Brave sport to singe the beard o' the King of Spain! Brave sport, but in the end dreamed he of home-- Of where the trout-brook lisped among the reeds, Of great chalk cliffs and leagues of yellow gorse, Of peaceful lanes, of London's roaring streets, The crowds, the shops, the pageants in Cheapside, And heard the trumpets blaring for the Queen When 't was the wind that whistled in the shrouds Off Cadiz. Ah, and softer dreams he had Of an unnamed and sweetest mystery, And from the marble of his soul's desire Hewed out the white ideal of his love-- A new Pygmalion! All things drew him home, This mainly. Foot on English earth once more, Dear earth of England his propitious fame A thorn in none but crooked Envy's side, He went cross-gartered, with a silken rose At golden lovelock, diamond brooch at hat Looping one side up very gallantly, And changed his doublet's color twice a day. Ill fare had given his softer senses edge; Good fortune, later, bade him come to dine, Mild Spenser's scholar, Philip Sidney's friend. So took he now his ease; in Devonshire, When Town was dull, or he had need at heart For sight of Wyndham Towers against the sky; But chiefly did he bask him by the Thames, For there 't was that Young England froze and thawed By turns in GLORIANA'S frown and smile. As some wild animal that gets a wound, And prescience hath of death, will drag itself Back to its cavern sullenly to die, And would not have heaven's airs for witnesses, So Wyndham, shrinking from the very stars And tell-tale places where the moonlight fell, Crept through the huddled shadows back to hall, And in a lonely room where no light was, Save what the moon made at the casement there, Sat pondering his hurt, and in the dark Gave audience to a host of grievances. For never comes reflection, gay or grave, But it brings with it comrades of its hue. So did he fall to thinking how his day Declined, and how his narrow life had run Obscurely through an age of great events Such as men never saw, nor will again Until the globe be riven by God's fire. Others had ventured for the Golden Fleece, Knaves of no parts at all, and got renown, (By force of circumstance and not desert,) While he up there on that rock-bastioned coast Had rotted like some old hulk's skeleton, Whose naked and bleached ribs the lazy tide Laps day by day, and no man thinks of more. Then was jade Fortune in her lavish mood. Why had he not for distant Colchis sailed And been the Jason of these Argonauts? True, some had come to block on Tower Hill, Or quittance made in a less noble sort; Still they had lived, from life's high-mantling cup Had blown the bead. In such case, if one's head