The Visions of England Part 14

And the purple-robed braes of Alban, The glory of stream and of plain, The Holyrood halls of his birthright Charles ne'er will look on again:-- And the land he loved well, not wisely, Will almost grudge him a grave: Then weep, too late, in her folly, The dark Dictator's slave!

This incident occurred during the attempt made by Charles, in the dark final days of his struggle, to march from South Wales with the hope of joining Montrose in Scotland. He appears to have halted for the night of Aug. 6, 1645, at Old Radnor and 'the name of _Rails Yat_, (Royal gate) still points out the spot where, on the following morning, he left the Rhos Lane for the road which brought him to shelter at Beggar's Bush': a name which is reported to be still preserved.

THE CAPTIVE CHILD

September 8: 1650

Child in girlhood's early grace, Pale white rose of royal race, Flower of France, and England's flower, What dost here at twilight hour Captive bird in castle-hold, Picture-fair and calm and cold, Cold and still as marble stone In gray Carisbrook alone?

--Fold thy limbs and take thy rest, Nestling of the silent nest!

Ah fair girl! So still and meek, One wan hand beneath her cheek, One on the holy texts that tell Of G.o.d's love ineffable;-- Last dear gift her father gave When, before to-morrow's grave, By no unmanly grief unmann'd, To his little orphan band In that stress of anguish sore He bade farewell evermore.

Doom'd, unhappy King! Had he Known the pangs in store for thee, Known the coa.r.s.e fanatic rage That,--despite her flower-soft age, Maidenhood's first blooming fair,-- Fever-struck in the imprison'd air As rosebud on the dust-hill thrown Cast a child to die alone,-- He had shed, with his last breath, Bitterer tears than tears of death!

As in her infant hour she took In her hand the pictured book Where Christ beneath the scourger bow'd, Crying 'O poor man!' aloud, And in baby tender pain Kiss'd the page, and kiss'd again, While the happy father smiled On his sweet warm-hearted child; --So now to him, in Carisbrook lone, All her tenderness has flown.

Oft with a child's faithful heart She has seen him act his part; Nothing in his life so well Gracing him as when he fell; Seen him greet his bitter doom As the mercy-message Home; Seen the scaffold and the shame, The red shower that fell like flame; Till the whole heart within her died, Dying in fancy by his side.

--Statue-still and statue-fair Now the low wind may lift her hair, Motionless in lip and limb; E'en the fearful mouse may skim O'er the window-sill, nor stir From the crumb at sight of her; Through the lattice unheard float Summer blackbird's evening note;-- E'en the sullen foe would bless That pale utter gentleness.

--Eyes of heaven, that pa.s.s and peep, Do not question, if she sleep!

She has no abiding here, She is past the starry sphere; Kneeling with the children sweet At the palm-wreathed altar's feet; --Innocents who died like thee, Heaven-ward through man's cruelty, To the love-smiles of their Lord Borne through pain and fire and sword.

Elizabeth, second daughter of Charles I. and Henrietta Maria, was born on Innocents' Day, 1635. The incident accounted in Stanza iv occurred in 1637. She had been taken on a visit to Hampton Court to her mother, who wished her to be present at her own vesper-service, when Elizabeth, not yet two years old, became very restless. To quiet her a book of devotion was shown to her.' The King, when the Queen drew his attention, said, 'She begins young!'

This tale is told by Mrs. Green, in her excellent _Princesses of England_, (London, 1853),--a book deserving to be better known,--on the authority of the Envoy Con.

The first grief of a very happy and promising childhood may have been the loss of her sister Anne in 1640. But by 1642, the evils of the time began to press upon Princess Elizabeth; her mother's departure from England, followed by her own capture by order of the Parliament; her confinement under conditions of varying severity; and the final farewell to her father, Jan. 29, 1649.

From that time her life was overshadowed by the sadness of her father's death, her own isolation, and her increasing feebleness of health. She seems to have been a singularly winning and intelligent girl, and she hence found or inspired affection in several of the guardians successively appointed to take charge of her. But if she had not been thus marked by beauty of nature, our indignant disgust would hardly be less at the brutal treatment inflicted by the Puritan-Independent authorities upon this child:--at the refusal of her prayer to be sent to her elder sister Mary, in Holland; at the captivity in Carisbrook; at the isolation in which she was left to die.--Yet it is not she who most merits pity!

In this poem, written before the plan of the book had been formed, I find that some slight deviation from the best authorities has been made.

Elizabeth's young brother Henry, Duke of Gloster, shared her prison: and although her own physician, Mayerne, had been dismissed, yet some medical attendance was supplied.--Henry Vaughan has described the patience of the young sufferer in two lovely lines:

Thou didst not murmur, nor revile, And drank'st thy wormwood with a smile.

--_Olor Isca.n.u.s_; 1651.

THE WRECK OF THE ADMIRAL

_A TALE OF PRINCE RUPERT_

September 30: 1651

Seventy league from Terceira they lay In the mid Atlantic straining; And inch upon inch as she settles they know The leak on the Admiral gaining.

Below them 'tis death rushes greedily in; But their signal unheeded is waving, For the shouts by their billow-toss'd consort unheard Are lost in the tempest's wild raving.

For Maurice in vain o'er the bulwark leant forth, While Rupert to rescue was crying; And the voice of farewell on his face is flung back With the scud on the billow-top flying!

But no time was for tears, save for duty no thought, When brother is parting from brother; For Rupert the brave and his high-hearted crew, They must die, as they lived, by each other.

Unregarded the boat, for none care from their post To steal off while the Prince is beside them, All, all, side by side with his comrades to share Till the death-plunge at last shall divide them.

Ah, sharp in his bosom meanwhile is the smart, He alone for his king is contending!

And the brightness and blaze of his youth in its prime Must here in mid-waves have their ending!

--The seas they break over, the seas they press in From fo'csle to binnacle streaming; And a ripple runs over the Admiral's deck, With blue cold witch-fire gleaming.

O then in a n.o.ble rebellion they rise; They may die, but the Prince shall o'erlive them!

With a loving rough force to the boat he is thrust, And he must be saved and forgive them!

Now their flame-pikes they lift, the last signal for life, Flaring wild in the wild rack above them:-- And each breast has one prayer for the Mercy on high, And one for the far-off who love them.

O high-beating hearts that are still'd in the deep Unknown treasure-caverns of Ocean!

There, where storms cannot vex, the three hundred are laid In their silent heroic devotion.

Rupert, nephew to Charles through his sister Elizabeth, wife to the Elector Palatine, after the ruin of his uncle's cause, carried on the struggle at sea. The incident here treated occurred on one of his last voyages, when cruising in the Atlantic near the Canaries: it is told at full length in E. Warburton's narrative of Rupert's life.

_Brother is parting from brother_; Maurice, a year younger than himself,--then in the companion ship _Swallow_, in which Rupert, by the devoted determination of his comrades, was ultimately saved. Maurice was not long after drowned in the West Indies.

_Flame-pikes_; Two 'fire-pikes,' it is stated, were burned as a signal just before the flag-ship sank. Three hundred and thirty-three was the estimate of the number drowned.

THE RETURN OF LAW

1660

At last the long darkness of anarchy lifts, and the dawn o'er the gray In rosy pulsation floods; the tremulous amber of day: In the golden umbrage of spring-tide, the dewy delight of the sward, The liquid voices awake, the new morn with music reward.

Peace in her car goes up; a rainbow curves for her road; Law and fair Order before her, the reinless coursers of G.o.d;-- Round her the gracious maids in circling majesty shine; They are rich in blossoms and blessings, the Hours, the white, the divine!

Hands in sisterly hands they unite, eye calling on eye; Smiles more speaking than words, as the pageant sweeps o'er the sky.

Plenty is with them, and Commerce; all gifts of all lands from her horn Raining on England profuse; and, clad in the beams of the morn, Her warrior-guardian of old the red standard rears in its might; And the Love-star trembles above, and pa.s.ses, light into light.

Many the marvels of earth, the more marvellous wonders on high, Worlds past number on worlds, blank lightless abysses of sky; But thou art the wonder of wonders, O Man! Thy impalpable soul, Atom of consciousness, measuring the Infinite, grasping the whole: Then, on the trivialest transiencies fix'd, or plucking for fruit Dead-sea apples and ashes of sin, more brute than the brute.

Yet in thy deepest depths, filth-wallowing orgies of night, l.u.s.t remorseless of blood, yet, allow'd an inlet for light: As where, a thousand fathom beneath us, midnight afar Glooms in some gulph, and we gaze, and, behold! one flash of one star!

For, ever, the golden gates stand open, the transit is free For the human to mix with divine; from himself to the Highest to flee.

Lo on its knees by the bedside the babe:--and the song that we hear Has been heard already in Heaven! the low-lisp'd music is clear:-- For, fresh from the hand of the Maker, the child still breathes the light air Of the House Angelic, the meadow where souls yet unbodied repair, Lucid with love, translucent with bliss, and know not the doom In the Marah valley of life laid up for the sons of the womb.

--I speak not of grovelling hearts, souls blind and begrimed from the birth, But the spirits of n.o.bler strain, the elect of the children of earth:-- For the needle swerves from the pole; they cannot do what they would; In their truest aim is falsehood, and ill out-balancing good.

Faith's first felicities fade; the world-mists thicken and roll, 'Neath the heavens arching their heaven; o'er-hazing the eye of the soul.