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Poems and Ballads (Third Series): Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles; Swinburne—Vol. III — John Shaqi

Poems and Ballads (Third Series): Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles; Swinburne—Vol. IIISwinburne, Algernon Charles

General

Poems and Ballads (Third Series): Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles; Swinburne—Vol. III

Name: Poems and Ballads (Third Series): Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles; Swinburne—Vol. III
Author: Swinburne, Algernon Charles

Swinburne, Algernon Charles

Poetry

And lightly before the breeze
           The ships of his foes take wing:
         Are they scattered, the lords of the seas?
           Are they broken, the foes of the king?
     And ever now higher as a mounting fire the hopes of the Spaniard
           spring.

         And a windless night comes down:
           And a breezeless morning, bright
         With promise of praise to crown
           The close of the crowning fight,
     Leaps up as the foe's heart leaps, and glows with lustrous rapture
           of light.

         And stinted of gear for battle
           The ships of the sea's folk lie,
         Unwarlike, herded as cattle,
           Six miles from the foeman's eye
     That fastens as flame on the sight of them tame and offenceless,
           and ranged as to die.

         Surely the souls in them quail,
           They are stricken and withered at heart,
         When in on them, sail by sail,
           Fierce marvels of monstrous art,
     Tower darkening on tower till the sea-winds cower crowds down as to
           hurl them apart.

         And the windless weather is kindly,
           And comforts the host in these;
         And their hearts are uplift in them blindly,
           And blindly they boast at ease
     That the next day's fight shall exalt them, and smite with
           destruction the lords of the seas.

     II

         And lightly the proud hearts prattle,
           And lightly the dawn draws nigh,
         The dawn of the doom of the battle
           When these shall falter and fly;
     No day more great in the roll of fate filled ever with fire the
           sky.

         To fightward they go as to feastward,
           And the tempest of ships that drive
         Sets eastward ever and eastward,
           Till closer they strain and strive;
     And the shots that rain on the hulls of Spain are as thunders afire
           and alive.

         And about them the blithe sea smiles
           And flashes to windward and lee
         Round capes and headlands and isles
           That heed not if war there be;
     Round Sark, round Wight, green jewels of light in the ring of the
           golden sea.

         But the men that within them abide
           Are stout of spirit and stark
         As rocks that repel the tide,
           As day that repels the dark;
     And the light bequeathed from their swords unsheathed shines lineal
           on Wight and on Sark.

         And eastward the storm sets ever,
           The storm of the sails that strain
         And follow and close and sever
           And lose and return and gain;
     And English thunder divides in sunder the holds of the ships of
           Spain.

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Poems and Ballads (Third Series): Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles; Swinburne—Vol. III

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