"The Demon 's broken loose, my lads,
He comes from swarthy Spain ;
And we must sink him in the sea,

Or hound him home again.

Now, you old War-dogs, show your paws!
Have at them tooth and nail and claws!"
And then his long, bright blade he draws.
"Push home; my hardy pikemen,
For we play a desperate part;
To-day, my gunners, let them feel
The pulse of England's heart!
They shall remember long that we
Once lived; and think how shamefully
We shook them !-One to fifty-three.'
With face of one who cheerily goes
To meet his doom that day,
Sir Richard sprang upon his foes
The foremost gave him way:

His round shot smashed them through and through,
At every flash white splinters flew:
And madder grew his fighting few.
They clasp the little ship Revenge
As in the arms of fire;

They run aboard her, six at once,

Hearts beat, hot guns leap higher;
Through gory gaps the boarders swarm,
But still our English stay the storm,
The bulwark in their breast is firm.
Ship after ship, like broken waves
That wash up on a rock,

Those mighty galleons fall back foiled,
And shattered from the shock.
With fires she answers all their blows;
Again, again, in pieces strews

The girdle round her as they close.
Some know not they are wounded till
'Tis slippery where they stand;
Then each one tighter grips his steel
As 'twere Salvation's hand.

Grim faces glow through lurid night
With sweat of spirit shining bright:
Only the dead on deck turn white.
At daybreak the flame-picture fades
In blackness and in blood;
There, after fifteen hours of fight,

The unconquered Sea-king stood
Defying all the powers of Spain:
Fifteen armadas hurled in vain,
And fifteen hundred foemen slain.
About that little bark Revenge
The baffled Spaniards ride

At distance. Two of their good ships
Were sunken at her side

e;

The rest lie round her in a ring
As round the dying Lion-king,
The dogs, afraid of his death-spring.

Our pikes all broken, powder spent,
Sails, masts, to shivers blown,
And with her dead and wounded crew
The ship was going down!

Sir Richard's wounds were hot and deep;
Then cried he with a proud pale lip,
"Ho! Master Gunner, sink the ship!

"Make ready now, my Mariners,
То go aloft with me,
That nothing to the Spaniard
May remain of victory.

They cannot take us, nor we yield ;
So let us leave our battle-field,
Under the shelter of God's shield."

They had not heart to dare fulfil

The stern Commander's word:

With swelling hearts, and welling eyes,
They carried him aboard

The Spaniard's ship; and round him stand
The warriors of his wasted band:

Then said he, feeling death at hand :

"Here die I, Richard Grenville,
With a joyful and quiet mind;
I reach a Soldier's end, I leave
A Soldier's fame behind,

Who for his Queen and Country fought,
For Honour and Religion wrought,
And died as a true Soldier ought."
Old heroes who could grandly do,
As they could greatly dare,
A vesture, very glorious,
Their shining spirits wear

Of noble deeds!

God give us grace,

That we may see such face to face,

In our great day that comes apace.

The Singing of the Magnificat.
(By permission of the Author.)

In midst of wide green pasture lands, cut through
By lines of alders bordering deep-banked streams,
Where bulrushes and yellow iris grew,

And rest, and peace, and all the flower of dreams,
The Abbey stood-so still, it seemed a part
Of the marsh country's almost pulseless heart.
Where grey-green willows fringed the stream and pool,
The lazy meek-faced cattle strayed to graze;
Sheep in the meadows cropped the grasses cool,
And silver fish shone through the watery ways;
And many a load of fruit and load of corn
Into the Abbey storehouses was borne.

Yet though so much they had of life's good things,
The monks but held them as a sacred trust,

Lent from the storehouse of the King of kings

Till they, his stewards, should crumble back to dust. "Not as our own," they said, "but as the Lord's, All that the stream yields, or the land affords,"

And all the villages and hamlets near

Knew the monks' wealth, and how that wealth was spent.

In tribulation, sickness, want, or fear,
First to the Abbey all the peasants went,
Certain to find a welcome, and to be
Helped in the hour of their extremity.

When plague or sickness smote the people sore,
The Brothers prayed beside the dying bed,
And nursed the sick back into health once more,

And through the horror and the danger said:
"How good is God, Who has such love for us,
He lets us tend His suffering children thus."
They in their simple ways and works were glad :
Yet all men must have sorrows of their own.
And so a bitter grief the Brothers had,

Nor mourned for others' heaviness alone.
This was the secret of their sorrowing,
That not a monk in all the house could sing!
Was it the damp air from the lovely marsh,
Or strain of scarcely intermitted prayer,
That made their voices, when they sang, as harsh
As any frog's that croaks in evening air—
That made less music in their hymns to lie
Than in the hoarsest wildfowl's hoarsest

cry

?

If love could sweeten voice to sing a song,
Theirs had been sweetest song was ever sung:
But their hearts' music reached their lips all wrong,
The soul's intent foiled by the traitorous tongue
That marred the chapel's peace, and seemed to scare
The rapt devotion lingering in the air.

The birds that in the chapel built their nests,

And in the stone-work found their small lives fair, Flew thence with hurried wings and fluttering breasts When the bell to call the monks to prayer. "Why will they sing," they twittered, "Why at all? In heaven their silence must be festival!"

rang

The Brothers prayed with penance and with tears,
That God would let them give some little part

Out for the solace of their own sad ears
Of all the music crowded in their heart.

Their nature and the marsh-air had their way,
And still they sang more vilely every day.
And all their prayers and fasts availing not
To give them voices sweet, their souls' desire,
The Abbot said, "Gifts He did not allot

God at our hands will not again require.
The love He gives us He will ask again
In love to Him and to our fellow-men.

“Praise Him we must, and since we cannot praise
As we would choose, we praise Him as we can.
In heaven we shall be taught the angels' ways
Of singing-we afford to wait a span.
In singing, as in toil, do ye your best;
God will adjust the balance-do the rest!"
But one good Brother, anxious to remove

This, the reproach now laid on them so long,
Rejected counsel, and for very love

Besought a Brother, skilled in art of song,
To come to them-his cloister far to leave-
And sing Magnificat on Christmas Eve.

So when each brown monk duly sought his place,
By two and two, slow pacing to the choir,

Shrined in his dark oak stall, the strange monk's face

Shone with a light as of devotion's fire.

Good, young and fair, his seemed a form wherein

Pure beauty left no room at all for sin.

And when the time for singing it had come,

Magnificat,' face raised, and voice, he sang:

Each in his stall the monks stood glad and dumb,
As through the chancel's dusk his voice outrang,
Pure, clear, and perfect-as the thrushes sing
Their first impulsive welcome of the spring.
At the first notes the Abbot's heart spoke low :
"O God, accept this singing, seeing we,
Had we the power, would ever praise Thee so—

Would ever, Lord, Thou know'st, sing thus for Thee;

Thus in our hearts Thy hymns are ever sung,
As he Thou blessest sings them with his tongue."