The Ballad Of King Monmouth Poem by Francis Turner Palgrave

1685

Fear not, my child, though the days be dark,
Never fear, he will come again,
With the long brown hair, and the banner blue,
King Monmouth and all his men!

The summer-smiling bay
Has doff'd its vernal gray;
A peacock breast of emerald shot with blue:
Is it peace or war that lands
On these pale quiet sands,
As round the pier the boats run-in their silent crew?

Bent knee, and forehead bare;
That moment was for prayer!
Then swords flash out, and--Monmouth!--is the cry:
The crumbling cliff o'erpast,
The hazard-die is cast,
'Tis James 'gainst James in arms! Soho! and Liberty!

--_Fear not, my child, though he come with few_;
_Alone will he come again_;
_God with him, and his right hand more strong_
_Than a thousand thousand men_!

They file by Colway now;
They rise o'er Uplyme brow;
And faithful Taunton hails her hero-knight:
And girlhood's agile hand
Weaves for the patriot band
The crown-emblazon'd flag, their gathering star of fight.

--Ah flag of shame and woe!
For not by these who go,
Scythe-men and club-men, foot and hunger-worn,
These levies raw and rude,
Can England be subdued,
Or that ancestral throne from its foundations torn!

Yet by the dour deep trench
Their mettle did not blench,
When mist and midnight closed o'er sad Sedgemoor;
Though on those hearts of oak
The tall cuirassiers broke,
And Afric's tiger-bands sprang forth with sullen roar:

Though the loud cannon plane
Death's lightning-riven lane,
Levelling that unskill'd valour, rude, unled:
--Yet happier in their fate
Than whom the war-fiends wait
To rend them limb from limb, the gibbet-withering dead!

--_Yet weep not, my child, though the dead be dead_,
_And the wounded rise not again_!
_For they are with God who for England fought_,
_And they bore them as Englishmen_.

Stout hearts, and sorely tried!
--But he, for whom they died,
Skulk'd like the wolf in Cranborne, torn and gaunt:--
Till, dragg'd and bound, he knelt
To one no prayers could melt,
Nor bond of blood, nor fear of fate, from vengeance daunt.

--O hill of death and gore,
Fast by the tower'd shore,
What wealth of precious blood is thine, what tears!
What calmly fronted scorn;
What pangs, not vainly borne!
For heart beats hot with heart, and human grief endears!

--_Then weep not, my child, though the days be dark_;
_Fear not; He will come again_,
_With Arthur and Harold and good Saint George_,
_King Monmouth and all his men_!