Lyra Heroica Part 45

CXXVI

THE FLAG OF ENGLAND

Winds of the World, give answer! They are whimpering to and fro-- And what should they know of England who only England know?-- The poor little street-bred people that vapour and fume and brag, They are lifting their heads in the stillness to yelp at the English Flag.

Must we borrow a clout from the Boer--to plaster anew with dirt?

An Irish liar's bandage, or an English coward's shirt?

We may not speak of England; her Flag's to sell or share.

What is the Flag of England? Winds of the World, declare!

The North Wind blew:--'From Bergen my steel-shod vanguards go; I chase your lazy whalers home from the Disko floe; By the great North Lights above me I work the will of G.o.d, And the liner splits on the ice-fields or the Dogger fills with cod.

I barred my gates with iron, I shuttered my doors with flame, Because to force my ramparts your nutsh.e.l.l navies came; I took the sun from their presence, I cut them down with my blast, And they died, but the Flag of England blew free ere the spirit pa.s.sed.

The lean white bear hath seen it in the long, long Arctic night, The musk-ox knows the standard that flouts the Northern Light: What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my bergs to dare, Ye have but my drifts to conquer. Go forth, for it is there!'

The South Wind sighed:--'From the Virgins my mid-sea course was ta'en Over a thousand islands lost in an idle main, Where the sea-egg flames on the coral and the long-backed breakers croon Their endless ocean legends to the lazy, locked lagoon.

Strayed amid lonely islets, mazed amid outer keys, I waked the palms to laughter--I tossed the scud in the breeze-- Never was isle so little, never was sea so lone, But over the scud and the palm trees an English flag was flown.

I have wrenched it free from the halliard to hang for a wisp on the Horn; I have chased it north to the Lizard--ribboned and rolled and torn; I have spread its fold o'er the dying, adrift in a hopeless sea; I have hurled it swift on the slaver, and seen the slave set free.

My basking sunfish know it, and wheeling albatross, Where the lone wave fills with fire beneath the Southern Cross.

What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my reefs to dare, Ye have but my seas to furrow. Go forth, for it is there!'

The East Wind roared:--'From the Kuriles, the Bitter Seas, I come, And me men call the Home-Wind, for I bring the English home.

Look--look well to your shipping! By the breath of my mad typhoon I swept your close-packed Praya and beached your best at Kowloon!

The reeling junks behind me and the racing seas before, I raped your richest roadstead--I plundered Singapore!

I set my hand on the Hoogli; as a hooded snake she rose, And I heaved your stoutest steamers to roost with the startled crows.

Never the lotos closes, never the wild-fowl wake.

But a soul goes out on the East Wind that died for England's sake-- Man or woman or suckling, mother or bride or maid-- Because on the bones of the English the English Flag is stayed.

The desert-dust hath dimmed it, the flying wild-a.s.s knows, The scared white leopard winds it across the taintless snows.

What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my sun to dare, Ye have but my sands to travel. Go forth, for it is there!'

The West Wind called:--'In squadrons the thoughtless galleons fly That bear the wheat and cattle lest street-bred people die.

They make my might their porter, they make my house their path, And I loose my neck from their service and whelm them all in my wrath.

I draw the gliding fog-bank as a snake is drawn from the hole, They bellow one to the other, the frighted ship-bells toll: For day is a drifting terror till I raise the shroud with my breath, And they see strange bows above them and the two go locked to death.

But whether in calm or wrack-wreath, whether by dark or day I heave them whole to the conger or rip their plates away, First of the scattered legions, under a shrieking sky, Dipping between the rollers, the English Flag goes by.

The dead dumb fog hath wrapped it--the frozen dews have kissed-- The morning stars have hailed it, a fellow-star in the mist.

What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my breath to dare, Ye have but my waves to conquer. Go forth, for it is there!'

_Kipling._

NOTES

I

This descant upon one of the most glorious feats of arms that even England has achieved is selected and pieced together from the magnificent verse a.s.signed to the Chorus--'_Enter RUMOUR painted full of tongues_'--to _King Henry V._, the n.o.ble piece of pageantry produced in 1598, and a famous number from the _Poems Lyrick and Pastorall_ (_circ._ 1605) of Michael Drayton. 'Look,'

says Ben Jonson, in his _Vision on the Muses of his Friend, Michael Drayton_:--

Look how we read the Spartans were inflamed With bold Tyrtaeus' verse; when thou art named So shall our English youths urge on, and cry An AGINCOURT! an AGINCOURT! or die.

This, it is true, was in respect of another _Agincourt_, but we need not hesitate to appropriate it to our own: in respect of which--'To the Cambro-Britons and their Harp, His _Ballad of Agincourt_,' is the poet's own description--it is to note that Drayton had no model for it; that it remains wellnigh unique in English letters for over two hundred years; and that, despite such lapses into doggerel as the third stanza, and some curious infelicities of diction which need not here be specified, it remains, with a certain Sonnet, its author's chief t.i.tle to fame. Compare the ballads of _The Brave Lord Willoughby_ and _The Honour of Bristol_ in the seventeenth century, the song of _The Arethusa_ in the eighteenth, and in the nineteenth a choice of such Tyrtaean music as _The Battle of the Baltic_, Lord Tennyson's _Ballad of the Fleet_, and _The Red Thread of Honour_ of the late Sir Francis Doyle.

II

Originally _The True Character of a Happy Life_: written and printed about 1614, and reprinted by Percy (1765) from the _Reliquiae Wottonianae_ of 1651. Says Drummond of Ben Jonson, 'Sir Edward (_sic_) Wotton's verses of a Happy Life he hath by heart.'

Of Wotton himself it was reserved for Cowley to remark that

He did the utmost bounds of knowledge find, And found them not so large as was his mind;

And when he saw that he through all had pa.s.sed He died--lest he should idle grow at last.

See Izaak Walton, _Lives_.

III, IV

From _Underwoods_ (1640). The first, _An Ode_, is addressed to an innominate not yet, I believe, identified. The second is part of that _Ode to the Immortal Memory of that Heroic Pair, Sir Lucius Cary and Sir Henry Morrison_, which is the first true Pindaric in the language. Gifford ascribes it to 1629, when Sir Henry died, but it seems not to have been printed before 1640. Sir Lucius Cary is the Lord Falkland of Clarendon and Horace Walpole.

V

From _The Mad Lover_ (produced about 1618: published in 1640).

Compare the wooden imitations of Dryden in _Amboyna_ and elsewhere.

VI

First printed, Mr. Bullen tells me, in 1640. Compare X. (Shirley, _post_, p. 20), and the cry from Raleigh's _History of the World_: 'O Eloquent, Just, and Mighty Death! Whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the World hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the World and despised: thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched Greatness, all the Pride, Cruelty, and Ambition of Man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, "_Hic Jacet_."'