  Messenger. This gold chain ... Bears the twelve badges of the strength of Spain Once linked in glory, Philip, but now loosed. (Detaching link from link.) Castilla, Leon, Aragon, and these, Palestine, Portugal, the Sicilies, Navarre, Granada, the Valencian State, The Indies, East and West, the Archducate, The Western Mainland in the Ocean Sea. Those who upheld their strength have ceased to be. I, who am dying, King, have seen their graves. Philip, your Navy is beneath the waves. Philip. He who in bounty gives in wisdom takes. Messenger. O King, forgive me, for my spirit breaks; I saw those beaches where the Grange descends White with unburied corpses of stripped friends. Philip. I grieve that Spain’s disaster brings such loss. Messenger. From Pentland to the Groyne the tempests toss Unshriven Spaniards driving with the tide. They were my lovely friends and they have died, Far from wind-broken Biscay, far from home, With no anointing chrism but the foam. Philip. The dead will rise from unsuspected slime; God’s chosen will be gathered in God’s time. Messenger. King, they died helpless; our unwieldy fleet Made such a target to the English guns That we were riddled through like sifted wheat. We never came to grappling with them once. They raked us from a distance, and then ran. Each village throughout Spain has lost a man; The widows in the seaports fill the streets. Philip. Uncertain chance decides the fate of fleets. Messenger. Now the North Sea is haunted for all time By miserable souls whose dying words Cursed the too proud adventure as a crime. Our broken galleons house the gannet-birds. The Irish burn our Captain’s bones for lime. O misery that the might of England wrought! Philip. Christ is the only remedy for thought When the mind sickens. We are pieces played, Not moving as we will, but as we are made; Beaten and spurred at times like stubborn steeds, That we may go God’s way. Your spirit bleeds, Having been proved in trouble past her strength. Give me the roll in all its ghastly length. Which of my friends survive, if any live? Messenger. Some have survived, but all are fugitive. Your Admiral in command is living still; MichÆl Oquendo too, though he is ill, Dying of broken heart and bitter shame. Valdes is prisoner, Manrique the same. Philip. God willed the matter; they are not to blame. Thank God that they are living. Name the rest. Messenger. They are all dead ... with him you loved the best. Philip. I dreamed De Leyva died, so it is true? Messenger. Drowned on the Irish coast with all his crew. After enduring dying many days The sea has given him quiet. Many ways Lead men to death, and he a hard one trod, Bearing much misery, like a knight of God. Philip. Amen. Go on. Messenger. Hugh de Moncada died, Shot in his burning ship by Calais side, Cheering his men to save her. Pimentel Sank in a galleon shambled like a hell Rather than yield, and in a whirl of flames Pedro Mendoza, Captain of St. James, Stood with Don Philip thrusting boarders back Till their Toledan armour was burnt black, And both their helms ran blood. And there they fell, Shot down to bleed to death. They perished well, Before defeat had fallen on their friends; Happier than most, for where the merrows sing Paredes and his brother met their ends, And Don Alarcon, cast alive ashore, Was killed and stripped and hanged upon a tree. And young Mendoza, whom the flagship bore, Died of starvation and of misery. But hundreds perished, King; why mention these? Battle and hunger, heart-break, and the seas Have overwhelmed the chivalry of Spain. Philip. Misfortune, after effort, brings no stain. Perhaps I underjudged the English fleet. How was it that the Spaniards met defeat? What evil fortune brought about our fall? Messenger. Their sailors and their cannon did it all. Philip. Yet when the fleet reached Calais all went well. Messeng
e a swan that died, But although ruined she was still a queen. “Put back with all her sails gone,” went the word; Then, from her signals flying, rumour ran, “The sea that stove her boats in killed her third; She has been gutted and has lost a man.” So, as though stepping to a funeral march, She passed defeated homewards whence she came, Ragged with tattered canvas white as starch, A wild bird that misfortune had made tame. She was refitted soon: another took The dead man’s office; then the singers hove Her capstan till the snapping hawsers shook; Out, with a bubble at her bows, she drove. Again they towed her seawards, and again We, watching, praised her beauty, praised her trim, Saw her fair house-flag flutter at the main, And slowly saunter seawards, dwindling dim; And wished her well, and wondered, as she died, How, when her canvas had been sheeted home, Her quivering length would sweep into her stride, Making the greenness milky with her foam. But when we rose next morning, we discerned Her beauty once again a shattered thing; Towing to dock the Wanderer returned, A wounded sea-bird with a broken wing. A spar was gone, her rigging’s disarray Told of a worst disaster than the last; Like draggled hair dishevelled hung the stay, Drooping and beating on the broken mast. Half-mast upon her flagstaff hung her flag; Word went among us how the broken spar Had gored her captain like an angry stag, And killed her mate a half-day from the bar. She passed to dock upon the top of flood. An old man near me shook his head and swore: “Like a bad woman, she has tasted blood— There’ll be no trusting in her any more.” We thought it truth, and when we saw her there Lying in dock, beyond, across the stream, We would forget that we had called her fair, We thought her murderess and the past a dream. And when she sailed again, we watched in awe, Wondering what bloody act her beauty planned, What evil lurked behind the thing we saw, What strength was there that thus annulled man’s hand, How next its triumph would compel man’s will Into compliance with external Fate, How next the powers would use her to work ill On suffering men; we had not long to wait. For soon the outcry of derision rose, “Here comes the Wanderer!” the expected cry. Guessing the cause, our mockings joined with those Yelled from the shipping as they towed her by. She passed us close, her seamen paid no heed To what was called: they stood, a sullen group, Smoking and spitting, careless of her need, Mocking the orders given from the poop. Her mates and boys were working her; we stared. What was the reason of this strange return, This third annulling of the thing prepared? No outward evil could our eyes discern. Only like someone who has formed a plan Beyond the pitch of common minds, she sailed, Mocked and deserted by the common man, Made half divine to me for having failed. We learned the reason soon; below the town A stay had parted like a snapping reed, “Warning,” the men thought, “not to take her down.” They took the omen, they would not proceed. Days passed before another crew would sign. The Wanderer lay in dock alone, unmanned, Feared as a thing possessed by powers malign, Bound under curses not to leave the land. But under passing Time fear passes too; That terror passed, the sailors’ hearts grew bold. We learned in time that she had found a crew And was bound out and southwards as of old. And in contempt we thought, “A little while Will bring her back again, dismantled, spoiled. It is herself; she cannot change her style; She has the habit now of being foiled.” So when a ship appeared among the haze, We thought, “The Wanderer back again”; but no, No Wanderer showed for many, many days, Her passing lights made other waters glow. But we would often think and talk of her, Tell newer hands her story, wondering, then, Upon what ocean she was Wanderer, Bound to the cities built by foreign men. And one by one our little conclave thinned, Passed into ships and sailed and so away, To drown in some great roaring of the wind, Wanderers themselves, unhappy fortune’s prey. And Time went by me making memory dim, Yet still I wondered if the Wanderer fared Still pointing to the unreached ocean’s rim, Brightening the water where her breast was bared. And much in ports abroad I eyed the ships, Hoping to see her well-remembered form Come with a curl of bubbles at her lips Bright to her berth, the sovereign of the storm. I never did, and many years went by, Then, near a Southern port, one Christmas Eve, I watched a gale go roaring through the sky, Making the caldrons of the clouds upheave. Then the wrack tattered and the stars appeared, Millions of stars that seemed to weet Sea-troubling sisters of the Fernie Fleet. Corunna (in whom my friend died) and the old Long since loved Esmeralda long since sold. Aladdin burnt, the Bidston water broken, Yola in whom my friend sailed, Dawpool trim, Fierce-bowed Egeria plunging to the swim, Stanmore wide-sterned, sweet Cupica, tall Bard Queen in all harbours with her moonsail yard. Though I tell many there must still be others, McVickar Marshall’s ships and Fernie Brothers’ Lochs, Counties, Shires, Drums, the countless lines Whose house-flags all were once familiar signs At high main trucks on Mersey’s windy ways When sun made all the wind-white water blaze. Their names bring back old mornings when the docks Shone with their house-flags and their painted blocks, Their raking masts below the Custom House And all the marvellous beauty of their bows. Familiar steamers, too, majestic steamers, Shearing Atlantic roller-tops to streamers Umbria, Etruria, noble, still at sea, The grandest, then, that man had brought to be Majestic, City of Paris, City of Rome, Forever jealous racers, out and home. The Alfred Holt’s blue smokestacks down the stream, The fair Arabian with her bows a-cream. The marks and styles of countless ship designers. The Magdalena, Puno, Potosi, Lost Cotopaxi, all well known to me. These splendid ships, each with her grace, her glory, Her memory of old song or comrade’s story, Still in my mind the image of life’s need, Beauty in hardest action, beauty indeed. “They built great ships and sailed them” sounds most brave, Whatever arts we have or fail to have; I touch my country’s mind, I come to grips With half her purpose thinking of these ships. That art untouched by softness, all that line Drawn ringing hard to stand the test of brine; That nobleness and grandeur, all that beauty Born of a manly life and bitter duty; That splendour of fine bows which yet could stand The shock of rollers never checked by land. That art of masts, sail-crowded, fit to break, Yet stayed to strength, and back-stayed into rake, The life demanded by that art, the keen Eye-puckered, hard-case seamen, silent, lean, Their tests are tempests and the sea that drowns. They are my country’s line, her great art done By strong brains labouring on the thought unwon, They mark our passage as a race of men, Earth will not see such ships as those agen.
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