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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341774" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Revenge - A Ballad of the Fleet</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I</div><div style="margin:10px 0">AT Flores, in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay, <br>And a pinnace, like a flutter’d bird, came flying from far away; <br>“Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted fifty-three!” <br>Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: “’Fore God I am no coward; <br>But I cannot meet them here, for my ships are out of gear, <br>And the half my men are sick. I must fly, but follow quick. <br>We are six ships of the line; can we fight with fifty-three?” <br> <br>II</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then spake Sir Richard Grenville: “I know you are no coward; <br>You fly them for a moment to fight with them again. <br>But I’ve ninety men and more that are lying sick ashore. <br>I should count myself the coward if I left them, my Lord Howard, <br>To these Inquisition dogs and the devildoms of Spain.” <br> <br>III</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So Lord Howard past away with five ships of war that day, <br>Till he melted like a cloud in the silent summer heaven; <br>But Sir Richard bore in hand all his sick men from the land <br>Very carefully and slow, <br>Men of Bideford in Devon, <br>And we laid them on the ballast down below: <br>For we brought them all aboard, <br>And they blest him in their pain, that they were not left to Spain, <br>To the thumb-screw and the stake, for the glory of the Lord. <br> <br>IV</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He had only a hundred seamen to work the ship and to fight, <br>And he sailed away from Flores till the Spaniard came in sight, <br>With his huge sea-castles heaving upon the weather bow. <br>“Shall we fight or shall we fly? <br>Good Sir Richard, tell us now, <br>For to fight is but to die! <br>There’ll be little of us left by the time this sun be set.” <br>And Sir Richard said again: “We be all good Englishmen. <br>Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the devil, <br>For I never turn’d my back upon Don or devil yet.” <br> <br>V</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Sir Richard spoke and he laugh’d, and we roar’d a hurrah and so <br>The little Revenge ran on sheer into the heart of the foe, <br>With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below; <br>For half of their fleet to the right and half to the left were seen, <br>And the little Revenge ran on thro’ the long sea-lane between. <br> <br>VI</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thousands of their soldiers look’d down from their decks and laugh’d, <br>Thousands of their seamen made mock at the mad little craft <br>Running on and on, till delay’d <br>By their mountain-like San Philip that, of fifteen hundred tons, <br>And up-shadowing high above us with her yawning tiers of guns, <br>Took the breath from our sails, and we stay’d. <br> <br>VII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And while now the great San Philip hung above us like a cloud <br>Whence the thunderbolt will fall <br>Long and loud, 45 <br>Four galleons drew away <br>From the Spanish fleet that day. <br>And two upon the larboard and two upon the starboard lay, <br>And the battle-thunder broke from them all. <br> <br>VIII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But anon the great San Philip, she bethought herself and went, <br>Having that within her womb that had left her ill content; <br>And the rest they came aboard us, and they fought us hand to hand, <br>For a dozen times they came with their pikes and musqueteers, <br>And a dozen times we shook ’em off as a dog that shakes his ears <br>When he leaps from the water to the land. <br>IX</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea, <br>But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three. <br>Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons came, <br>Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-thunder and flame; <br>Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and her shame. <br>For some were sunk and many were shatter’d and so could fight us no more— <br>God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the world before? <br> <br>X</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For he said, “Fight on! fight on!” <br>Tho’ his vessel was all but a wreck; <br>And it chanced that, when half of the short summer night was gone, With a grisly wound to be drest he had left the deck, <br>But a bullet struck him that was dressing it suddenly dead, <br>And himself he was wounded again in the side and the head, <br>And he said, “Fight on! fight on!” <br> <br>XI</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the night went down, and the sun smiled out far over the summer sea, <br>And the Spanish fleet with broken sides lay round us all in a ring; <br>But they dared not touch us again, for they fear’d that we still could sting, <br>So they watch’d what the end would be. <br>And we had not fought them in vain, <br>But in perilous plight were we, <br>Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain, <br>And half of the rest of us maim’d for life <br>In the crash of the cannonades and the desperate strife; <br>And the sick men down in the hold were most of them stark and cold, <br>And the pikes were all broken or bent, and the powder was all of it spent; 80 <br>And the masts and the rigging were lying over the side; <br>But Sir Richard cried in his English pride: <br>“We have fought such a fight for a day and a night <br>As may never be fought again! <br>We have won great glory, my men! <br>And a day less or more <br>At sea or ashore, <br>We die—does it matter when? <br>Sink me the ship, Master Gunner—sink her, split her in twain! <br>Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!” <br>XII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the gunner said, “Ay, ay,” but the seamen made reply: <br>“We have children, we have wives, <br>And the Lord hath spared our lives. <br>We will make the Spaniard promise, if we yield, to let us go; <br>We shall live to fight again and to strike another blow.” <br>And the lion there lay dying, and they yielded to the foe. <br> <br>XIII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the stately Spanish men to their flagship bore him then, <br>Where they laid him by the mast, old Sir Richard caught at last, <br>And they praised him to his face with their courtly foreign grace; <br>But he rose upon their decks, and he cried: <br>“I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man and true; <br>I have only done my duty as a man is bound to do. <br>With a joyful spirit I Sir Richard Grenville die!” <br>And he fell upon their decks, and he died. <br> <br>XIV</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And they stared at the dead that had been so valiant and true, <br>And had holden the power and glory of Spain so cheap <br>That he dared her with one little ship and his English few; <br>Was he devil or man? He was devil for aught they knew, <br>But they sank his body with honor down into the deep. <br>And they mann’d the Revenge with a swarthier alien crew, <br>And away she sail’d with her loss and long’d for her own; <br>When a wind from the lands they had ruin’d awoke from sleep, <br>And the water began to heave and the weather to moan, <br>And or ever that evening ended a great gale blew, <br>And a wave like the wave that is raised by an earthquake grew, <br>Till it smote on their hulls and their sails and their masts and their flags, <br>And the whole sea plunged and fell on the shot-shatter’d navy of Spain, <br>And the little Revenge herself went down by the island crags <br>To be lost evermore in the main.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Alfred+Lord+Tennyson">Alfred Lord Tennyson</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341774" data-title="The Revenge - A Ballad of the Fleet de Alfred Lord Tennyson" data-description="I

AT Flores, in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay, 
And a pinnace, like a flutter’d bird, came flying from far away; 
“Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted fifty-three!” 
Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: “’Fore God I am no cowa..."></div>
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