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 the 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 in
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.)
Source: The Collected Poems of G. K. Chesterton (1927)
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