And half of the rest of us maim'd for life.
In the crash of the cannonades and the des-

perate 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;

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!

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!"

I ga

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 an

other blow."

And the lion there lay dying, and they yielded

96

to the foe.

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 upɔn their decks, and he died. 104

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,

And or ever that evening ended a great gale

blew,

And a wave like the wave that is raised by an earthquake grew,

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-shatter'd navy of Spain,

And the little Revenge herself went down by

the island crags

To be lost evermore in the main.

1878.

119

Lord Tennyson.

OF DEATH AND SORROW