LONDON BRIDGE
July 6: 1535
The midnight moaning stream
Draws down its glassy surface through the bridge
That o’er the current casts a tower’d ridge,
Dark sky-line forms fantastic as a dream;
And cresset watch-lights on the bridge-gate gleam,
Where ’neath the star-lit dome gaunt masts upbuoy
No flag of festive joy,
But blanching spectral heads;—their heads, who died
Victims to tyrant-pride,
Martyrs of Faith and Freedom in the day
Of shame and flame and brutal selfish sway.
And one in black array
Veiling her Rizpah-misery, to the gate
Comes, and with gold and moving speech sedate
Buys down the thing aloft, and bears away
Snatch’d from the withering wind and ravens’ prey:
And as a mother’s eyes, joy-soften’d, shed
Tears o’er her young child’s head,
Golden and sweet, from evil saved; so she
O’er this, sad-smilingly,
Mangled and gray, unwarm’d by human breath,
Clasping death’s relic with love passing death.
So clasping now! and so
When death clasps her in turn! e’en in the grave
Nursing the precious head she could not save,
Tho’ through each drop her life-blood yearn’d to flow
If but for him she might to scaffold go:—
And O! as from that Hall, with innocent gore
Sacred from roof to floor,
To that grim other place of blood he went—
What cry of agony rent
The twilight,—cry as of an Angel’s pain,—
My father, O my father! . . . and in vain!
Then, as on those who lie
Cast out from bliss, the days of joy come back,
And all the soul with wormwood sweetness rack,
So in that trance of dreadful ecstasy
The vision of her girlhood glinted by:—
And how the father through their garden stray’d,
And, child with children, play’d,
And teased the rabbit-hutch, and fed the dove
Before him from above
Alighting,—in his visitation sweet,
Led on by little hands, and eager feet.
Hence among those he stands,
Elect ones, ever in whose ears the word
He that offends these little ones . . . is heard,
With love and kisses smiling-out commands,
And all the tender hearts within his hands;
Seeing, in every child that goes, a flower
From Eden’s nursery bower,
A little stray from Heaven, for reverence here
Sent down, and comfort dear:
All care well paid-for by one pure caress,
And life made happy in their happiness.
He too, in deeper lore
Than woman’s in those early days, or yet,—
Train’d step by step his youthful Margaret;
The wonders of that amaranthine store
Which Hellas and Hesperia evermore
Lavish, to strengthen and refine the race:—
For, in his large embrace,
The light of faith with that new light combined
To purify the mind:—
A crystal soul, a heart without disguise,
All wisdom’s lover, and through love, all-wise.
—O face she ne’er will see,—
Gray eyes, and careless hair, and mobile lips
From which the shaft of kindly satire slips
Healing its wound with human sympathy;
The heart-deep smile; the tear-concealing glee!
O well-known furrows of the reverend brow!
Familiar voice, that now
She will not hear nor answer any more,—
Till on the better shore
Where love completes the love in life begun,
And smooths and knits our ravell’d skein in one!
Blest soul, who through life’s course
Didst keep the young child’s heart unstain’d and whole,
To find again the cradle at the goal,
Like some fair stream returning to its source;—
Ill fall’n on days of falsehood, greed, and force!
Base days, that win the plaudits of the base,
Writ to their own disgrace,
With casuist sneer o’erglossing works of blood,
Miscalling evil, good;
Before some despot-hero falsely named
Grovelling in shameful worship unashamed.
—But they of the great race
Look equably, not caring much, on foe
And fame and misesteem of man below;
And with forgiving radiance on their face,
And eyes that aim beyond the bourn of space,
Seeing the invisible, glory-clad, go up
And drink the absinthine cup,
Fill’d nectar-deep by the dear love of Him
Slain at Jerusalem
To free them from a tyrant worse than this,
Changing brief anguish for the heart of bliss.
Envoy
—O moaning stream of Time,
Heavy with hate and sin and wrong and woe
As ocean-ward dost go,
Thou also hast thy treasures!—Life, sublime
In its own sweet simplicity:—life for love:
Heroic martyr-death:—
Man sees them not: but they are seen above.
One in black array; Sir T. More’s daughter, Margaret Roper.
That Hall; Westminster, where More was tried: That other place; Tower Hill.
The vision of her girlhood; More taught his own children, and was like a child with them. He ‘would take grave scholars and statesmen into the garden to see his girls’ rabbit-hutches. . . . I have given you kisses enough, he wrote to his little ones, but stripes hardly ever’: (Green, B. V: ch. ii).
The wonders; See first note to Grocyn at Oxford.
In his large embrace; More may be said to have represented the highest aim and effort of the ‘new learning’ in England. He is the flower of our Renaissance in genius, wisdom, and beauty of nature. ‘When ever,’ says Erasmus in a famous passage, ‘did Nature mould a character more gentle, endearing, and happy, than Thomas More’s?’
AT FOUNTAINS
1539-1862
Blest hour, as on green happy slopes I lie,
Gray walls around and high,
While long-ranged arches lessen on the view,
And one high gracious curve
Of shaftless window frames the limpid blue.
—God’s altar erst, where wind-set rowan now
Waves its green-finger’d bough,
And the brown tiny creeper mounts the bole
With curious eye alert,
And beak that tries each insect-haunted hole,
And lives her gentle life from nest to nest,
And dies undispossess’d:
Whilst all the air is quick with noise of birds
Where once the chant went up;
Now musical with a song more sweet than words.
Sky-roof’d and bare and deep in dewy sod,
Still ’tis the house of God!
Beauty by desolation unsubdued:—
And all the past is here,
Thronging with thought this holy solitude.
I see the taper-stars, the altars gay;
And those who crouch and pray;
The white-robed crowd in close monastic stole,
Who hither fled the world
To find the world again within the soul.
Yet here the pang of Love’s defeat, the pride
Of life unsatisfied,
Might win repose or anodyne; here the weak,
Armour’d against themselves,
Exchange true guiding for obedience meek.
Through day, through night, here, in the fragrant air,
Their hours are struck by prayer;
Freed from the bonds of freedom, the distress
Of choice, on life’s storm-sea
They gaze unharm’d, and know their happiness.
Till o’er this rock of refuge, deem’d secure,
—This palace of the poor,
Ascetic luxury, wealth too frankly shown,—
The royal robber swept
His lustful eye, and seized the prey his own.
—Ah, calm of Nature! Now thou hold’st again
Thy sweet and silent reign!
And, as our feverish years their orbit roll,
This pure and cloister’d peace
In its old healing virtue bathes the soul.
1539 is the year when the greater monasteries, amongst which Fountains in Yorkshire held a prominent place, were confiscated and ruined by Henry VIII.
The tiny creeper; Certhia Familiaris; the smallest of our birds after the wren. It belongs to a class nearly related to the woodpecker.
White-robed; The colour of the Cistercian order, to which Fountains belonged.
SIR HUGH WILLOUGHBY
1553-4
Two ships upon the steel-blue Arctic seas
When day was long and night itself was day,
Forged heavily before the South West breeze
As to the steadfast star they curved their way;
Two specks of man, two only signs of life,
Where with all breathing things white Death keeps endless strife.
The Northern Cape is sunk: and to the crew
This zone of sea, with ice-floes wedged and rough,
Domed by its own pure height of tender blue,
Seems like a world from the great world cut off:
While, round the horizon clasp’d, a ring of white,
Snow-blink from snows unseen, walls them with angry light.
Now that long day compact of many days
Breaks up and wanes; and equal night beholds
Their hapless driftage past uncharted bays,
And in her chilling, killing arms enfolds:
While the near stars a thousand arrowy darts
Bend from their diamond eyes, as the low sun departs.
Or the weird Northern Dawn in idle play
Mocks their sad souls, now trickling down the sky
In many-quivering lines of golden spray,
Then blazing out, an Iris-arch on high,
With fiery lances fill’d and feathery bars,
And sheeny veils that hide or half-reveal the stars.
A silent spectacle! Yet sounds, ’tis said,
On their forlornness broke; a hissing cry
Of mockery and wild laugh, as, overhead,
Those blight fantastic squadrons flaunted by:—
And that false dawn, long nickering, died away,
And the Sun came not forth, and Heaven withheld the day.
O King Hyperion, o’er the Delphic dale
Reigning meanwhile in glory, Ocean know
Thine absence, and outstretch’d an icy veil,
A marble pavement, o’er his waters blue;
Past the Varangian fiord and Zembla hoar,
And from Petsora north to dark Arzina’s shore:—
An iron ridge o’erhung with toppling snow
And giant beards of icicled cascade:—
Where, frost-imprison’d as the long mouths go,
The Good Hope and her mate-ship lay embay’d;
And those brave crews knew that all hope was gone;
England be seen no more; no more the living sun.
A store that daily lessens ’neath their eyes;
A little dole of light and fire and food:—
While Night upon them like a vampyre lies
Bleaching the frame and thinning out the blood;
And through the ships the frost-bit timbers groan,
And the Guloine prowls round, with dull heart-curdling moan.
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 shore,
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 fortitude:—
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;
‘God 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 ships, 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 passed. 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 ships 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 shines 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 shore
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 God
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 shore,
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 shore turn away;
From shame upon shame:—But most shame for those
On their passionate 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 assize
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 vanishing shore!
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 sunshine 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 partisanship, 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 nobles, 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 nobles 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 passage 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.