It becomes exceedingly hot. Colonel Earles says—
‘In vain Jove’s lightnings issues from the sky,
For death more sure from British ensigns fly.
Their messengers of death much blood have spilled,
And full three hundred of the Irish killed.’
A description of war (Herbert):—
‘Now bloody colours wave in their pride,
And each proud hero does his beast bestride.’
General Dorrington’s description of the fight is, if possible, still more noble:—
‘Dor. Haste, noble friends, and save your lives by flight,
For ‘tis but madness if you stand to fight.
Our cavalry the battle have forsook,
And death appears in each dejected look;
Nothing but dread confusion can be seen,
For severed heads and trunks o’erspread the green;
The fields, the vales, the hills, and vanquished plain,
For five miles round are covered with the slain.
Death in each quarter does the eye alarm,
Here lies a leg, and there a shattered arm.
There heads appear, which, cloven by mighty bangs,
And severed quite, on either shoulder hangs:
This is the awful scene, my Lords! Oh, fly
The impending danger, for your fate is nigh!’
Which party, however, is to win—the Irish or English? Their heroism is equal, and young Godfrey especially, on the Irish side, is carrying all before him—when he is interrupted in the slaughter by the ghost of his father: of old Sir Edmonbury, whose monument we may see in Westminster Abbey. Sir Charles, at first, doubts about the genuineness of this venerable old apparition; and thus puts a case to the ghost:—
‘Were ghosts in heaven, in heaven they there would stay,
Or if in hell, they could not get away.’
A clincher, certainly, as one would imagine; but the ghost jumps over the horns of the fancied dilemma, by saying that he is not at liberty to state where he comes from.
‘Ghost. Where visions rest, or souls imprisoned dwell,
By Heaven’s command, we are forbid to tell;
But in the obscure grave—where corpse decay,
Moulder in dust and putrify away,—
No rest is there; for the immortal soul
Takes its full flight and flutters round the pole;
Sometimes I hover over the Euxine sea—
From pole to sphere, until the judgment day—
Over the Thracian Bosphorus do I float,
And pass the Stygian lake in Charon’s boat,
O’er Vulcan’s fiery court and sulph’rous cave,
And ride like Neptune on a briny wave;
List to the blowing noise of Etna’s flames,
And court the shades of Amazonian dames;
Then take my flight up to the gloomy moon:
Thus do I wander till the day of doom.
Proceed I dare not, or I would unfold
A horrid tale would make your blood run cold,
Chill all your nerves and sinews in a thrice,
Like whispering rivulets congealed to ice.