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.
TORRES VEDRAS
1810
As who, while erst the Achaians wall’d the shore,
Stood Atlas-like before,
A granite face against the Trojan sea
Of foes who seethed and foam’d,
From that stern rock refused incessantly;
So He, in his colossal lines, astride
From sea to river-side,
Alhandra past Aruda to the Towers,
Our one true man of men
Frown’d back bold France and all the Imperial powers.
For when that Eagle, towering in his might
Beyond the bounds of Right,
O’ercanopied Europe with his rushing wings,
And all the world was prone
Before him as a God, a King of Kings;
When Freedom to one isle, her ancient shrine,
O’er the free favouring brine
Fled, as a girl by lustful war and shame
Discloister’d from her home,
Barefoot, with glowing eyes, and cheeks on flame,
And call’d aloud, and bade the realm awake
To arms for Freedom’s sake:
—Yet,—for the land had rusted long in rest,
The nerves of war unstrung,
Faint thoughts or rash alternate in her breast,
While purblind party-strife with venomous spite
Made plausible wrong seem right,—
O then for that unselfish hero-chief
Tender and true, and lost
At Trafalgar,—or him, whose patriot grief
Died with the prayer for England, as he died,
In vain we might have cried!
But this one pillar rose, and bore the war
Upon himself alone;
Supreme o’er Fortune and her idle star.