Theodore Watts-Dunton: Poet, Novelist, Critic

Far down the offing glows a spot of red,
My soul knows well it hath that Inca’s form.
‘It lights,’ quoth I, ‘the red cross banner of Spain
There on the flagship where Medina sleeps —
Hell’s banner, wet with sweat of Indian’s pain,
And tears of women yoked to treasure train,
Scarlet of blood for which the New World weeps.’

There on the dark the flagship of the Don
To me seems luminous of the spectre’s glow;
But soon an arc of gold, and then the sun,
Rise o’er the reddening billows, proud and slow;
Then, through the curtains of the morning mist,
That take all shifting colours as they shake,
I see the great Armada coil and twist
Miles, miles along the ocean’s amethyst,
Like hell’s old snake of hate – the winged snake.

And, when the hazy veils of Morn are thinned,
That snake accursed, with wings which swell and puff
Before the slackening horses of the wind,
Turns into shining ships that tack and luff.
‘Behold,’ quoth I, ‘their floating citadels,
The same the priests have vouched for musket-proof,
Caracks and hulks and nimble caravels,
That sailed with us to sound of Lisbon bells —
Yea, sailed from Tagus’ mouth, for Christ’s behoof.

For Christ’s behoof they sailed: see how they go
With that red skeleton to show the way
There sitting on Medina’s stem aglow —
A hundred sail and forty-nine, men say;
Behold them, brothers, galleon and galeasse —
Their dizened turrets bright of many a plume,
Their gilded poops, their shining guns of brass,
Their trucks, their flags – behold them, how they pass —
With God’s Revenge for figurehead – to Doom!’

Then Ben Jonson, the symposiarch, rises and calls upon Raleigh to tell the story of the defeat of the Great Armada. I can give only a stanza or two and the chorus: —

Raleigh

The choirboys sing the matin song,
When down falls Seymour on the Spaniard’s right.
He drives the wing – a huddled throng —
Back on the centre ships, that steer for flight.
While galleon hurtles galeasse,
And oars that fight each other kill the slaves,
As scythes cut down the summer grass,
Drake closes on the writhing mass,
Through which the balls at closest ranges pass,
Skimming the waves.

Fiercely do galley and galeasse fight,
Running from ship to ship like living things.
With oars like legs, with beaks that smite,
Winged centipedes they seem with tattered wings.
Through smoke we see their chiefs encased
In shining mail of gold where blood congeals;
And once I see within a waist
Wild English captives ashen-faced,
Their bending backs by Spanish scourges laced
In purple weals.

    [David Gwynn here leaps up, pale and panting, and
    bares a scarred arm, but at a sign from Raleigh sits down again.
The Don fights well, but fights not now
The cozened Indian whom he kissed for friend,
To pluck the gold from off the brow,
Then fling the flesh to priests to burn and rend.
He hunts not now the Indian maid
With bloodhound’s bay – Peru’s confiding daughter,
Who saw in flowery bower or glade
The stranger’s god-like cavalcade,
And worshipped, while he planned Pizarro’s trade
Of rape and slaughter.

His fight is now with Drake and Wynter,
Hawkins, and Frobisher, and English fire,
Bullet and cannon ball and splinter,
Till every deck gleams, greased with bloody mire:
Heaven smiles to see that battle wage,
Close battle of musket, carabine, and gun:
Oh, vainly doth the Spaniard rage
Like any wolf that tears his cage!
’Tis English sails shall win the weather gauge
Till set of sun!

Their troops, superfluous as their gold,
Out-numbering all their seamen two to one,
Are packed away in every hold —
Targets of flesh for every English gun —
Till, like Pizarro’s halls of blood,
Or slaughter-pens where swine or beeves are pinned,
Lee-scuppers pour a crimson flood,
Reddening the waves for many a rood,
As eastward, eastward still the galleons scud
Before the wind.

The chief leit-motiv of the poem is the metrical idea that whenever a stanza ends with the word ‘sea,’ Ben Jonson and the rest of the jolly companions break into this superb chorus: —