wound the sky,
While England's little _Rainbow_ foams and flashes by.

Suddenly the flag-ship of Recalde, stung
To fury it seemed, heeled like an avalanche
To leeward, then reeled out beyond the rest
Against the wind, alone, daring the foe
To grapple her. At once the little _Revenge_
With Drake's flag flying flashed at her throat,
And hardly a cable's-length away out-belched
Broadside on broadside, under those great cannon,
Crashing through five-foot beams, four shots to one,
While Howard and the rest swept to and fro
Keeping at deadly bay the rolling hulks
That looming like Leviathans now plunged
Desperately against the freshening wind
To rescue the great flag-ship where she lay
Alone, amid the cannonades of Drake,
Alone, like a volcanic island lashed
With crimson hurricanes, dinning the winds
With isolated thunders, flaking the skies
With wrathful lava, while great spars and blocks
Leapt through the cloudy glare and fell, far off,
Like small black stones into the hissing sea.

Oquendo saw her peril far away!
His rushing prow thro' heaven begins to loom,
Oquendo, first in all that proud array,
Hath heart the pride of Spain to reassume:
He comes; the rolling seas are dusked with gloom
Of his great sails! Now round him once again,
Thrust out your oars, ye mighty hulks of doom;
Forward, with hiss of whip and clank of chain!
Let twice ten hundred slaves bring on the wrath of Spain!

Sidonia comes! Toledo comes!--huge ranks
That rally against the storm from sky to sky,
As down the dark blood-rusted chain-locked planks
Of labouring galleys the dark slave-guards ply
Their knotted scourges, and the red flakes fly
From bare scarred backs that quiver and heave once more,
And slaves that heed not if they live or die
Pull with numb arms at many a red-stained oar,
Nor know the sea's dull crash from cannon's growing roar.

Bring on the wrath! From heaven to rushing heaven
The white foam sweeps around their fierce array;
In vain before their shattering crimson levin
The ships of England flash and dart away:
Not England's heart can hold that host at bay!
See, a swift signal shoots along her line,
Her ships are scattered, they fly, they fly like spray
Driven against the wind by wrath divine,
While, roun