This way, this way! 'Mother dear, we cannot stay! The wild white horses foam and fret.' Margaret! Margaret ! Come, dear children, come away down ; Call no more! One last look at the white-wall'd town, And the little gray church on the windy shore; She will not come though you call all day; Children dear, was it yesterday We heard the sweet bells over the bay? Through the surf and through the swell, Children dear, was it yesterday On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea, And the youngest sate on her knee. She comb'd its bright hair, and she tended it well, When down swung the sound of a far-off bell, She sigh'd, she look'd up through the clear green sea; She said: 'I must go, for my kinsfolk pray In the little gray church on the shore to-day. 'Twill be Easter-time in the world--ah me! And I lose my poor soul, Merman! here with thee.' I said: 'Go up, dear heart, through the waves; caves !' She smiled, she went up through the surf in the bay. Children dear, was it yesterday? Children dear, were we long alone? 'The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan; Long prayers,' I said, 'in the world they say; Come!' I said; and we rose through the surf in the bay. We went up the beach, by the sandy down Where the sea-stocks bloom, to the white-wall'd town; Through the narrow paved streets, where all was still, To the little gray church on the windy hill. From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers, But we stood without in the cold blowing airs. We climb'd on the graves, on the stones worn with rains, And we gazed up the aisle through the small leaded panes. She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear: Down, down, down! Down to the depths of the sea! She sits at her wheel in the humming town, Singing most joyfully. Hark what she sings: 'O joy, O joy, For the humming street, and the child with its toy! For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well; For the wheel where I spun, And the blessed light of the sun!' And so she sings her fill, Singing most joyfully, Till the spindle drops from her hand, And the whizzing wheel stands still. She steals to the window, and looks at the sand, And over the sand at the sea; And her eyes are set in a stare ; And anon there breaks a sigh, For the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden Come away, away, children; She will start from her slumber We shall see, while above us A pavement of pearl. Singing: 'Here came a mortal, And alone dwell for ever The kings of the sea.' But, children, at midnight, Up the creeks we will hie, We will gaze, from the sand-hills, A BALLAD OF THE FLEET At Florés in the Azorés Sir Richard Grenville lay, And a pinnace, like a flutter'd bird, came flying from away: 'Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted fiftythree !' Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: "Fore God I am no coward; But I cannot meet them here, for my ships are out of gear, And the half my men are sick. I must fly, but follow quick. We are six ships of the line; can we fight with fiftythree?' Then spake Sir Richard Grenville: 'I know you are no coward; You fly them for a moment to fight with them again. But I've ninety men and more that are lying sick ashore. I should count myself the coward if I left them, my Lord Howard, To these Inquisition dogs and the devildoms of Spain.' So Lord Howard past away with five ships of war that day, Till 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; And they blest him in their pain, that they were not left to Spain, To the thumbscrew and the stake, for the glory of the Lord. He had only a hundred seamen to work the ship and to fight, And he sail'd 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.' Sir Richard spoke and he laugh'd, and we roar'd a hurrah, and so The little Revenge ran on sheer into the heart of the foe, With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below; For half of their fleet to the right and half to the left were seen, And the little Revenge ran on thro' the long sea-lane between. K |