Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Americas: Vol. XXX. 1876–79.
D’Anville’s Fleet
By John Hunter-Duvar (1821–1899)’T
On an Indian summer day,
That a fleet of foreign war-ships
Sailed up Chebucto Bay,—
On the waters of the Basin,
Scarce heaving there they lay.
Their canvas was in strips,
The rust of smoke and ocean spray
Hung on the cannons’ lips,
And in the lull, the fleur-de-lys
Hung drooping o’er the ships.
As our traditions tell,
Of seventy sail that three months since
Sailed out of gay Rochelle,
Yet skilful were the captains,
And they sailed their vessels well.
For clouds upclomb the heights,
And then would fall, as dark as pall,
The long Atlantic nights,
Save for the north-wind’s harbinger,
The bright auroral lights.
Would storm come on to blow,
And in the wrack tall mast would crack,
Till, shattered aloft and low,
The gallant hulls like wearied things
Lay rocking to and fro.
The tempest and the sea,
The English ships and the pestilence,
They might have withstood the three,
But the angel of death sailed with the ships,
And preyed there silently.
Brave men! but yet stout hearts grew faint,
For whispers dark and vague,
Of spectres such as legends tell
Beleaguered the walls of Prague,
Crept man to man, for men knew then
On board them was the plague!
To cast to the deep their dead;
At morning gun death’s rites begun,—
The sheet and the weight of lead;
And all day long the dying groan
Told another vacant bed.
With a comrade by his side,
Ere eight bells tolled the hour of noon,
Was drifting out on the tide;
And his comrade ere the day was done
Was ta’en with the plague and died.
The pestilence walked the decks,
Till hands were so few that scarce a crew
Could man those floating specks,
And at length, when they lay in Chebucto Bay,
They were little but death and wrecks.
That were fitted out in June,
But seventeen sail made up the tale,—
With their Admiral sick,—that noon;
And there, the shattered hulks, they lay
In form of a half-moon.
At the coast of rock and tree,
While thoughts of home came winging fast
From over the sorrowful sea,
And the little sailor-boy up on the mast,
Up on the mast sang he:
My sister Nanette’s tread,
As watches she so kind and leal
By my sick mother’s bed,—
Ah! do they in their evening prayer
Pray God and Mary for me?
Oh, never again! Oh, never again!
My home in Picardie!”
And sadly himself he crossed:
“My soul to God and my sword to the King,
And tell him that all is lost.
Oh, weary my life! Oh, weary my death!
Oh, weary and tempest-tost!”
Was rowed adown the Bay,
And in it, wrapped in the flag of France,
The Admiral D’Anville lay,
And sad the boom of his funeral guns
Made the heart of the fleet that day.
“Shall I command this host?
Shall I go back to gallant France
And say that all is lost?
No! weary my life! Oh, weary my death,
Oh, weary and tempest-tost!”
Was rowed adown the Bay,
And in it, wrapped in the flag of France,
Sieur d’Estournelle he lay,
And sad the sound of his funeral guns
Made the heart of the fleet that day.
“Is this without remede?
Ho! Scotsman, Sieur de Ramsay,
St. André be thy speed!
Now that the Admiral’s dead and gone,
You help us in our need!”
“Make ready to advance!”
This is the hand of God, my men,
And not the work of chance;
And by God’s help and St. Denis,
I ’ll take this fleet to France!
Tell off each man and gun,—
Fire wrecks! the rest make sailing-trim
Ere rising of the sun,—
Who is there fears to follow me?
Who? Men of France? Not one!”
All night rang hammers’ clank,
All night the boat and swift canoe
Plied to and from the bank,—
When morning broke the shattered fleet
Was rearranged in rank.
They turned them to the west;
The pine grove lay in its shadows gray
Above their comrades’ rest.
And the wrecks, a fleet of fire they lay
Reddening the water’s breast.
Lit up in fitful glow,
The tongues of flame they whistled and moaned
As the breeze came on to blow,
And the sigh of the trees o’er the buried dead
Sang requiem soft and low.
God sain thy soul, O Duc d’Anville!
D’Estournelle, Christ thee save!
May clement Heaven benignant be
To all ye Frenchmen brave,
Though naught now shows your resting-place,
No cairn to mark your grave,—
A bed of lichened stones,
With scattered tufts of herbage sown,
And flecked with pine-tree cones
From stunted trees, whose prying roots
Grope among dead men’s bones.
Take boat, and downwards glance
Where, blue as Mediterranean,
“The Basin’s” waters dance,
And see the ribs of d’Anville’s fleet,
The Armada of fair France.