APPENDIX I (p. [2])
ENGLISH PRIZE POEM
(Written by Bute at Harrow School, æt. 15-½.)
Subject: EDWARD THE BLACK PRINCE.
(The footnotes are the young author's own)
When the long requiem's assuaging strain
Sounds high and solemn through the holy fane,
And loud and frequent in the darkened pile
The organ's heavy swell is heard the while,
Askest thou, pilgrim stranger, wherefore low,
In prayer unceasing, mournful hundreds bow;
Why choral hymns unceasingly arise,
And thuribles with incense cloud the skies,
While dying tapers glimmer pale and low
Upon the bloodless alabaster brow
That only represents the hero now?
Read sculptured on a grave that royal name,
So often blown abroad by noisy fame:
Yes; low as other men, the caitiff tomb
Has dared to shroud his splendour in its gloom!
Edward, who once the Knight of England shone,
Lies cold and stiff beneath this sculptured stone.
The brilliant Phosphor of a brighter day
Too soon in night is passed for aye away!
The lordly thistle blooms in purple pride;
The shamrock clusters by her sheltering side;[[1]]
And, though from each full many a spray is riven,
Unshaken yet they rise to friendly heaven.
The golden lily, even in her tears,
Full many a flower of vernal promise bears;
The pomegranate hangs fruitful on the tree;
The olive waves o'er many an eastern sea;
And strong beneath her eagle's sable wings
The pine upon her fir-clad mountains clings;
The rose alone, the fairest of them all,[[2]]
Is doomed to see her bud of promise fall!
The green genista's golden bloom is shed,
Her brightest offspring numbered with the dead.
O! plundered flower, O! doubly plundered bloom
Whose fairest fragrance only feeds the tomb!
'Tis said that when upon a rocky shore
The salt sea billows break with muffled roar,
And, launched in mad career, the thundering wave
Leaps booming through the weedy ocean cave;
Each tenth is grander than the nine before,
And breaks with tenfold thunder on the shore.
Alas! it is so on the sounding sea;
But so, O England, it is not with thee!
Thy decuman is broken on the shore:
A peer to him shall lave thee never more!
Ring forth, O mournful harp—no nobler strain
Than this to-day shall e'er be thine again.
See where amid her ruined towns and towers
France broods upon her country's shattered powers.
Ask her his glories—at the fatal name
Her olive cheek grows red with burning shame,
The tear starts flashing to her careworn eye,
She points where stiff and cold her children lie,
Beneath the bloody sod of many a plain,
By victor Edward's dreaded arrows slain;
From where on Cressy's dark and trodden ground
Two kings were slain and princes died around,
To where Limoges' streets ran red with blood,
And lives of thousands fed the crimson flood;
Or where, again, in Poitiers' fatal lane
The flower of all her gay noblesse were slain,
And trodden down amid the gory clay,
In useless valour threw their lives away;
While many a lordly tower and holy spire
Fell blackened ruins to the invader's fire.
But not upon thy fields, O France, alone
Like meteor shot from sphere of light he shone.
Rise, Spain, and witness how thy fair Castile
Has bled upon Najarra's fatal hill,
When sullen Najarilla's voiceless flow
Rang to the buckler's clang and falchion's blow,
And legions melted as a morning's snow.
But own that, when before his victor brand
He stretched defenceless all the humbled land,
It then was Edward's voice that stemmed the tide,
And Guzman only for his treason died.
Ungrateful Pedro! gilt and sceptred slave!
Ill hast thou merited the crown he gave!