t them know
That there is blood, not water, in our veins.
Sail on, my captain, to the glorious end,
And, though at first thou needs must sail alone
And undefended, ere that end be reached,
When I shall give the word, nay, but one word,
All England shall be up and after thee,
The sword of England shall shine over thee,
And round about thee like a guardian fire;
All the great soul of England shall be there;
Her mighty dead shall at that cry of doom
Rise from their graves and in God's panoply
Plunge with our standards through immortal storms
When Drake rides out across the wreck of Rome.
As yet we must be cautious; let no breath
Escape thee, save to thy most trusted friends;
For now, if my lord Burleigh heard one word
Of all thou hast in mind, he is so much
The friend of caution and the beaten road,
He would not rest till he had spilled thy hopes
And sealed thy doom! Go now, fit out thy ships.
Walsingham is empowered to give thee gold
Immediately, but look to him for more
As thou shalt need it, gold and gold to spare,
My golden-hearted pilot to the shores
Of victory--so farewell;" and through the gloom
She vanished as she came; and Drake groped, dazed,
Out through the doors, and found great Walsingham
Awaiting him with gold.
But in the room
Where Drake had held his converse with the Queen
The embroidered arras moved, and a lean face,
White with its long eavesdropping upon death,
Crept out and peered as a venomous adder peers
From out dark ferns, then as the reptile flashes
Along a path between two banks of flowers
Almost too swift for sight, a stealthy form
--One of the fifty spies whom Burleigh paid--
Passed down the gold-gloomed corridor to seek
His master, whom among great books he found,
Calm, like a mountain brooding o'er the sea.
Nor did he break that calm for all these winds
Of rumour that now burst from out the sky.
His brow bent like a cliff over his thoughts,
And the spy watched him half resentfully,
Thinking his news well worth a blacker frown.
At last the statesman smiled and answered, "Go;
Fetch Thomas Doughty, Leicester's secretary."

Few suns had risen and set ere Francis Drake
Had furnished forth his ships with guns and men,
Tried seamen that he knew in storms of old,--