We rode till pierced those beacon fires the shafts
O’ the sun, and their red smouldering ashes dulled. 
Beside them, scorched, smoke-blackened, weary, leaned
Men that had fed them, dropped their tired arms
And dozed. 
             And also through that day we rode,
Till reapers at their nooning sat awhile
On the shady side of corn-shocks:  all the talk
Of high, of low, or them that went or stayed
Determined but unhopeful; desperate
To strike a blow for England ere she fell.

And ever loomed the Spaniard to our thought,
Still waxed the fame of that great Armament—­
New horsemen joining, swelled it more and more—­
Their bulky ship galleons having five decks,
Zabraes, pataches, galleys of Portugal,
Caravels rowed with oars, their galliasses
Vast, and complete with chapels, chambers, towers. 
And in the said ships of free mariners
Eight thousand, and of slaves two thousand more,
An army twenty thousand strong.  O then
Of culverin, of double culverin,
Ordnance and arms, all furniture of war,
Victual, and last their fierceness and great spleen,
Willing to founder, burn, split, wreck themselves,
But they would land, fight, overcome, and reign.

Then would we count up England.  Set by theirs,
Her fleet as walnut shells.  And a few pikes
Stored in the belfries, and a few brave men
For wielding them.  But as the morning wore,
And we went ever eastward, ever on,
Poured forth, poured down, a marching multitude
With stir about the towns; and waggons rolled
With offerings for the army and the fleet. 
Then to our hearts valour crept home again,
The loathed name of Alva fanning it;
Alva who did convert from our old faith
With many a black deed done for a white cause
(So spake they erewhile to it dedicate)
Them whom not death could change, nor fire, nor sword,
To thirst for his undoing.

Ay, as I am a Christian man, our thirst
Was comparable with Queen Mary’s.  All
The talk was of confounding heretics,
The heretics the Spaniards.  Yet methought,
’O their great multitude!  Not harbour room
On our long coast for that great multitude. 
They land—­for who can let them—­give us battle,
And after give us burial.  Who but they,
For he that liveth shall be flying north
To bear off wife and child.  Our very graves
Shall Spaniards dig, and in the daisied grass
Trample them down.’ 
                     Ay, whoso will be brave,
Let him be brave beforehand.  After th’ event
If by good pleasure of God it go as then
He shall be brave an’ liketh him.  I say
Was no man but that deadly peril feared.