Lepanto

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 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 at 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.)