(AA) Canto 41: Power Struggles
Thistle & Rose
Is not Thy Forth, as well as Isis Thine?
Though Isis vaunt shee hath more Wealth in store,
Let it suffice Thy Forth doth love Thee more
William Drummond of Hawthornden
London laments the passing of an age,
The virgin Gloriana breathes her last,
As cannon-molds of monarchs hold the stage
Proud Stuart bloodline pours into the cast;
Britain reborn,
One king, one law, one land!
The border guards withdrawn, the lords & ladies stand,
“Deirest bretherin & friendis
My two realmis I unite
To endis all oor quarellis,
Together wee must fyght
All oor rascally enemis,
Put them to common flyght,
Letting oor contree prosper with the peese,
& all oor revenues thereby increese.”
The world we live in day-by-day
Was born this very year,
This mortal clay, this keen swordplay,
This burgeoning idea,
That Britain is an entity, but destiny unclear.
London
1603
Pilgrim Fathers
Peach blossom that’s made thicker by the rain.
Deep in the trees, I sometimes see a deer,
And at the stream I hear no noonday bell
Li Bai
Far from the divine right of divers kings,
The Mayflower unburthens purer faiths,
Shores paradasean the North Star brings –
No longer men but ragged, pale-faced wraiths;
Indian chief
Welcomes his white guests in,
Advent of native grief, death sentences begin.
In the land of the Sequana
& the endless prairie plain,
Where the buffalo & cougar
Suckle Susquehanna’s vein,
Horseback tribes have lived forever
Praising both sun & rain,
Content to roam upon ancestral soil –
Now aiding pilgrims in their meager toil.
Seedling imperial takes root,
The plant begins to spread,
As shoot-by-shoot fresh towns recruit
Life to replace the dead,
Tough slaves are made to gather grain, rough soldiers guard the bread.
North Virginia
1628
Thirty Years War
Through a mist that makes five rivers one,
We bid each other a sad farewell,
We two officials going opposite ways
Wang Bo
As shepherds find pockets of anxious sheep
Pull from the flock, as Rajput palaces
Crumble with time, as when the pathway steep
Descends from pinnacles & promises;
Colossal Spain’s,
Catholic continent,
Enchalleng’d in her reigns by stern-soul’d protestant.
With this the vastdeath-time begun
Bespoken on gypsy palms,
Phrenzealous ‘Wars of Religion’
Pillage, blood spillage, ne’er calms,
Buoy’d by the Aztec bullion
Germany’s up in arms –
While three hundred petty princes squabble
Handsome burghers turn’d to brick & rubble.
The treaty of Westphalia
Ends three decades of wars,
When Europa had, together,
Made conflict, cause-by-cause,
With Prussian gentry musing, “this not peace, but more a pause.“
Berlin
1648
Sun-King
your smile was my sun anon,
you created upon the earth beauty with your ways,
and my soul in your garden lives on
Knut Hamsun
To be a Frenchman is to feel a king
& if a king of France then feel a god,
The fourteenth Louis, near life’s fountain spring,
Unnerving ancyent nations with his nod;
Thro’ cocksure steel,
& arrogance a shield,
Sends legions conq’ring Lille, Alsace & Flander’s field.
As godheads in their realms do reign,
Build palaces in the sky,
Upon the Parisian plain
Would heaven on earth arise,
Where courtiers sip dry champagne
& chandeliers surprise
The sycophantic fervor of Versaille –
Were men on earth ever esteem’d so high?
He builds a string of starry forts
Verdun up to Gravelines,
Then fills the ports with thrilling sorts –
Many a tough marine –
Combin’d with mountains barriers Europa’s queen’s serene.
France
1684
Treaty of Utrecht
Woe to thee, wild Ambition! I employ
Despair’s low notes thy dread effects to tell;
Born in high heaven, her peace thou coulds’t destroy
Maria Brooks
As Peneus & Alpheus combin’d,
England & Holland wash the wound of France,
Pour thwarting salts within; bloodthirsty, blind,
Into his dotage Louis did advance;
Dictating still
Quarrellings of nations,
Arse far from battle’s thrill & war’s degredations.
Then… what has France gain’d from his war?
Her towns depopulated,
Enemy pirates at the shore,
Her fields uncultivated,
Her country houses wick with Poor,
Death unsatiated –
At first, with Warfare men, say tis a sport,
But by the end just horrors they’ll report.
At last the Sun-King sues for peace,
To ‘paradise’ preserve,
By this increase Europa’s police,
Great Britain sealion verve,
Has occupied Gibraltar by which all world sealanes swerve.
Gibralta
1713
Clara MacDonald
Her suffering ended with the day,
Yet lived she at its close,
& breathed the long, long night away
James Aldrich
She met him, in the hot flush of her youth,
Working the lobster-pots of Port Appin,
’Tween creamy kisses lips scream passion’s truth,
So wed for love, her kinsmen took him in;
She bore three sons,
Each wore her husband’s name –
The sounds of pipes & guns towards their idyll came.
Alexander away did ride,
Joining with the Jacobite,
Tho’ calm she seemeth the outside,
Tears drench’d her pillow by night,
& trembling all her time did bide
For news of distant fight,
When certain words within her soul would burn,
“O mother, when will father dear return?”
Her prayers answer’d happily,
He strolls in with the mail,
Enbalanc’d three sons on each knee,
Told them a stirring tayle
Of Highlanders proud marching for a cause that must prevail.
Scotland
1715
Culloden
The grim, grey fathers, bent wi’ years,
Come stridin’ through the muirland mist,
Wi’ beardless lads scarce by wi’ school
Charles Murray
From frilly sleeves France slips the Stuart sword,
Then plays it like a Pittsburgh poker ace,
Imperial wars these days fought abroad,
To Inverness embattl’d armies race;
Alexander
Ran with his manly sons,
Yelling altogether toward the English guns.
Clan Appin on the right flank fell,
Questing for King & country,
Eye-slicing claymores faced Burell,
Gruesome-ended ancestry
As Haelan’ hopes turn to a hell,
Cumberland’s butcherie –
Heart haunted by the death-screams of his boys,
MacDonald fled, thro’ all the fire & noise.
He comforted his grieving wife,
“O, my darlin’ Clara,
We’ve too much strife, a better life
Awaits America,”
So sail’d, with dead sons’ families, from Scotland… forever!
Oban
1746
Pre-emptive Strike
Mark now the proof I give thee, that the brave
Need no such aids as superstition lends,
To steel their hearts against the dread of death
William Cowper
Musing at the Sans Souci, free from care,
King Fred’rick contemplates his nation’s fate,
A friend & confidente of Herr Voltaire,
Thinks deep into the future of the state;
The answers come,
Great powers on each side,
To solve the conundrum to warfare all must slide.
If he who laughs last laughs longest,
Those striking first strike strongest
Facing this self-inflicted test,
Fred’rick proclaims the contest,
Now foes in battle must he best,
No momentary rest,
For Russia, France & Austria, allied –
Only Great Britain stands by Prussia’s side.
The world, once more, shown genius
Exists in martial arts,
His warriors victorious
As battle’s many parts
Like children kept; from ammo carts to patriotic hearts.
Saxony
1756
General Wolfe
We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning,
By the struggling moonbeam’s misty light
Charles Wolfe
The global visions of William the Pitt,
See certain sections shaded Preston red,
A puzzle with one piece struggling to fit,
Like racing gates with horses poorly bred;
Chess-player sent
To North America,
With one present intent, to conquer Canada.
Beyond my triple metaphor
Sit the pretty English fleet,
Spit-snarling like the dogs of war,
Quebecois quake in the street,
Night helps slip silent boats to shore,
Outflanking move complete,
Stood with his officers at break of day
Chiaroscuro on a page of Gray…
“I would rather have that composed,
Than gain the hot day’s fame!”
The armies closed, all problems posed
Brought down with shot & flame,
“They run, they run!” tho’ dying his checkmate had won the game.
Quebec
1758
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