The Death of Admiral Blake

(AUGUST 7TH, 1657)

Laden with spoil of the South, fulfilled with the glory
of achievement,
And freshly crowned with never-dying fame,
Sweeping by shores where the names are the names of the
victories of England,
Across the Bay the squadron homeward came.

Proudly they came, but their pride was the pomp of a
funeral at midnight,
When dreader yet the lonely morrow looms;
Few are the words that are spoken, and faces are gaunt
beneath the torchlight
That does but darken more the nodding plumes.

Low on the field of his fame, past hope lay the Admiral
triumphant,
And fain to rest him after all his pain;
Yet for the love that he bore to his own land, ever
unforgotten,
He prayed to see the western hills again.
Fainter than stars in a sky long gray with the coming of
the daybreak,
Or sounds of night that fade when night is done,
So in the death-dawn faded the splendour and loud
renown of warfare,
And life of all its longings kept but one.

"Oh! to be there for an hour when the shade draws in
beside the hedgerows,
And falling apples wake the drowsy noon:
Oh! for the hour when the elms grow sombre and
human in the twilight,
And gardens dream beneath the rising moon.

"Only to look once more on the land of the memories of childhood,
Forgetting weary winds and barren foam:
Only to bid farewell to the combe and the orchard and
the moorland,
And sleep at last among the fields of home!"

So he was silently praying, till now, when his strength
was ebbing faster,
The Lizard lay before them faintly blue;
Now on the gleaming horizon the white cliffs laughed
along the coast-line,
And now the forelands took the shapes they knew.
There lay the Sound and the Island with green leaves
down beside the water,
The town, the Hoe, the masts with sunset fired--
Dreams! ay, dreams of the dead! for the great heart
faltered on the threshold,
And darkness took the land his soul desired.