So mock'd, so spurn'd, so baited two whole days I lost myself and fell from evenness, And rail'd at all the Popes, that ever since Sylvester shed the venom of worldwealth Into the church, had only prov'n themselves Poisoners, murderers. Well - God pardon all Me, them, and all the world - yea, that proud Priest, That mock-meek mouth of utter Antichrist, That traitor to King Richard and the truth, Who rose and doom'd me to the fire. Amen! Nay, I can burn, so that the Lord of life Be by me in my death. Those three! the fourth Was like the Son of God! Not burnt were they. At Barcelona-tho' you were not then So bearded. Yes. The city deck'd herself To meet me, roar'd my name; the king, the queen Bade me be seated, speak, and tell them all The story of my voyage, and while I spoke The crowd's roar fell as at the Peace, 1 be still!' And when I ceased to speak, the king, the queen, 1 He was burnt on Christmas Day, 1417. Some thought it heresy, but that would not hold. King David call'd the heavens a hide, a tent Spread over earth, and so this earth was flat: Some cited old Lactantius: could it be That trees grew downward, rain fell upward, men' Walk'd like the fly on ceilings? and besides, The great Augustine wrote that none could breathe Within the zone of heat; so might there be Two Adams, two mankinds, and that was clean Against God's word: thus was I beaten back, And chiefly to my sorrow by the Church, And thought to turn my face from Spain, appeal Once more to France or England; but our Queen Recall'd me, for at last their Highnesses Were half-assured this earth might be a sphere. All glory to the all-blessed Trinity, All glory to the mother of our Lord, And Holy Church, from whom I never swerved Not even by one hair's-breadth of heresy, I have accomplish'd what I came to do. And given the Great Khan's palaces to the Moor, Or clutch'd the sacred crown of Prester John, And cast it to the Moor: but had I brought From Solomon's now-recover'd Ophir all The gold that Solomon's navies carried home, Would that have gilded me? Blue blood of Spain, Tho' quartering your own royal arms of Spain, I have not: blue blood and black blood of Spain, The noble and the convict of Castile, Howl'd me from Hispaniola; for you know The flies at home, that ever swarm about me so these outbuzz'd With what was mine, came happily to the shore. There was a glimmering of God's hand. And God Hath more than glimmer'd on me. O my lord, I swear to you I heard his voice between The thunders in the black Veragua nights, 'O soul of little faith, slow to believe! Have I not been about thee from thy birth? Given thee the keys of the great Oceansea? Set thee in light till time shall be no more? Is it I who have deceived thee or the world? Endure! thou hast done so well for men, that men Cry out against thee: was it otherwise With mine own Son?' And more than once in days Of doubt and cloud and storm, when drowning hope Sank all but out of sight, I heard his voice, 'Be not cast down. I lead thee by the hand, Fear not,' And I shall hear his voice again I know that he has led me all my life, Still for all that, my lord, The first discoverer starves - his followers, all Flower into fortune- our world's way and I, Without a roof that I can call mine own, With scarce a coin to buy a meal withal, And seeing what a door for scoundrel scum I open'd to the West, thro' which the lust, Villany, violence, avarice, of your Spain Pour'd in on all those happy naked islesTheir kindly native princes slain or slaved, Their wives and children Spanish concubines, Their innocent hospitalities quench'd in blood, Some dead of hunger, some beneath the Scourge, Some over-labour'd, some by their own hands, Yea, the dear mothers, crazing Nature, kill Their babies at the breast for hate of Spain Ah God, the harmless people whom we found In Hispaniola's island-Paradise! And we have sent them very fiends from And I myself, myself not blameless, I Could sometimes wish I had never led the way. Spain then the mightiest, wealthiest realm on earth, So made by me, may seek to unbury me, To lay me in some shrine of this old Spain, Or in that vaster Spain I leave to Spain. Then some one standing by my grave will say, 'Behold the bones of Christopher Colòn' Ay, but the chains, what do they mean the chains?'. I sorrow for that kindly child of Spain Who then will have to answer, 'These same chains Bound these same bones back thro' the I WAS the chief of the race he had stricken my father dead But I gather'd my fellows together, I swore I would strike off his head. Each of them look'd like a king, and was noble in birth as in worth, And each of them boasted he sprang from the oldest race upon earth. Each was as brave in the fight as the bravest hero of song, And each of them liefer had died than have done one another a wrong. He lived on an isle in the ocean- we sail'd on a Friday morn He that had slain my father the day before I was born. II. And we came to the isle in the ocean, and there on the shore was he. But a sudden blast blew us out and away thro' a boundless sea. III. And we came to the Silent Isle that we never had touch'd at before, Where a silent ocean always broke on a silent shore, |