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| Drake's Drum by Sir Henry Newbolt Sir Henry Newbolt (1862-1938) was a lawyer who, in his thirties, transferred his attention to literature and became one of the best-loved poets of late-Victorian and Edwardian England. He put forward an ideal of English manhood, an ideal that people of that period, by no means only English people, found admirable and inspiring. His best-known poem is the 1898 production Vitai Lampada, each of whose three stanzas ends with the exhortation to: "Play up! play up! and play the game!" Of this poem and its author, Paul Fussell has the following to say in his classic literary survey of World War One: The author of these lines was a lifetime friend of Douglas Haig [commander of British forces in WW1]. They had first met when they were students together at [private boys' boarding school] Clifton College... Much later Newbolt wrote: "When I looked into Douglas Haig I saw what was really great--perfect acceptance, which means perfect faith." This version of Haig brings him close to the absolute ideal of what [WW2 hero and author] Patrick Howarth has termed homo newboltiensis, or "Newbolt Man": honorable, stoic, brave, loyal, courteous--and unaesthetic, unironic, unintellectual and devoid of wit. Newbolt was knighted by George V in 1915 for his contributions to Imperial elan. "Drake's Drum" appears in a collection titled Admirals All, published in 1897. On the strength of this book, Newbolt was sometimes tagged as "the naval Kipling." The poem relates to a legend about the late 16th century (actually 1545-1595) English explorer and admiral Sir Francis Drake, who died while on a raiding expedition against Spanish settlements in the West Indies. The legend concerns Drake's drum--the one that would have been beaten on his ship to summon the sailors to their battle stations. This drum was brought home and hung in Buckland Abbey, near Drake's home port of Plymouth, in the county of Devon. It can still be seen there. According to the legend, if this drum is beaten when England is in danger, Drake will return to save his country once again. (Although an alternative version says only that the drum will be heard beating at moments of national crisis.) "in his hammock...slung atween the round shot"--to bury a sailor at sea, you wrapped him in his hammock, with a cannonball at head and foot to sink the package. "Nombre Dios Bay"--Sir Francis's place of burial; properly "Nombre de Dios," a small town on the north coast of Panama. "Plymouth Hoe"--a hoe is a promontory, a piece of land sticking out into the sea. The dockside at Plymouth has this form. "the island"--St. Nicholas' Island in Drake's time, now called Drake Island; in Plymouth Sound, visible from the Hoe. "the Dons"--the Spanish, England's great enemy all through Drake's career.
Drake he's in his hammock an' a thousand mile away,
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