Some foul mischance in this sort might have been; For at dark Fortune's feet had Darrell flung In his youth's flower a daring gauntlet down. A beardless stripling, at that solemn hour When, breaking its frail filaments of clay, The mother's spirit soared invisible, The younger son, unhoused as well he knew, Had taken horse by night to London town, With right sore heart and nought else in his scrip But boyish hope to footing find at Court-- A page's place, belike, with some great lord, Or some small lord, that other proving shy Of merit that had not yet clipt its shell. Day after day, in weather foul or fair, With lackeys, hucksters, and the commoner sort, At Whitehall and Westminster he stood guard, Reading men's faces with most anxious eye. There the lords swarmed, some waspish and some bland, But none would pause at plucking of the sleeve To hearken to him, and the lad had died On London stones for lack of crust to gnaw But that he caught the age's malady, The something magical that was in air, And made men poets, heroes, demi-gods-- Made Shakespeare, Rawleigh, Grenvile, Oxenham, And set them stars in the fore-front of Time. In fine, young Darrell drew of that same air A valiant breath, and shipped with Francis Drake, Of Tavistock, to sail the Spanish seas And teach the heathen manners, with God's aid; And so, among lean Papists and black Moors, He, with the din of battle in his ears, Struck fortune. Who would tamely bide at home At beck and call of some proud swollen lord Not worth his biscuit, or at Beauty's feet Sit making sonnets, when was work to do Out yonder, sinking Philip's caravels At sea, and then by way of episode Setting quick torch* to pirate-nests ashore? * Sir Francis Drake called this “singeing the King of Spayne's beard.”