Slowly the dark bells toll for him who asks
No more of men, but that they may sometimes
Pray for the souls of Richard Whittington,
Alice, his wife, and (as themselves of old
Had prayed) the father and mother of each of them.
Slowly the great notes fall and float away:--
_Omnibus exemplum
Barathrum vincendo morosum
Condidit hoc templum ...
Pauperibus pater ...
Finiit ipse dies
Sis sibi Christe quies. Amen._"
IX
RALEIGH
Ben was our only guest that day. His tribe
Had flown to their new shrine--the Apollo Room,
To which, though they enscrolled his golden verse
Above their doors like some great-fruited vine,
Ben still preferred our _Mermaid_, and to smoke
Alone in his old nook; perhaps to hear
The voices of the dead,
The voices of his old companions.
Hovering near him,--Will and Kit and Rob.
"Our Ocean-shepherd from the Main-deep sea,
Raleigh," he muttered, as I brimmed his cup,
"Last of the men that broke the fleets of Spain,
'Twas not enough to cage him, sixteen years,
Rotting his heart out in the Bloody Tower,
But they must fling him forth in his old age
To hunt for El Dorado. Then, mine host,
Because his poor old ship _The Destiny_
Smashes the Spaniard, but comes tottering home
Without the Spanish gold, our gracious king,
To please a catamite,
Sends the old lion back to the Tower again.
The friends of Spain will send him to the block
This time. That male Salome, Buckingham,
Is dancing for his head. Raleigh is doomed."
A shadow stood in the doorway. We looked up;
And there, but O, how changed, how worn and grey,
Sir Walter Raleigh, like a hunted thing,
Stared at us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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