When the battle fought was the hottest,
And the hero of heroes was slain!

For the fleet of France and the force of Spain were gather’d for fight,
A greater than Philip their lord, a new Armada in might:—
And the sails were aloft once more in the deep Gaditanian bay,
Where Redoubtable and Bucentaure and great Trinidada lay;
Eager-reluctant to close; for across the bloodshed to be
Two navies beheld one prize in its glory,—the throne of the sea!
Which were bravest, who should tell? for both were gallant and true;
But the greatest seaman was ours, of all that sail’d o’er the blue.

From Cadiz the enemy sallied: they knew not Nelson was there;
His name a navy to us, but to them a flag of despair.
’Twixt Algeziras and Ayamonte he guarded the coast,
Till he bore from Tavira south; and they now must fight, or be lost;—
Vainly they steer’d for the Rock and the Midland sheltering sea,
For he headed the Admirals round, constraining them under his lee,

Villeneuve of France, and Gravina of Spain: so they shifted their ground,
They could choose,—they were more than we;—and they faced at Trafalgar round;
Rampart-like ranged in line, a sea-fortress angrily tower’d!
In the midst, four-storied with guns, the dark Trinidada lower’d.

So with those.—But meanwhile, as against some dyke that men massively rear,
From on high the torrent surges, to drive through the dyke as a spear,
Eagled-eyed e’en in his blindness, our chief sets his double array,
Making the fleet two spears, to thrust at the foe, any way, . . .
‘Anyhow!—without orders, each captain his Frenchman may grapple perforce:
Collingwood first’ (yet the Victory ne’er a whit slacken’d her course)
‘Signal for action! Farewell! we shall win, but we meet not again!’
—Then a low thunder of readiness ran from the decks o’er the main,
And on,—as the message from masthead to masthead flew out like a flame,
England expects every man will do his duty,—they came.

—Silent they come:—While the thirty black forts of the foeman’s array
Clothe them in billowy snow, tier speaking o’er tier as they lay;
Flashes that thrust and drew in, as swords when the battle is rife;—

But ours stood frowningly smiling, and ready for death as for life.
—O in that interval grim, ere the furies of slaughter embrace,
Thrills o’er each man some far echo of England; some glance of some face!
—Faces gazing seaward through tears from the ocean-girt shore;
Faces that ne’er can be gazed on again till the death-pang is o’er. . . .
Lone in his cabin the Admiral kneeling, and all his great heart
As a child’s to the mother, goes forth to the loved one, who bade him depart
. . . O not for death, but glory! her smile would welcome him home!
—Louder and thicker the thunderbolts fall:—and silent they come.

As when beyond Dongola the lion, whom hunters attack,
Plagued by their darts from afar, leaps in, dividing them back;
So between Spaniard and Frenchman the Victory wedged with a shout,
Gun against gun; a cloud from her decks and lightning went out;
Iron hailing of pitiless death from the sulphury smoke;
Voices hoarse and parch’d, and blood from invisible stroke.
Each man stood to his work, though his mates fell smitten around,
As an oak of the wood, while his fellow, flame-shatter’d, besplinters the ground:—
Gluttons of danger for England, but sparing the foe as he lay;
For the spirit of Nelson was on them, and each was Nelson that day.

‘She has struck!’—he shouted—‘She burns, the Redoubtable! Save whom we can,
Silence our guns’:—for in him the woman was great in the man,
In that heroic heart each drop girl-gentle and pure,
Dying by those he spared;—and now Death’s triumph was sure!
From the deck the smoke-wreath clear’d, and the foe set his rifle in rest,
Dastardly aiming, where Nelson stood forth, with the stars on his breast,—
‘In honour I gain’d them, in honour I die with them’ . . . Then, in his place,
Fell . . . ‘Hardy! ’tis over; but let them not know’: and he cover’d his face.
Silent, the whole fleet’s darling they bore to the twilight below:
And above the war-thunder came shouting, as foe struck his flag after foe.

To his heart death rose: and for Hardy, the faithful, he cried in his pain,—
‘How goes the day with us, Hardy?’ . . . ‘’Tis ours’:—Then he knew, not in vain
Not in vain for his comrades and England he bled: how he left her secure,
Queen of her own blue seas, while his name and example endure.
O, like a lover he loved her! for her as water he pours
Life-blood and life and love, lavish’d all for her sake, and for ours!
—‘Kiss me, Hardy!—Thank God!—I have done my duty!’—And then
Fled that heroic soul, and left not his like among men.

Hear ye the heart of a nation
Groan, for her saviour is gone;

Gallant and true and tender,
Child and chieftain in one?
Such another day never
England will weep for again,
When the triumph darken’d the triumph,
And the hero of heroes was slain.