me with some word that burns
And rankles in me still, making me fear
The man was mad, some word of lonely seas,
A desert island and a mutineer
And dead Magellan's gallows. Sirs, my life
Was hardly safe with him. Why, he resolved
To storm the Castle of St. Vincent, sirs,
A castle on a cliff, grinning with guns,
Well known impregnable! The Spaniards fear
Drake; but to see him land below it and bid
Surrender, sirs, the strongest fort of Spain
Without a blow, they laughed! And straightway he,
With all the fury of Satan, turned that cliff
To hell itself. He sent down to the ships
For faggots, broken oars, beams, bowsprits, masts,
And piled them up against the outer gates,
Higher and higher, and fired them. There he stood
Amid the smoke and flame and cannon-shot,
This Admiral, like a common seamen, black
With soot, besmeared with blood, his naked arms
Full of great faggots, labouring like a giant
And roaring like Apollyon. Sirs, he is mad!
But did he take it, say you? Yea, he took it,
The mightiest stronghold on the coast of Spain,
Took it and tumbled all its big brass guns
Clattering over the cliffs into the sea.
But, sirs, ye need not raise a cheer so loud
It is not warfare. 'Twas a madman's trick,
A devil's!"
Then the rumour of a storm
That scattered the fleet of Drake to the four winds
Disturbed the heart of England, as his ships
Came straggling into harbour, one by one,
Saying they could not find him. Then, at last,
When the storm burst in its earth-shaking might
Along our coasts, one night of rolling gloom
His cannon woke old Plymouth. In he came
Across the thunder and lightning of the sea
With his grim ship of war and, close behind,
A shadow like a mountain or a cloud
Torn from the heaven-high panoplies of Spain,
A captured galleon loomed, and round her prow
A blazoned scroll, whence (as she neared the quays
Which many a lanthorn swung from brawny fist
Yellowed) the sudden crimson of her name
_San Filippe_ flashed o'er the white sea of faces,
And a rending shout went skyward that outroared
The blanching breakers--"'Tis the heart of Spain!
The great _San Filippe_!" Overhead she towered,
The mightiest ship afloat; and in her hold
The riches of a continent, a prize
Greater than earth had ever kn