And the host of them trembles and quails, caught fast in his hand as a bird in the toils; For the wrath and the joy that fulfil him are mightier than man's, whom he slays and spoils. And vainly, with heart divided in sunder, and labor of wavering will, The lord of their host takes counsel with hope if haply their star shine still, If haply some light be left them of chance to renew and redeem the fray; But the will of the black south-wester is lord of the councils of war to-day. One only spirit it quells not, a splendor undarkened of chance or time; 235 Be the praise of his foes with Oquendo for ever, a name as a star sublime. 255 With English hunters at heel, till now is the herd of them past the Forth, All huddled and hurtled seaward; and now need none wage war upon these, Nor huntsmen follow the quarry whose fall is the pastime sought of the seas. Day upon day upon day confounds them, with measureless mists that swell, With drift of rains everlasting and dense as the fumes of ascending hell. The visions of priest and of prophet beholding his enemies bruised of his rod Beheld but the likeness of this that is fallen on the faithful, the friends of God. Northward, and northward, and northward they stagger and shudder and swerve and flit, Dismantled of masts and of yards, with sails by the fangs of the storm-wind split. 260 But north of the headland whose name is Wrath, by the wrath or the ruth of the sea, They are swept or sustained to the westward, and drive through the rollers aloof to the lee. Some strive yet northward for Iceland, and perish but some through the stormhewn straits That sunder the Shetlands and Orkneys are borne of the breath which is God's or fate's: 266 And some, by the dawn of September, at last give thanks as for stars that smile, For the winds have swept them to shelter and sight of the cliffs of a Catholic isle. Though many the fierce rocks feed on, and many the merciless heretic slays, Yet some that have labored to land with their treasure are trustful, and give God praise. And the kernes of murderous Ireland, athirst with a greed everlasting of blood, Unslakable ever with slaughter and spoil, rage down as a ravening flood, 270 To slay and to flay of their shining apparel their brethren whom shipwreck spares; Such faith and such mercy, such love and such manhood, such hands and such hearts are theirs. Short shrift to her foes gives England, but shorter doth Ireland to friends; and worse Fare they that come with a blessing on treason than they that come with a curse. Hacked, harried, and mangled of axes and skenes, three thousand naked and dead Bear witness of Catholic Ireland, what sons of what sires at her breasts are bred. 276 Winds are pitiful, waves are merciful, tempest and storm are kind: The waters that smite may spare, and the thunder is deaf, and the lightning is blind: Of these perchance at his need may a man, though they know it not, yet find grace; But grace, if another be hardened against him, he gets not at this man's face. 280 For his ear that hears and his eye that sees the wreck and the wail of men, And his heart that relents not within him, but hungers, are like as the wolf's in his den. Worthy are these to worship their master, the murderous Lord of lies, Who hath given to the pontiff his servant the keys of the pit and the keys of the skies. And here, cast up from the ravening sea on the mild land's merciful breast, This comfort they find of their fellows in worship; this guerdon is theirs of their quest. Death was captain, and doom was pilot, and darkness the chart of their way; Night and hell had in charge and in keeping the host of the foes of day. Invincible, vanquished, impregnable, shattered, a sign to her foes of fear, A sign to the world and the stars of laughter, the fleet of the Lord lies here. Nay, for none may declare the place of the ruin wherein she lies; 295 Nay, for none hath beholden the grave whence never a ghost shall rise. The fleet of the foemen of England hath found not one but a thousand graves; And he that shall number and name them shall number by name and by tale the The gift love's blood has reddened for thy sake? Was not thy life-blood given for us before? And if love's heart-blood can avail thy need, And thou not die, how should it hurt indeed? (1871) ON THE DEATHS OF THOMAS CARLYLE AND GEORGE ELIOT Two souls diverse out of our human sight Pass, followed one with love and each with wonder: The stormy sophist with his mouth of thunder, Clothed with loud words and mantled in the might Of darkness and magnificence of night; 5 And one whose eye could smite the night in sunder, Searching if light or no light were thereunder, And found in love of loving-kindness light. Duty divine and Thought with eyes of fire Still following Righteousness with deep desire WALTER HORATIO PATER (1839-1894) Pater began his life-long academic career at King's School, Canterbury, from which he proceeded to Queen's College, Oxford, where he took his bachelor's degree in 1862. As an undergraduate Pater knew few men, devoting himself closely to books, especially to Greek literature, in which Benjamin Jowett gave him much encouragement. After graduation he was elected to the Old Mortality, an essay society, through which he came into contact with the stimulating personalities of T. H. Green, A. C. Swinburne, and others. In 1864, he was elected fellow of Brasenose College, and except for visits to the Continent and a short residence in London, he remained in Oxford for the rest of his life. In 1865, a sojourn in Italy gave Pater those impressions of Renaissance art that appear conspicuously in his later writing. The quiet poise of his life as Oxford tutor and author was disturbed by nothing more eventful than an occasional vacation tour in France or Ger many. Pater's most significant mission was in interpreting to his age the spirit of the Renais sance in art and literature. His first essays, which had begun to appear in periodicals in 1867, were collected and published in a considerable volume, Studies in the History of the Renaissance, in 1873. In 1885 appeared Pater's finest single work. Marius the Epicurean, a historical romance expounding the best phases of Epicureanism. His Imaginary Portraits (1887) contains fine studies in philosophic fiction, and his Appreciations, with an Essay on Style (1889) reveals bits of his most subtle literary criticism. Plato and Platonism (1893) is a notable result of his early classical studies. Pater's somewhat painful seeking for precision of expression resulted in a style more delicate and rhythmical than direct and simple. His philosophy of temperance, discipline, and asceticism in art has had a permanent and refining influence upon English criticism. STYLE Since all progress of mind consists for the most part in differentiation, in the resolution of an obscure and complex object into its component aspects, it is surely the stupidest of losses to confuse things which right reason has put asunder, to lose the sense of achieved distinctions, the distinction between poetry and prose, for instance, or, to speak more exactly, between the laws and characteristic excellences of verse and prose composition. On the other hand, those who have dwelt most emphatically on the distinction between prose and verse, prose and poetry, may sometimes have been tempted to limit the proper functions of prose too narrowly; and this again is at least false economy, as being, in effect, the renunciation of a certain means or faculty, in a world where after all we must needs make the most of things. Critical efforts to limit art a priori, by anticipations regarding the natural incapacity of the material with which this or that artist works, as the sculptor with solid form, or the prosewriter with the ordinary language of men, are always liable to be discredited by the facts of artistic production; and while prose is actually found to be a colored thing with Bacon, picturesque with Livy and Carlyle, musical with Cicero and Newman, mystical and intimate with Plato and Michelet and Sir Thomas Browne, exalted or florid, it may be, with Milton and Taylor, it will be useless to protest that it can be nothing at all, except something very tamely and narrowly confined to mainly practical ends a kind of 'good round-hand'; as useless as the protest that poetry might not touch prosaic subjects as with Wordsworth, or an abstruse matter as with Browning, or treat contemporary life nobly as with Tennyson. In subordination to one essential beauty in all good literary style, in all literature as a fine art, as there are many beauties of poetry, so the beauties of prose are many, and it is the business of criticism to |