And, launched in mad career, the thundering wave Leaps booming through the weedy ocean cave; Each tenth is grander than the nine before, And breaks with tenfold thunder on the shore. Alas! it is so on the sounding sea; But so, O England, it is not with thee! Thy decuman is broken on the shore: A peer to him shall lave thee never more! Ring forth, O mournful harp--no nobler strain Than this to-day shall e'er be thine again. See where amid her ruined towns and towers France broods upon her country's shattered powers. Ask her his glories--at the fatal name Her olive cheek grows red with burning shame, The tear starts flashing to her careworn eye, She points where stiff and cold her children lie, Beneath the bloody sod of many a plain, By victor Edward's dreaded arrows slain; From where on Cressy's dark and trodden ground Two kings were slain and princes died around, To where Limoges' streets ran red with blood, And lives of thousands fed the crimson flood; Or where, again, in Poitiers' fatal lane The flower of all her gay noblesse were slain, And trodden down amid the gory clay, In useless valour threw their lives away; {233} While many a lordly tower and holy spire Fell blackened ruins to the invader's fire. But not upon thy fields, O France, alone Like meteor shot from sphere of light he shone. Rise, Spain, and witness how thy fair Castile Has bled upon Najarra's fatal hill, When sullen Najarilla's voiceless flow Rang to the buckler's clang and falchion's blow, And legions melted as a morning's snow. But own that, when before his victor brand He stretched defenceless all the humbled land, It then was Edward's voice that stemmed the tide, And Guzman only for his treason died. Ungrateful Pedro! gilt and sceptred slave! Ill hast thou merited the crown he gave! "The crown he gave," and now, alas! has he Who was the heir to England's sovereignty No diadem except the cerecloth band, No sceptre but the taper in his hand! The glory that embalms his brilliant name Alone is deathless through the voice of fame; Or where, adorned in many a loyal heart, It burns unmoved till life itself shall part-- It lives undying there. What other throne So meet for him who called those hearts his own?