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A Ballad of the Fleet, 1591
AT Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay, | |
| And a pinnace, like a fluttered bird, came flying from far away: | |
| “Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted fifty-three!” | |
| Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: “’Fore God I am no coward; | |
| But I cannot meet them here, for my ships are out of gear, | 5 |
| And the half my men are sick. I must fly, but follow quick. | |
| We are six ships of the line; can we fight with fifty-three?” | |
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| Then spake Sir Richard Grenville: “I know you are no coward; | |
| You fly them for a moment to fight with them again. | |
| But I ’ve ninety men and more that are lying sick ashore. | 10 |
| I should count myself the coward if I left them, my Lord Howard, | |
| To these Inquisition dogs and the devildoms of Spain.” | |
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| So Lord Howard past away with five ships of war that day, | |
| Till he melted like a cloud in the silent summer heaven; | |
| But Sir Richard bore in hand all his sick men from the land | 15 |
| Very carefully and slow, | |
| Men of Bidford in Devon, | |
| And we laid them on the ballast down below; | |
| For we brought them all aboard, | |
| And they blest him in their pain, that they were not left to Spain, | 20 |
| To the thumbscrew and the stake, for the glory of the Lord. | |
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| He had only a hundred seamen to work the ship and to fight, | |
| And he sailed away from Flores till the Spaniard came in sight, | |
| With his huge sea-castles heaving upon the weather bow. | |
| “Shall we fight or shall we fly? | 25 |
| Good Sir Richard, let us know, | |
| For to fight is but to die! | |
| There ’ll be little of us left by the time the sun be set.” | |
| And Sir Richard said again: “We be all good Englishmen. | |
| Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the devil, | 30 |
| For I never turned my back upon Don or devil yet.” | |
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| Sir Richard spoke, and he laughed, and we roared a hurrah, and so | |
| The little “Revenge” ran on sheer into the heart of the foe, | |
| With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below; | |
| For half of their fleet to the right and half to the left were seen, | 35 |
| And the little “Revenge” ran on through the long sea-lane between. | |
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| Thousands of their soldiers looked down from their decks and laughed, | |
| Thousands of their seamen made mock at the mad little craft | |
| Running on and on, till delayed | |
| By their mountain-like “San Philip” that, of fifteen hundred tons, | 40 |
| And up-shadowing high above us with her yawning tiers of guns, | |
| Took the breath from our sails, and we stayed. | |
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| And while now the great “San Philip” hung above us like a cloud | |
| Whence the thunderbolt will fall | |
| Long and loud, | 45 |
| Four galleons drew away | |
| From the Spanish fleet that day, | |
| And two upon the larboard and two upon the starboard lay, | |
| And the battle-thunder broke from them all. | |
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| But anon the great “San Philip,” she bethought herself and went, | 50 |
| Having that within her womb that had left her ill-content; | |
| And the rest they came aboard us, and they fought us hand to hand, | |
| For a dozen times they came with their pikes and musqueteers, | |
| And a dozen times we shook ’em off as a dog that shakes his ears | |
| When he leaps from the water to the land. | 55 |
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| And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea, | |
| But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three. | |
| Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons came, | |
| Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-thunder and flame; | |
| Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and her shame; | 60 |
| For some were sunk and many were shattered, and so could fight us no more— | |
| God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the world before? | |
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| For he said, “Fight on! fight on!” | |
| Though his vessel was all but a wreck; | |
| And it chanced that, when half of the summer night was gone, | 65 |
| With a grisly wound to be dressed he had left the deck, | |
| But a bullet struck him that was dressing it suddenly dead, | |
| And himself he was wounded again in the side and the head, | |
| And he said, “Fight on! fight on!” | |
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| And the night went down, and the sun smiled out far over the summer sea, | 70 |
| And the Spanish fleet with broken sides lay round us all in a ring; | |
| But they dared not touch us again, for they feared that we still could sting, | |
| So they watched what the end would be. | |
| And we had not fought them in vain, | |
| But in perilous plight were we, | 75 |
| Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain, | |
| And half of the rest of us maimed for life | |
| In the crash of the cannonades and the desperate strife; | |
| And the sick men down in the hold were most of them stark and cold, | |
| And the pikes were all broken or bent, and the powder was all of it spent; | 80 |
| And the masts and the rigging were lying over the side; | |
| But Sir Richard cried in his English pride, | |
| “We have fought such a fight for a day and a night | |
| As may never be fought again! | |
| We have won great glory, my men! | 85 |
| And a day less or more | |
| At sea or ashore, | |
| We die—does it matter when? | |
| Sink me the ship, Master Gunner—sink her, split her in twain! | |
| Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!” | 90 |
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| 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.” | 95 |
| And the lion there lay dying, and they yielded to the foe. | |
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| 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: | 100 |
| “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. | |
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| And they stared at the dead that had been so valiant and true, | 105 |
| 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 honor down into the deep, | |
| And they manned the “Revenge” with a swarthier alien crew, | 110 |
| And away she sailed with her loss and longed for her own; | |
| When a wind from the lands they had ruined awoke from sleep, | |
| And the water began to heave and the weather to moan, | |
| And or ever that evening ended a great gale blew, | |
| And a wave like the wave that is raised by an earthquake grew, | 115 |
| Till it smote on their hulls and their sails and their masts and their flags, | |
| And the whole sea plunged and fell on the shot-shattered navy of Spain, | |
| And the little “Revenge” herself went down by the island crags | |
| To be lost evermore in the main. | |
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