White founts falling in the courts
of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is
smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the
fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the
darkness of his beard,
It curls the blood-red crescent,
the crescent of his lips,
For the inmost sea of all the earth
is shaken with his ships.
They have dared the white republics
up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round
the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms
abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom
for swords about the Cross,
The cold queen of England is
looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning
at the Mass;
From evening isles fantastical
rings faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn
is laughing in the sun.
Dim drums throbbing, in the hills
half heard,
Where only on a nameless throne a
crownless prince has stirred,
Where, risen from a doubtful seat
and half attainted stall,
The last knight of Europe takes
weapons from the wall,
The last and lingering troubadour
to whom the bird has sung,
That once went singing southward
when all the world was young,
In that enormous silence, tiny and
unafraid,
Comes up along a winding road the
noise of the Crusade.
Strong gongs groaning as the guns
boom far,
Don John of Austria is going to the
war,
Stiff flags straining in the
night-blasts cold
In the gloom black-purple, in the
glint old-gold,
Torchlight crimson on the copper
kettle-drums,
Then the tuckets, then the
trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.
Don John laughing in the brave
beard curled,
Spurning of his stirrups like the
thrones of all the world,
Holding his head up for a flag of
all the free.
Love-light of Spain—hurrah!
Death-light of Africa!
Don John of Austria
Is riding to the sea.
Mahound is in his paradise above
the evening star,
(Don John of Austria is going to
the war.)
He moves a mighty turban on the
timeless houri’s knees,
His turban that is woven of the
sunset and the seas.
He shakes the peacock gardens as he
rises from his ease,
And he strides among the tree-tops
and is taller than the trees,
And his voice through all the
garden is a thunder sent to bring
Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on
the wing.
Giants and the Genii,
Multiplex of wing and eye,
Whose strong obedience broke the
sky
When Solomon was king.
They rush in red and purple from
the red clouds of the morn,
From temples where the yellow gods
shut up their eyes in scorn;
They rise in green robes roaring
from the green hells of the sea
Where fallen skies and evil hues
and eyeless creatures be;
On them the sea-valves cluster and
the grey sea-forests curl,
Splashed with a splendid sickness,
the sickness of the pearl;
They swell in sapphire smoke out of
the blue cracks of the ground,—
They gather and they wonder and
give worship to Mahound.
And he saith, “Break up the
mountains where the hermit-folk can hide,
And sift the red and silver sands
lest bone of saint abide,
And chase the Giaours flying night
and day, not giving rest,
For that which was our trouble
comes again out of the west.
We have set the seal of Solomon on
all things under sun,
Of knowledge and of sorrow and
endurance of things done,
But a noise is in the mountains, in
the mountains, and I know
The voice that shook our
palaces—four hundred years ago:
It is he that saith not ‘Kismet’;
it is he that knows not Fate ;
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is
Godfrey in the gate!
It is he whose loss is laughter
when he counts the wager worth,
Put down your feet upon him, that
our peace be on the earth.”
For he heard drums groaning and he
heard guns jar,
(Don John of Austria is going to
the war.)
Sudden and still—hurrah!
Bolt from Iberia!
Don John of Austria
Is gone by Alcalar.
St. Michael’s on his mountain in
the sea-roads of the north
(Don John of Austria is girt and
going forth.)
Where the grey seas glitter and the
sharp tides shift
And the sea folk labour and the red
sails lift.
He shakes his lance of iron and he
claps his wings of stone;
The noise is gone through Normandy;
the noise is gone alone;
The North is full of tangled things
and texts and aching eyes
And dead is all the innocence of
anger and surprise,
And Christian killeth Christian in
a narrow dusty room,
And Christian dreadeth Christ that
hath a newer face of doom,
And Christian hateth Mary that God
kissed in Galilee,
But Don John of Austria is riding
to the sea.
Don John calling through the blast
and the eclipse
Crying with the trumpet, with the
trumpet of his lips,
Trumpet that sayeth ha!
Domino
gloria!
Don John of Austria
Is shouting to the ships.
King Philip’s in his closet with
the Fleece about his neck
(Don John of Austria is armed
upon the deck.)
The walls are hung with velvet
that, is black and soft as sin,
And little dwarfs creep out of it
and little dwarfs creep in.
He holds a crystal phial that has
colours like the moon,
He touches, and it tingles, and he
trembles very soon,
And his face is as a fungus of a
leprous white and grey
Like plants in the high houses that
are shuttered from the day,
And death is in the phial, and the
end of noble work,
But Don John of Austria has fired
upon the Turk.
Don John’s hunting, and his hounds
have bayed—
Booms away past Italy the rumour of
his raid
Gun upon gun, ha! ha!
Gun upon gun, hurrah!
Don John of Austria
Has loosed the cannonade.
The Pope was in his chapel before
day or battle broke,
(Don John of Austria is hidden
in the smoke.)
The hidden room in man’s house
where God sits all the year,
The secret window whence the world
looks small and very dear.
He sees as in a mirror on the
monstrous twilight sea
The crescent of his cruel ships
whose name is mystery;
They fling great shadows foe-wards,
making Cross and Castle dark,
They veil the plumèd lions on the
galleys of St. Mark;
And above the ships are palaces of
brown, black-bearded chiefs,
And below the ships are prisons,
where with multitudinous griefs,
Christian captives sick and
sunless, all a labouring race repines
Like a race in sunken cities, like
a nation in the mines.
They are lost like slaves that
sweat, and in the skies of morning hung
The stair-ways of the tallest gods
when tyranny was young.
They are countless, voiceless,
hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on
Before the high Kings’ horses in
the granite of Babylon.
And many a one grows witless in his
quiet room in hell
Where a yellow face looks inward
through the lattice of his cell,
And he finds his God forgotten, and
he seeks no more a sign—
(But Don John of Austria has
burst the battle-line!)
Don John pounding from the
slaughter-painted poop,
Purpling all the ocean like a
bloody pirate’s sloop,
Scarlet running over on the silvers
and the golds,
Breaking of the hatches up and
bursting of the holds,
Thronging of the thousands up that
labour under sea
White for bliss and blind for sun
and stunned for liberty.
Vivat Hispania!
Domino Gloria!
Don John of Austria
Has set his people free!
Cervantes on his galley sets the
sword back in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides
homeward with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a
straggling road in Spain,
Up which a lean and foolish knight
forever rides in vain,
And he smiles, but not as Sultans
smile, and settles back the blade....
(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)
