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!'

XI

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 fear'd that we still could sting,

So they watch'd what the end would be.

And we had not fought them in vain,

But in perilous plight were we,

Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain,

And half of the rest of us maim'd for life

75

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!
And a day less or more

At sea or ashore,

We die-does it matter when?

85

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

90

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.

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 :

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.

XIV

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

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 earth

quake 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 shotshattered navy of Spain,

And the little Revenge herself went down by the island crags

To be lost evermore in the main.

HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX°

ROBERT BROWNING

ROBERT BROWNING (1812-1889) ranks with Tennyson as one of the two greatest poets of the latter part of the nineteenth century. He was extremely fortunate in his home life and the sympathetic companionship of his father, a man of culture and wide reading. Intensely fond of nature, music, and art, and gifted with a vivid imagination and strong dramatic instincts, he turned to literature as a means of expression. During a long life he wrote an enormous number of works, and though never popular in the same sense that Tennyson is popular, he has had a large following of ardent admirers. Much of his work is obscure, and written with what seems a disregard of artistic form, but there has probably been no poet since Shakespeare with a more profound insight into human character. When thirty-four years of age he married Elizabeth Barrett, who also was a poet of great, though uneven, powers, and his married life was ideally happy. Among Browning's chief works are 'The Blot in the 'Scutcheon,'' Pippa Passes,' 'The Ring and the Book,' 'Men and Women,' and 'Dramatis Persona.'

I SPRANG to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;

I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three ;

'Good speed!' cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew;

'Speed!' echoed the wall to us galloping through; Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest, 5 And into the midnight we galloped abreast.

Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place;

9

I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight,
Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right,
Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit,
Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.

'Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear; At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see;

15

At Düffeld, 'twas morning as plain as could be;
And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-

chime,

So Joris broke silence with, 'Yet there is time!'

At Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the sun,
And against him the cattle stood black every one, 20
To stare through the mist at us galloping past,
And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last,
With resolute shoulders each butting away

The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray:

H