madams, and cut-purses
For half-chewed Norfolk pippins. Never mind!
We'll build the perfect stage in Shoreditch yet.
And Will, there, hath half promised I shall write
A piece for his own company! What d'ye think
Of _Venus and Adonis_, his first heir,
Printed last week? A bouncing boy, my lad!
And he's at work on a Midsummer's Dream
That turns the world to fairyland!"

All these
And many more were there, and all were young!
There, as I brimmed their cups, I heard the voice
Of Raleigh ringing across the smoke-wreathed room,--
"Ben, could you put a frigate on the stage,
I've found a tragedy for you. Have you heard
The true tale of Sir Humphrey Gilbert?"

"No!"

"Why, Ben, of all the tragical affairs
Of the Ocean-sea, and of that other Ocean
Where all men sail so blindly, and misjudge
Their friends, their charts, their storms, their stars, their God,
If there be truth in the blind crowder's song
I bought in Bread Street for a penny, this
Is the brief type and chronicle of them all.
Listen!" Then Raleigh sent these rugged rhymes
Of some blind crowder rolling in great waves
Of passion across the gloom. At each refrain
He sank his voice to a broad deep undertone,
As if the distant roar of breaking surf
Or the low thunder of eternal tides
Filled up the pauses of the nearer storm,
Storm against storm, a soul against the sea:--

A KNIGHT OF THE OCEAN-SEA

Sir Humphrey Gilbert, hard of hand,
Knight-in-chief of the Ocean-sea,
Gazed from the rocks of his New Found Land
And thought of the home where his heart would be.

He gazed across the wintry waste
That weltered and hissed like molten lead,--
"He saileth twice who saileth in haste!
I'll wait the favour of Spring," he said.

_Ever the more, ever the more,
He heard the winds and the waves roar!
Thunder on thunder shook the shore._

The yellow clots of foam went by
Like shavings that curl from a ship-wright's plane,
Clinging and flying, afar and nigh,
Shuddering, flying and clinging again.

A thousand bubbles in every one
Shifted and shimmered with rainbow gleams;
But--had they been planets and stars that spun
He had let them drift by his feet like dream