5

Foes ere the cloud went up, black Norris and Stanley in one Pledge iron hands and kiss swords, each his mate’s, in the face of the sun, Warm with the generous wine of the battle; and Willoughby’s might To the turf bore Crescia, and lifted again,—­knight honouring knight; All in the hurry and turmoil:—­where North, half-booted and rough, Launch’d on the struggle, and Sidney struck onward, his cuisses thrown off, Rash over-courage of poet and youth!—­while the memories, how At the joust long syne She look’d on, as he triumph’d, were hot on his brow, ’Stella! mine own, my own star!’—­and he sigh’d:—­and towards him a flame Shot its red signal; a shriek!—­and the viewless messenger came; Found the unguarded gap, the approach left bare to the prey, Where through the limb to the life the death-stroke shatter’d a way.

6

—­Astrophel!  England’s pride! 
O stroke that, when he died,
Smote through the realm,—­our best, our fairest ta’en! 
For now the wound accurst
Lights up death’s fury-thirst;—­
Yet the allaying cup, in all that pain,
Untouch’d, untasted he gives o’er
To one who lay, and watch’d with eyes that craved it more:—­

7

‘Take it,’ he said, ’’tis thine;
Thy need is more than mine’;—­
And smiled as one who looks through death to life: 
—­Then pass’d, true heart and brave,
Leal from birth to grave:—­
For that curse-laden roar of mortal strife,
With God’s own peace ineffable fill’d,—­
In that eternal Love all earthly passion still’d.

In 1585 Elizabeth, who was then aiding the United Provinces in their resistance to Spain, sent Sir Philip Sidney (born 1554) as governor of the fortress of Flushing in Zealand.  The Earl of Leicester, chosen by the Queen’s unhappy partiality to command the English force, named Sidney (his nephew) General of the horse.  He marched thence to Zutphen in Guelderland, a town besieged by the Spaniards, in hopes of destroying a strong reinforcement which they were bringing in aid of the besiegers.  The details of the rash and heroic charge which followed may be read in Motley’s History of the United Netherlands, ch. ix.

St. 1 Guelderland; in this province the Rhine divides before entering the sea:  ’gliding through a vast plain.’—­South-Fen; Zutphen, on the Yssel (Rhine).

St. 3 The bands from Epirus; Crescia, the Epirote chief, commanded a body of Albanian cavalry.—­The waning Dudley star; Leicester, who was near the end of his miserable career.—­Astrophel; Sidney celebrated his love for Penelope Devereux, Lady Rich, in the series of Sonnets and Lyrics named Astrophel and Stella:—­posthumously published in 1591.—­After, or with Shakespeare’s Sonnets, this series seems to me to offer the most powerful picture of the passion of love in the whole range of our poetry.

St. 4 Saker; early name for field-piece.—­The Six Hundred; The Crimea in ancient days was named Chersonesus Taurica.