By their mountain-like "San Philip" that, of fifteen hundred tons,

And up-shadowing high above us with her yawning tiers of guns,

Took the breath from our sails, and we stay'd.

VII

And while now the great "San Philip" hung above us like a cloud

Whence the thunderbolt will fall

Long and loud,

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.

VIII

But anon the great "San Philip" she bethought herself and went,

Having that within her womb that had left her illcontent;

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.

IX

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 battlethunder and flame;

Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and her shame.

For some were sunk and many were shatter'd, and so could fight us no more

God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the world

before?

X

For he said, "Fight on! fight on!"

Tho' his vessel was all but a wreck;

And it chanced that, when half of the summer night

was gone,

With a grisly wound to be drest 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!"

XI

And the night went down, and the sun smiled out far over the summer sea,

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

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 ;

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,

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

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,

And or ever that evening ended a great gale blew, And a wave like the wave that is raised by an earth

quake 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 shotshatter'd navy of Spain,

And the little "Revenge" herself went down by the island crags

To be lost evermore in the main.

QUEEN ELIZABETH

SARAH WILLIAMS

ELIZABETH was seventy years of age when she came to die (1603). Her long reign had been one of the most brilliant in English history. She found the nation weak, wretched, divided by a bitter religious controversy. She left it prosperous, united, and at peace. But the last years of the great queen were embittered by loneliness and by the apparent ingratitude of her people. Her friends and counsellors, the men who had made England strong and victorious, were already dead. Men of the new generation concerned themselves little with the wishes of the dying monarch, so eager were they to curry favor with her successor.