aliant 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."

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,