Each trusty captain knew his part: They served as men, not marshalled kine: The pulses they of his great heart, With heads to work his main design. Their Nelson’s word, to beat the foe, And spare the fall’n, before them shone. Good was the hour of blow for blow, And clear their course while they fought on. Behold the Envied vanward sweep!— A day in mourning weeds adored! Then Victory was wrought to weep; Then sorrow crowned with laurel soared. A breezeless flag above a shroud All Britain was when wind and wave, To make her, passing human, proud, Brought his last gift from o’er the grave! Uprose the soul of him a star On that brave day of Ocean days: It rolled the smoke from Trafalgár To darken Austerlitz ablaze. Are we the men of old, its light Will point us under every sky The path he took; and must we fight, Our Nelson be our battle-cry! He leads: we hear our Seaman’s call In the roll of battles won; For he is Britain’s Admiral Till setting of her sun. ODES IN CONTRIBUTION TO THE SONG OF FRENCH HISTORY THE REVOLUTION I NOT yet had History’s Aetna smoked the skies, And low the Gallic Giantess lay enchained, While overhead in ordered set and rise Her kingly crowns immutably defiled; Effulgent on funereal piled Across the vacant heavens, and distrained Her body, mutely, even as earth, to bear; Despoiled the tomb of hope, her mouth of air. II Through marching scores of winters racked she lay, Beneath a hoar-frost’s brilliant crust, Whereon the jewelled flies that drained Her breasts disported in a glistering spray; She, the land’s fount of fruits, enclosed with dust; By good and evil angels fed, sustained In part to curse, in part to pray, Sucking the dubious rumours, till men saw The throbs of her charged heart before the Just, So worn the harrowed surface had become: And still they deemed the dance above was Law, Amort all passion in a rebel dumb. III