But hour by hour that night grew deeper. Spain
Watched, cloud by cloud, her huge Armadas grow,
Watched, tower by tower, and zone by zone, her fleets
Grapple the sky with a hundred hands and drag
Whole sea-horizons into her menacing ranks,
Joining her powers to the fierce night, while Philip
Still strove, with many a crafty word, to lull
The fears of Gloriana, till his plots Were ripe, his armaments complete; and still
Great Gloriana took her woman's way,
Preferring ever tortuous intrigue
To battle, since the stakes had grown so great;
Now, more than ever, hoping against hope
To find some subtler means of victory;
Yet not without swift impulses to strike,
Swiftly recalled. Blind, yet not blind, she smiled
On Mary of Scotland waiting for her throne,
A throne with many a strange dark tremor thrilled
Now as the rumoured murderous mines below
Converged towards it, mine and countermine,
Till the live earth was honeycombed with death.
Still with her agate smile, still she delayed,
Holding her pirate admiral in the leash
Till Walsingham, nay, even the hunchback Burleigh,
That crafty king of statesmen, seeing at last
The inevitable thunder-crash at hand.
Grew heart-sick with delay and ached to shatter
The tense tremendous hush that seemed to oppress
All hearts, compress all brows, load the broad night
With more than mortal menace.
Only once
The night was traversed with one lightning flash,
One rapier stroke from England, at the heart
Of Spain, as swiftly parried, yet no less
A fiery challenge; for Philip's hate and scorn
Growing with his Armada's growth, he lured
With promises of just and friendly trade
A fleet of English corn-ships to relieve
His famine-stricken coast. There as they lay
Within his ports he seized them, one and all,
To fill the Armada's maw.
Whereat the Queen,
Passive so long, summoned great Walsingham,
And, still averse from open war, despite
The battle-hunger burning in his eyes,
With one strange swift sharp agate smile she hissed,
"Unchain El Draque!"
A lightning flash indeed
Was this; for he whose little Golden Hynde
With scarce a score of seamen late had scourged
The Spanish Main; he whose piratic neck
Scarcely the Queen's most wily statecraft saved
From Spain's revenge: he, privateer to the eyes
Of Spain, but England to all English hearts,
Gathered together, in all good jollity,
All help and furtherance himself could wish,
Before that moon was out, a pirate fleet
Whereof the like old ocean had not seen—
Eighteen swift cruisers, two great battleships,
With pinnaces and store-ships and a force
Of nigh three thousand men, wherewith to singe
The beard o' the King of Spain.
By night they gathered
In marvellous wind-whipt inns nigh Plymouth Sound,
Not secretly as, ere the Golden Hynde
Burst thro' the West, that small adventurous crew
Gathered beside the Thames, tossing the phrase
"Pieces of eight" from mouth to mouth, and singing
Great songs of the rich Indies, and those tall
Enchanted galleons, red with blood and gold,
Superb with rubies, glorious as clouds,
Clouds in the sun, with mighty press of sail
Dragging the sunset out of the unknown world,
And staining all the grey old seas of Time
With rich romance; but these, though privateers,
Or secret knights on Gloriana's quest,
Recked not if round the glowing magic door
Of every inn the townsfolk grouped to hear
The storm-scarred seamen toasting Francis Drake,
Nor heeded what blithe urchin faces pressed
On each red-curtained magic casement, bright
With wild reflection of the fires within,
The fires, the glasses, and the singing lips
Lifting defiance to the powers of Spain.
SONG
Sing we the Rose,
The flower of flowers most glorious!
Never a storm that blows
Across our English sea,
But its heart breaks out wi' the Rose
On England's flag victorious,
The triumphing flag that flows
Thro' the heavens of Liberty.
Sing we the Rose,
The flower of flowers most beautiful!
Until the world shall end
She blossometh year by year,
Red with the blood that flows
For England's sake, most dutiful,
Wherefore now we bend
Our hearts and knees to her.
Sing we the Rose,
The flower, the flower of war it is,
Where deep i' the midnight gloom
Its waves are the waves of the sea,
And the glare of battle grows,
And red over hulk and spar it is,
Till the grim black broadsides bloom
With our Rose of Victory.
Sing we the Rose,
The flower, the flower of love it is,
Which lovers aye shall sing
And nightingales proclaim;
For O, the heaven that glows,
That glows and burns above it is
Freedom's perpetual Spring,
Our England's faithful fame.
Sing we the Rose,
That Eastward still shall spread for us
Upon the dawn's bright breast,
Red leaves wi' the foam impearled;
And onward ever flows
Till eventide make red for us
A Rose that sinks i' the West
And surges round the world;
Sing we the Rose!