With torch and steel; with stake and rack
He trampled out God's Truce
Until Queen Bess her leashes slip't
And let her sea-dogs loose.
God! how they sprang and how they tore!
The Gilberts, Hawkins, Drake!
Remember, Boy, they were your sires:
They made the Spaniard quake.
Dick Grenville with a single ship
Struck all the Spanish line:
One Devon knight to the Spanish Dons:
One ship to fifty and nine.
When Spain in San Ulloa's Bay
Her sacred treaty broke,
Stout Hawkins fought his way through fire
And gave her stroke for stroke.
A bitter malt Spain brewed that day,
She drained it to the lees:
The thunder of her guns awoke
The Dragon of The Seas.
From coast to coast he ravaged far,
A scourge with flaming breath:
Where'er the Spaniard sailed his ships,
Sailed Francis Drake and Death.
No coast was safe against his ire;
Secure no furthest shore;
The fairest day oft sank in fire
Before the Dragon's roar.
He made th' Atlantic surges red
Round every Spanish keel,
Piled Spanish decks with Spanish dead,
The noblest of Castile.
From Del Fuego's beetling coast
To sleety Hebrides
He hounded down the Spanish host
And swept the flaming seas.
He fought till on Spain's inmost lakes
'Mid Orange bowers set,
La Mancha's maidens feared to sail
Lest they the Dragon met.*