Page:Poems that every child should know (ed. Burt, 1904).djvu/285

Rh Then spake Sir Richard Grenville: "I know you are no coward;

You fly them for a moment, to fight with them again.

But I've ninety men and more that are lying sick ashore.

I should count myself the coward if I left them, my Lord Howard,

To these Inquisition dogs and the devildoms of Spain."

So Lord Howard passed away with five ships of war that day,

Till he melted like a cloud in the silent summer heaven;

But Sir Richard bore in hand all his sick men from the land

Very carefully and slow,

Men of Bideford in Devon,

And we laid them on the ballast down below;

For we brought them all aboard,

And they blest him in their pain that they were not left to Spain,

To the thumbscrew and the stake, for the glory of the Lord.

He had only a hundred seamen to work the ship and to fight,

And he sail'd away from Flores till the Spaniard came in sight,

With his huge sea-castles heaving upon the weather bow.

"Shall we fight or shall we fly?

Good Sir Richard, tell us now,

For to fight is but to die!