The Ballad Of King Monmouth

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!

Monmouth's invasion forms one of the most brilliant,--perhaps the most brilliant,--of Lord Macaulay's narratives. But many curious details are added in the History by Mr. G Roberts (1844).

The belief, which this poem represents, that 'King Monmouth,' as he was called in the West, would return, lasted long. He landed in Lyme Bay, June 11, 1685, between the Cobb (Harbour-pier) and the beginning of the Ware cliffs: marching north, after a few days, by the road which left the ruins of Colway House on the right and led over Uplyme to Axminster.

Soho; the watch-word on Monmouth's side at Sedgemoor; his London house was in the Fields, (now Square), bearing that name.

Faithful Taunton; here the Puritan spirit was strong; and here Monmouth was persuaded to take the title of king (June 20), symbolized by the flag which the young girls of Taunton presented to him. It bore a crown with the cypher J B.--Monmouth's own name being James.

Dour deep trench; Sedgemoor lies in a marshy district near Bridgewater, much intersected by trenches or 'Rhines.' One, the Busses Rhine, lay between the two armies as they fought, July 6. Monmouth was caught hiding in Cranborne Chase, July 8; executed, after a vain attempt to move the heart of his uncle the king, July 15, on Tower Hill.

Afric's tiger-bands; Kirke savage troops from Tangier.