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So Lord Howard past away with five ships of war that day,

Til he melted like a cloud in the silent summer heaven;

But Sir Richard bore in hand all his sick men from the land

Very carefully and slow,

Men of Bideford in Devon,

And we laid them on the ballast down below:

For we brought them all aboard,

And they blest him in their pain, that they were not left to Spain,

To the thumb-screw and the stake, for the glory of the Lord.

IV

He had only a hundred seamen to work the ship and to fight,

And he sailed away from Flores till the Spaniard came in sight,

With his huge sea-castles heaving upon the weather bow.

"Shall we fight or shall we fly? Good Sir Richard, tell us now, For to fight is but to die!

There'll be little of us left by the time this sun be set."

And Sir Richard said again: "We be all good English men.

Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the devil,

For I never turn'd my back upon Don or devil yet."

V

the ships coming from Reutic

Four galleons drew away

From the Spanish fleet that day,

And two upon the larboard and two upon the starboard lay,

And the battle-thunder broke from them all.

VIII

But anon the great San Philip, she bethought herself and went

Having that within her womb that had left her ill content;

And the rest they came aboard us, and they fought us hand to hand,

For a dozen times they came with their pikes and musqueteers,

And a dozen times we shook 'em off as a dog that shakes his ears

When he leaps from the water to the land.

IX

And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea, But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three.

Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons came,

Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-thunder and flame:

Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and her shame. For some were sunk and many were shatter'd, and so could fight us no

more

God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the world before?

X

For he said, "Fight on! fight on!" Tho' his vessel was all but a wreck; And it chanced that, when half of the short summer night was gone, With a grisly wound to be drest he had left the deck,

But a bullet struck him that was dressing it suddenly dead,

And himself he was wounded again in the side and the head, And he said, "Fight on! fight on!"

XI

And the night went down, and the sun smiled out far over the summer sea, And the Spanish fleet with broken sides lay round us all in a ring;

But they dared not touch us again, for

they fear'd that we still could sting. So they watch'd what the end would be. And we had not fought them in vain, But in perilous plight were we, Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain,

And half of the rest of us maim'd for life

In the crash of the cannonades and the desperate strife;

And the stately Spanish men to their flagship bore him then,

Where they laid him by the mast, old
Sir Richard caught at last,
And they praised him to his face with
their courtly foreign grace;

But he rose upon their decks, and he cried:

"I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man and true;

I have only done my duty as a man is bound to do.

With a joyful spirit I Sir Richard Grenville die!"

And he fell upon their decks, and he died.

And the water began to heave and the weather to moan,

And or ever that evening ended a great gale blew,

And a wave like the wave that is raised by an earthquake grew,

Till it smote on their hulls and their sails and their masts and their flags, And the whole sea plunged and fell on the shot-shatter'd navy of Spain, And the little Revenge herself went down

by the island crags

To be lost evermore in the main.

stres line of veriqul RIZPAH but orthon. Coricqual près quit

[1880]

I

WAILING, wailing, wailing, the wind over land and sea

And Willy's voice in the wind, “O mother, come out to me!"

Why should he call me to-night, when he knows that I cannot go?

For the downs are as bright as day, and the full moon stares at the snow.

II

We should be seen, my dear; they would
spy us out of the town.
The loud black nights for us, and the

storm rushing over the down, bare hill ne When I cannot see my own hand, but

am led by the creak of the chain, And grovel and grope for my son till I find myself drenched with the rain.

III

Anything fallen again? nay - what was there left to fall?

I have taken them home, I have number'd the bones, I have hidden them all.

What am I saying? and what are you? do you come as a spy? Falls? what falls? who knows? As the tree falls so must it lie.

IV

Who let her in? how long has she been? you what have you heard? Why did you sit so quiet? you never have spoken a word.

O to pray with me -yes- a lady -none of their spies

But the night has crept into my heart, and begun to darken my eyes.

V

Ah-you, that have lived so soft, what should you know of the night, The blast and the burning shame and the bitter frost and the fright?