Sink me the ship, Master Gunner - sink her, split her in twain!

Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!'

XII.

And the gunner said 'Ay, ay,' but the seamen made reply:

We have children, we have wives, And the Lord hath spared our lives. We will make the Spaniard promise, if we yield, to let us go;

We shall live to fight again and to strike another blow.'

And the lion there lay dying, and they yielded to the foe.

XIII.

And the stately Spanish men to their flagship bore him then,

Where they laid him by the mast, old Sir Richard caught at last, And they praised him to his face with their courtly foreign grace; But he rose upon their decks, and he cried: 'I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man and true;

I have only done my duty as a man is bound to do:

With a joyful spirit I Sir Richard Grenville die!'

And he fell upon their decks, and he died.

XIV.

And they stared at the dead that had been so valiant and true,

And had holden the power and glory of Spain so cheap

That he dared her with one little ship and his English few;

Was he devil or man? He was devil for aught they knew,

But they sank his body with honour down into the deep,

And they mann'd the Revenge with a swarthier alien crew,

And away she sail'd with her loss and long'd for her own;

When a wind from the lands they had

ruin'd awoke from sleep, And the water began to heave and the weather to moan,

So that bright face was flash'd thro' sense and soul

And by the poplar vanish'd- to be found Long after, as it seem'd, beneath the tall

Tree-bowers, and those long-sweeping beechen boughs

Of our New Forest. I was there alone: The phantom of the whirling landaulet For ever past me by: when one quick peal

Of laughter drew me thro' the glimmering glades

Down to the snowlike sparkle of a cloth On fern and foxglove. Lo, the face again, My Rosalind in this Arden - Edith - all One bloom of youth, health, beauty, happiness,

And moved to merriment at a passing jest.

There one of those about her knowing

me

Call'd me to join them; so with these I spent

What seem'd my crowning hour, my day of days.

I woo'd her then, nor unsuccessfully, The worse for her, for me! was I content? Ayno, not quite; for now and then I thought

Laziness, vague love-longings, the bright
May,

Had made a heated haze to magnify
The charm of Edith that a man's ideal
Is high in Heaven, and lodged with
Plato's God,

Not findable here - content, and not content,

In some such fashion as a man may be That having had the portrait of his friend Drawn by an artist, looks at it, and says, 'Good! very like! not altogether he.'

As yet I had not bound myself by words, Only believing I loved Edith, made Edith love me. Then came the day

when I,

Flattering myself that all my doubts were

fools

Born of the fool this Age that doubts of

all

Not I that day of Edith's love or mine— Had braced my purpose to declare myself:

I stood upon the stairs of Paradise.
The golden gates would open at a word.
I spoke it told her of my passion, seen
And lost and found again, had got so

far,

Had caught her hand, her eyelids fellI heard

Wheels, and a noise of welcome at the doors

On a sudden after two Italian years
Had set the blossom of her health again,
The younger sister, Evelyn, enter'd-
there,

There was the face, and altogether she. The mother fell about the daughter's neck,

The sisters closed in one another's arms,

Did I not tell you they were twins? prevail'd

So far that no caress could win my wife Back to that passionate answer of full heart

I had from her at first. Not that her love,

Tho' scarce as great as Edith's power of love,

Had lessen'd, but the mother's garrulous wail

For ever woke the unhappy Past again, Till that dead bridesmaid, meant to be my bride,

Put forth cold hands between us, and I fear'd

The very fountains of her life were chill'd; So took her thence, and brought her here, and here

She bore a child, whom reverently we call'd

Edith; and in the second year was born A second this I named from her own self,