Drake’s Breed Poem by Cicely Fox Smith

Drake looked out to the English shore
From the port of Dead Man’s Bay;
He heard the din and the thunder of war
Come to him from far away.
He said “Is it well with the Isle we knew?
Is her heart still sound? Are her lads still true?
Do they flutter her foes as we used to do
In the old Armada’s day?”

Drake looked out to the sea and the ships,
To mark how the fight went on;
With a smile that twitched at his bearded lips,
As it did when he sighted the Don,
Said he “It is well - though the foe be strange,
And the craft be new, and the old ways change,
In the same old fashion the seas we range
As we did in the time that’s gone.”

Drake looked out to the sea and the sky
From the port of Dead Man’s Bay;
And he cried aloud as he smote his thigh,
“Is it well with old England? Yea!
Though never we knew such craft as these,
That ride the clouds as we rode the seas,
They harry the foe as we harried him then,
They hustle and harry him, one to ten,
As it was when we harried the might of Spain,
Down the Channel and round by the Main,
In the old Armada’s day.”