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Theodore Watts-Dunton: Poet, Novelist, Critic
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When Mr. ‘W. H.’ sits down, the friend and brother of another great poet, Christopher Marlowe, who had been sitting moody and silent, oppressed by thoughts of the dead man, many of whose unfriends were at the gathering, recites these lines ‘On Seeing Kit Marlowe Slain at Deptford’: —
’Tis Marlowe falls! That last lunge rent asunder
Our lyre of spirit and flesh, Kit Marlowe’s life,
Whose chords seemed strung by earth and heaven at strife,
Yet ever strung to beauty above or under!
Heav’n kens of Man, but oh! the stars can blunder,
If Fate’s hand guided yonder villain’s knife
Through that rare brain, so teeming, daring, rife
With dower of poets – song and love and wonder.
Or was it Chance? Shakspeare, who art supreme
O’er man and men, yet sharest Marlowe’s sight
To pierce the clouds that hide the inhuman height
Where man and men and gods and all that seem
Are Nature’s mutterings in her changeful dream —
Come, spell the runes these bloody rivulets write!
After they have all drunk in silence to the memory of Marlowe, Marlowe’s friend speaks: —
Where’er thou art, ‘dead Shepherd,’ look on me;
The boy who loved thee loves more dearly now,
He sees thine eyes in yonder holly-bough;
Oh, Kit, my Kit, the Mermaid drinks to thee!
Then Raleigh rises, and the great business of the evening begins with the following splendid chorus: —
Raleigh
(Turning to David Gwynn)
Wherever billows foam
The Briton fights at home:
His hearth is built of water —
Chorus
Water blue and green;
Raleigh
There’s never a wave of ocean
The wind can set in motion
That shall not own our England —
Chorus
Own our England queen. [19 - ‘England is a country that can never be conquered while the Sovereign thereof has the command of the sea.’ – Raleigh.]
Raleigh
The guest I bring to-night
Had many a goodly fight
On seas the Don hath found —
Chorus
Hath found for English sails;
Raleigh
And once he dealt a blow
Against the Don to show
What mighty hearts can move —
Chorus
Can move in leafy Wales.
Raleigh
Stand up, bold Master Gwynn,
Who hast a heart akin
To England’s own brave hearts —
Chorus
Brave hearts where’er they beat;
Raleigh
Stand up, brave Welshman, thou,
And tell the Mermaid how
A galley-slave struck hard —
Chorus
Struck hard the Spanish fleet.
Christmas knows a merry, merry place,
Where he goes with fondest face,
Brightest eye, brightest hair:
Tell the Mermaid where is that one place:
Where?
Upon being thus called forth the old sea-dog rises, and tells a wonderful story indeed, the ‘story of how he and the Golden Skeleton crippled the Great Armada sailing out’: —
‘A galley lie’ they called my tale; but he
Whose talk is with the deep kens mighty tales:
The man, I say, who helped to keep you free
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