Chapter IV (1)

Sister Mary, all is quiet
In thy wards, and midnight nears:
Seek the scanty rest thou needest;
Seek the scanty rest thou grudgest,
All is hushed and no one fears.

But, though midnight, Sister Mary
Thinks it yet not time to go;
And the night-lamps shining dimly
Show her vaguely in the shadow
Moving softly to and fro.

What is it that she is doing,
Flitting round one sleeper’s bed;
Is she sprinkling something round it,
Something white as wheaten flour,
And on which she will not tread?

And at last the work is over,
And she goeth to her rest;
And she sleeps at once, exhausted
By long labour, and, it may be,
By strong struggles in her breast.

Nothing breaks upon the stillness
Of the night, except, afar,
Some faint shouts of ending revel
Or of brawling, in the quarters
Where the Spanish soldiers are.

Time wades slowly through the darkness
Till at last it reaches day,
And the city’s many steeples
Buried in the starless heaven
Grow distinct in sunless grey.

And the light wakes Sister Mary,
And she dresses in strange haste,
Giving God no prayer, and leaving
On her bed the beads and crosses
That should dangle from her waist.

And with unheard steps she hurries
Through the ward where all sleep on
To the bed in which is lying
He who day by day is growing
More inexorably wan.

All around the bed is sprinkled
Something white, like thin fresh snow,
Where a naked foot has printed
In the night a many footprints,
Sharp and clear from heel to toe:

Sister Mary, Sister Mary,
Dost thou know thy own small foot?
Would it fit those marks which make thee
Turn more pale than thy own paleness
If upon them it were put?

And the dying youth smiles faintly
Pleasure’s last accorded smile;
And he murmurs as he hears her,
“Sister Mary, I am better;
Let me hold thy hand awhile:

“Sister Mary, I would tell thee
Fain one thing before I die;
For a dying man may utter
What another must keep hidden
In the fastness of a sigh.

“Sister Mary, I have loved thee--
Is it sin to tell thee this?
And I dreamt--O God, be lenient
If ’tis sin--that thou didst give me
On the throat a long, long kiss.”

THE BRIDE OF PORPHYRION.

DIOCLEA.

Pass on, pass on, and seek thy lair, lone man,
If neighbouring lair thou hast. Night falls; and God
For whom thou once didst snap all human ties
Requires thy evening prayer.

PORPHYRION.

Oh, if I stop
Upon my path and bandy words with woman--
I who for years have shunned man, woman, child,
But woman most--I would not have thee think
In error that thy old familiar voice,
Which seems to come from out the past, has called
Emotion back to life, or that I care
To take advantage of the freak of chance
Which brings us face to face and makes us stand
Each like a spectre in the other’s eyes.
But I suspect thee of a rash design
Abhorrent to the Christian; and I ask,
Woman, once more, what brings thee here at dusk--
Here by the deep lone Nile, when rise the mists
Heavy with death, when prowl devouring beasts,
And when God’s lonely dweller in the waste
Alone has nought to fear?

DIOCLEA.

What brings me here?
The Nile flower is closing with the day;
The Nile bird hastens to her bulrush nest;
All Nature that is not of night and evil
Is seeking rest; and why should not I too,
If I am weary, find repose at dusk
Where rolls the deep dark stream?

PORPHYRION.

Because the Lord,
Through my unworthy voice, has bid thee quit
This perilous brink, and bear such heavy load
As He, whom none shall judge, may choose to heap
Upon thy head.

DIOCLEA.

Resume thy path, lone man--
Resume thy path in peace. Oh, thou art rash
To linger out this meeting of dead souls!
Art thou not that Porphyrion who escaped
Into the waste to shun the sight of woman,
However pure and spotless she might be?
Then leave me to myself; go seek thy lair,
And leave me to the darkness and the night;
Else will I tell thee in one monstrous word
What she now is who once was Dioclea,
And make thy desert-nurtured chastity
Shrink back in fear as from a gust from hell!

PORPHYRION.

Oh, I have wrestled with the Fiend too long
And placed my heel too oft upon his neck
To fear contamination from thy breath!
I care not what thou wast, nor what thou art,
Now that my soul is safe and that long years
Of ruthless castigation of the flesh
Have put me out of reach of woman’s snare;
But, as a Christian servant of the Lord,
I may not let thee do the thing thou wouldst,
And which God hates. Thy soul is on the brink
Of the abyss; and God now bids me stretch
My hand to save it.

DIOCLEA.

Oh, not thine, not thine!
The wanton hand that broke the precious vessel
Shall not attempt to mend it.

PORPHYRION.

What I did
Upon that day, I did at God’s command.

DIOCLEA.

Upon my bridal morn my father’s house
Was full of song; my heart was full of sun;
Yea, and of earnest love and brave intent:
Less snowy was the linen I had woven
With my own hands for thee; less fresh the wreaths
The bridesmaids still were twining; and less pure
The gold of bridal gifts which guest-friends brought,
Than was the heart that waited to be thine.

PORPHYRION.

Upon thy bridal morn my heart was filled
With doubt and fear. My hounded spirit groped
Like one who fears pursuers in the dark
And knows no issue. Yea, within my breast,
Like captive eagles in a cage too narrow,
The love of God, the love of thee, did fight.
I cursed the perilous lustre of thy eyes;
I cursed thy smile and laugh; and cursed myself
That loathed them not. The sounds of mirth and song
That filled the house fell grating on my ear;
The nuptial cakes smacked bitter in my mouth,
Ay, worse than gall; the dewy bridal wreaths
Stank in my nostrils, while an inner voice
Kept thundering in my soul: “Away, away!
The howling waste awaits thee. Not for thee
Are care and kiss of woman; not for thee
Are hearth and home, and kith and kin and friend;
But scourge and shirt of hair!”

DIOCLEA.

And like a thief,
After the priest had blessed us and before
The feast was over, thou didst skulk away,
And all at once convert the sound of song
Into the hum of pity and derision.
I sat alone upon my empty bed,
Wrapped in the double gloom of night and woe.
The pillars of my faith in human good
Had given way; the roof had fallen in
Upon my life. Oh how I cursed the night
For dragging out its black and silent creep!
And when dawn came, oh how I cursed the dawn
For its intrusive stare! And yet that night
Was but the first of many equal nights;
That dawn was but the first of many dawns
In ushering in a loathed and lonely day.
I held aloof from every happier woman,
Suspiciously and silently to brood;
Grudging to one her husband’s look of love,
And to the next the infant at her breast;
Grudging to all their house, their home, their hearth,
Their dignity, their duties, and their cares:
And shunning, I was shunned, and, as it were,
Marked out for future shame.

PORPHYRION.

If like a thief
I stole away unseen, oh it was not
To spend that night in any rival’s arms!
Rock, hard and wind-swept, was my marriage bed;
The wilderness my bride; the starry sky
My roof; the distant, interrupted howl
Of beasts of prey my nuptial lullaby.
Before me lay the waste, strewn here and there
With ribs of men and camels, or the wreck
Of perished cities; yea, and thirst and pain
In vaguely measured sum. But in my soul
The voice of thunder cried: “Push on, push on
Into the waste, Porphyrion! thou art still
Too near to human haunts, too far from God!”
And I pushed on; and in an empty tomb
In a deserted city of the dead
I made my lair, alone with stones and God;
Living off locusts and such scanty herbs
As grew in clefts of rock and empty wells.
Oh what a silence, what a loneliness!
The temple columns and the huge carved stones
Cast long black shadows on the sun-baked sand
In endless rows; and through the livelong day
No moving shadow crossed them save my own,
As, like a leper whom his sores have doomed
To lead the lonely life, I prowled for food.
Oh, it was hard! For knowing that the Fiend
Would come ere long to scare and tempt me back
To human haunts, I sought with prayer, and scourge,
And thirst, and hunger, and restricted sleep
To arm myself against him and his strength;
And come he did. He prowled at first at night,
Shaped as a roaring lion, round and round
My lonely cell; but his re-echoing roar
Deterred me not, nor stopped a single prayer.
And then he came with soft insidious step
During my sleep, and strove to tempt the flesh
In woman’s guise--yea, in thy very shape--
And sought to lure me to caress and kiss,
Taking thy face, thy eyes, thy very voice
In all their beauty and their blandishment;
But I defied him, and he howling fled,
And changed his plan. He made the solid ground
Lurch ever and anon beneath my feet;
He made me shiver in the blazing sun
With mortal cold; and sometimes, in the dusk
He made the huge stone heads of sphinxes nod
And gibber as I passed them. Oh, for years
I wrestled with him in the awful waste;
But I o’ercame his strength.

DIOCLEA.

And dost thou think
That I, in that worse waste, which was not strewn
Like thine with stones, but with the wreck of hopes
And wreck of love, was not sought out by fiends
As well as thou? Ay, ay, they came, the fiends;
They whispered in my ear that I was young,
And that my youth was passing unenjoyed;
They whispered in my ear that I was fair--
Fairer than any other far or near,
And that the beauty that a fool had spurned
Would wane before its time. They said: “Look up!
Thou mournest Love whom thou believest dead,
And Love, hard by, is waiting for one word,
One motion of encouragement, one glance.
Give but the signal, and the lonely one
Whom maid and matron scorn, and who now holds
Suspiciously aloof from life and joy,
Will be a very Empress new-enthroned,
And waste her life no more.” But oh, I clung
To the dull honour of my broken life;
I struggled with the Tempter long and hard;
I said unto myself that after all
Thou mightst at last return to me; and strove
With all my strength to keep me pure for thee.
But years went by and still thou didst not come,
And round and round my heart the Tempter prowled,
Nearer and ever nearer with new arts,
New wiles, new snares, new whispers, day by day,
And proved at last the stronger of the two.
I fled my father’s house for ever more;
I loved; was loved; I saw luxurious cities
Where pleasure triumphed--Alexandria,
Antioch and Athens, ay, and even Rome--
Courted where’er I went; until the day
When he proved false, and when once more I sat
Upon my lonely bed and prayed for dawn.
And yet I loved again; yea, twice and thrice.
Down, down the winding stair of love I went,
Until the slippery and precipitous steps
Became so dark and noisome all at once
That I threw up my arms and shrieked in fear;
But all my strength was gone, and heaven’s faint light
Too far above my head. Oh, since we two
Last saw each other’s eyes, not thou alone
Hast felt the scourge alight upon thy back,
Not thou alone hast known the howling waste;
For I have felt that nine times knotted scourge
Which makes the soul and not the body writhe.
Descending on me fiercely; and have found
In men’s embrace a loneliness more dread,
A desert more terrific and more bare
Than any which thy bruised unsandalled foot
Has ever trodden yet.

PORPHYRION.

The worse for thee.
I freed thee from the weight of human ties;
I pointed out the path that leads to heaven
Across life’s wreck; and if, instead of God,
Thou chosest Satan, what is that to me?
Thou mightst have built a mansion for thy soul
Upon the ruins of an earthly home;
Thou mightst like me have wrestled with the Fiend,
And felt the pride of bruising with thy heel
The Tempter’s head; thou mightst like me have felt
The fierce voluptuous pleasure of the scourge;
Nay, even, like myself thou mightst, with time,
Have sought to snatch from Heaven’s hand the crown,
The glorious crown of martyrdom: for if
Upon this day thou meetest me so near
The haunts of men, it is because I wait
For some fresh outburst of the Pagan’s wrath
Against our sect, to court the lingering death.
But lo, we waste our words; for I have warned
And summoned thee to leave the perilous brink
Of this dark circling water; and if thou
Still cleavest to thy heathenish design
Of self-destruction, not upon my soul
Shall fall the wrath of Heaven for the deed.
Once more I bid thee, woman, leave the brink;
For see, the night has come; and, as thou say’st,
God needs my evening prayer.

DIOCLEA.

Ay, ay, the night
Has wrapped us round: I scarce can see the flowers
That glimmered on the current; though I hear
The sweet faint rustling of the stream-bent reeds.
Pass on thy way, lone man--pass on in peace;
There is no link between us, and no love.
Go, find thy rest, as I at last find mine;
And leave me here, beside the deep lone Nile,
Where woe will sink, and haply leave no trace.

HUNTING THE KING.

1792.

And the two in the twilight spurred fiercely again,
While behind them went trooping the trees,
And the darkening rutty cross-roads of Champagne,
With their patches of wood and their patches of grain,
Grew more solemn and lone by degrees.

Like the hurrying ghosts of two riders they rode,--
For the few whom they met, indistinct;
And the lights that sprang up few and far away showed
Where, to right or to left, lay a human abode;
And more stars overhead came and winked.

Through the maze of cross-roads they went ever more fast,
As if he who led on never doubted;
Till the other by dint of hard spurring at last
Brought his horse alongside, and between them there passed
Hurried words that were broken and shouted.

“Slacken pace! slacken pace!” “Spur him on without stay!
What’s a horse to the saving of France?”
“Art thou sure of the place where they change the relay?”
“At Varennes, nigh on twelve. Trust to me for the way!
France is saved if we get in advance!”

And the postmaster Drouet once more shot ahead,
Closely followed by Guillaume his friend;
Never seeming to waver or doubt as he led,
Or to see less distinct the invisible thread
Of short-cut on short-cut without end.

But the roads and the fields and the low hedges grew
Every minute more lonely and dark,
While his horse, nearly merged in the darkness, now drew
From the flint of the road with its thundering shoe
Every minute more brilliant a spark.

But he thought in his heart: “If the moon does not rise
When we get to the woods, I shall doubt;
And he’ll get to the army and German allies,
And the land, unprepared, will be caught by surprise,
And the great revolution stamped out.”

But a glow, faint at first, and then brighter, was spread
In the sky, and the moon showed her face,
And the plain and the hills were lit up far and wide;
And a galloping shadow appeared at his side,
And took part all at once in the race.

Oh the moon that plays tricks with the shadows she throws
Might have given that shadow the shape
Of the Rider who rides us all down, friends and foes,
And was now ere their time coming down upon those
Who had trusted to God for escape.

Hurry on, ye postillions, so royally paid,
That suspect not a King and a Queen!
Though ye never have heard in the course of your trade
Of a thing that the doctors of Paris have made,
Of a thing that they call Guillotine!

Hurry on to the chopper-shaped square of Varennes
Where your fellow-postillions await!
Hurry on! hurry on, ye dull whip-cracking men!
For each stride that ye take, there is one who takes ten,
And who gallops like Death and like Fate!

He caught sight of a face in the dark carriage-hood
As ye rolled from his door and were gone,
And he looked with a closeness that boded no good
At the crumpled bank-note where that face graven stood--
Hurry on! hurry on! hurry on!

There were clouds near the moon, and they girt her about
As if trying to screen and to save,
And the darkness one moment filled Drouet with doubt;
But she baffled them all and shone brilliantly out
To abet with the light that she gave.

And the stems of the corn flashed metallic and bright
And like bayonets distantly blue,
And the breeze-rippled patches of grain in the light
Looked like distant battalions restrained from the fight
That a thrill of impatience runs through.

But the patches of grain grew more scanty anon,
And the road grew more hard to discern;
And they entered the lonely dark woods of Argonne
Where the moon through the branches could ill help them on,
And they trampled on brushwood and fern.

As they galloped each oak with its black knotty arm
Seemed to grab at the two like a claw;
While the air seemed all full of destruction and harm,
And the one who rode second felt vaguely alarm
At each shadow and shape that he saw.

But the other dashed on, as with hounds on the scent
In his thundering, thundering speed;
Giving neither a thought to his horse nearly spent
Nor a look to his comrade, but solely intent
On a prey that was royal indeed.

Did no angel of life, as he spurred yet more fast,
Cry, “O God, for a slip or a stumble
That shall save from the block the heads sinking at last
Into sleep, now that fear of pursuers is past,
And the heads of a many more humble!

“O Thou God for a doubt that shall bring to a stop,
For a stone in the shoe to retard,
Or more heads in the basket of sawdust will drop
Than the bunches of grapes that the vintagers lop
On a day that their labour is hard;
“And the fields will be lashed not by tempests of rain,
But by tempests of iron and lead;
And manured year by year with fresh blood all in vain,
And each summer will bring not a harvest of grain,
But a harvest of cripples and dead;

“And the nations in carnage will ceaselessly strive
With a roar that disperses the clouds;
Where the trains of artillery furiously drive
And the gun-wheels make ruts through the dead and the live,
And the balls make long lanes through the crowd.

“Let his horse break a vein or his saddle a girth,
Trip him up on the rough, hardened mud!
For each drop from the rowel that falls to the earth
If he reaches Varennes, O Thou God, will give birth
To an ocean of innocent blood!”

Or did spirits invisible fly by his side
And in whispers excite him and goad
And exulting foretell him the end of his ride,
As his spur-mangled horse with his long fatal stride
One by one killed the miles of the road.

Did they cry: “Lash him on, as in lightness of heart
They have ridden the people to death;
Lash him on, as the Saviour of France that thou art;
Lash him on, till the blood from his nostrils shall start;
Lash him on! never think of his breath!”

Did they cry: “Lash him on without mercy or stay!”
As his arm, numb with lashing, desisted;
“Lash him on, as the quarterers lashed on the day
When their horses ’mid clapping of hands tugged away,
And the live limbs of Damiens resisted!

“Lash him on, for the freedom of nations depends
On the flag which at last is unfurled!
Lash him on, lash him on, till his very life ends!
Lash him on, lash him on, for the breath that he spends
Is for Freedom, and France, and the World!

“So shall Kellermann’s steed at Marengo be spurred
When the earth by his squadrons is shaken,
And the thunder of man o’er God’s thunder is heard,
And there runs from the Alps to the Tiber one word,
And the lands from their torpor awaken!

“So the couriers shall spur and the miles disappear
From the Oder, the Elbe, and the Po,
When the victories follow each other so near
That the bearers of tidings are filled with a fear
Lest another their tidings outdo!

“Lash him on, lash him on! and the three-coloured flag
That has sprung from the black Paris gutter
Shall be carried by plain and by valley and crag
And, all riddled by bullets, a mere tattered rag,
From Alhambra to Kremlin shall flutter!”

And he lashed, and he left his companion behind
And sped furiously on all alone,
With the sinister shadow the moon had designed
Flitting on just in front of him, vaguely defined,
At a pace that was wild as his own.

And as midnight was nearing, at last there appeared
The faint lights of Varennes far ahead,
And then only it was, as he finally cleared
The last miles of the road, that he suddenly feared
That his horse might fall suddenly dead.

But his horse did not drop; and with thundering feet
He dashed on to the inn of the Post;
While he shouted to all that his eye chanced to meet,
“Sound the tocsin! the tocsin! all up the long street!
Bar the Bridge! bar the Bridge! or all’s lost!”

And the patriots crouched in the shade of the old
Narrow archway, all holding their breath;
Till a carriage and four was heard coming, and rolled
Slowly, heavily, in; while the tocsin still tolled
Like a knell that anticipates death.

ABRAHAM CAREW.

Ye righteous Judges of this Christian state,
Ye bid me speak; ye bid me show good cause
Why I, whose hand is red with Christian blood,
Yea, even with the blood of my own child,
Of my own Edith, should not be condemned
To die upon the scaffold, nor be locked
For life within a mad-house: and I speak.
I fear not death; for now that she is dead,
Now that dull silence hath replaced her voice,
Life hath but little charm; and were it not
That to consent to ignominious death
For having acted by command of God
Would be unfit, and might call down His wrath
Upon the land, I think I scarce should take
The pains to plead; but strength hath narrow bounds,
And I confess intolerable fear
Lest ye condemn me to complete my years
Among the mad. O Thou Almighty God
Who for Thy purposes inscrutable
Hast pushed me on and nerved my quaking arm
To slay my child, preserve from such dread fate
One who has offered up what most he loved
Here upon earth, and give unto my tongue
Such eloquence as may convince these men
That I am sane!

I am a self-made man
Grown rich by building engines for the rail,
A man of little learning; one whose youth
Was spent in striking sparks from reddened iron
Amid the roar and clanging of a forge;
Knowing no books except the Book of books,
Whose sacred pages when my work was done
I turned with grimy hands, therein to learn
The will and orders of a jealous God,
A God of wrath, a God whose unseen hand
Falls heavily and chasteningly on all,
And most on them He loveth. Little time
Did I bestow on pleasure and those sports,
Unseemly for the most part, which divert
The spirit from obedience, and prevent
The growth of labour’s fruit; and God allowed
That I should prosper in my worldly wealth.
And that the name of Abraham Carew
Should hold high credit in the market-place,
And that my fellow-townsmen one and all
Should put their faith in my integrity,
Electing me an Elder of the Church
And civil Magistrate. But, as I say,
The Lord doth love to chasten; and He laid,
As years went by and multiplied my store,
Great tribulations on me. One by one
I saw the godly household which had grown
Around me, fall as fell the summer flowers
Around an aged tree when winter nears,
And leave him in his listless loneliness.
One child alone, one twining clinging flower--
Edith, my latest born--remained unnipped,
And in my rash presumption I believed
That God would spare her; for upon her cheek
The hectic spot appeared not which had marked
Her mother and her brethren; and I saw
With sinful joy how she increased in strength
As grew her beauty and her loveliness--
Yea, yea, a sinful joy which was to rouse
The jealousy of God. But if my tongue
Is to convince you of the thing I tell
And justify His ways, oh let me speak--
Oh let me tell you how I loved my child!
I loved her as an old man loves the sun
Which warms his limbs and keeps the palsy off;
I loved her as the plundered miser loves
The small secreted heap that yet remains;
I loved her as the shipwrecked drowning wretch
Loves the frail plank which each approaching wave
May tear from his embrace.

No vain gold chain,
No gaudy ribbon decked her nut-brown hair;
But in such sober raiment as befits
The virgin-mistress of a godly house
She went the round of her domestic duties,
In need of no adornment to enhance
The chaste and holy beauty which she wore
Unconscious to herself, and lived her life
Of cheerfulness and thrift, beloved by all;
Reading at morn and eve the Bible page
To our assembled servants, in a clear
And reverent voice; devoting patient hours
To teaching little children; and by help
Of her own needle, plied while others slept,
Providing winter clothing for the poor
Before the earliest chill of autumn came.
A grave and gracious girl, whose smile of love
Was as a light for my declining years;
Who prized the walks which we were wont to take
Together, through the lanes and ripening corn,
Above all routs and shows. Too great, too great
To please a jealous God, had grown the love
For Edith in my bosom; and at times
I felt a cruel tightening of the heart,
And a prophetic something seem to say
Unto my spirit: “Abraham, beware!
The Lord will claim His rights, and ask again
For that which He hath given unto thee.
Thy love is given to an earthly thing;
A common, natural instinct rules thy life,
And not the love of God.” But on her cheek
The ruddiness of health diminished not,
And I loved on.

There came a Sabbath day,
On which it chanced that at the Meeting House
The Scripture page was read in which it said
How he whose name I bear, in days of yore
Obeyed the dire injunction of the Lord,
And offered up his Isaac. By my side
Edith was sitting listening to the words
With fixed attention, as was e’er her wont.
The light athwart the high and narrow window
Streamed down upon her, lighting up her hair
With golding streakings, just as rays of sun
Light up the seaweed in a tide-left pool,
And played upon her features--ne’er before
Had she appeared so lovely. As my eyes
Were resting thus upon her sitting there,
A fear flashed through my spirit, and I thought:
“What if the Lord were to demand her life,
And bid thee offer up thy only child
As Abraham did Isaac?” and I felt
A strange and frightful struggle stir my soul--
Yea, stir my nature to its inmost depths.
I listened little to the words of prayer;
And on our homeward way, when Edith asked
What made my brow so suddenly o’ercast,
I answered not.

Ye wise and upright men
Who sit to-day deciding on my fate,
Ye wonder at the measure of my speech
Ye miss what ye expected ye would find,
A madman’s incoherence, or the glare
And desperate wild defence of guilt at bay?
Confess, confess, I speak not like the mad.
Oh, I have drilled and disciplined my tongue
In these long months of prison; I
From morn to eve within my narrow cell
Taming my own excitement, so that if,
When came the day of trial, God should make
No outward revelation of the truth
To save His servant, I might yet convince
My judges and the world. He hath not deigned
To make the attestation at my prayer.
No thunder from the blue unclouded sky,
No quaking of the earth hath helped my cause,
And God hath left me only earthly means
To prove to men that what they call a crime
I did by His command.

It came, it came,
That dread command! I had not long to wait;
I seemed to feel it coming; day and night
The frightful expectation filled my soul;
And by a natural instinct, thrice accurst,
The more I dreaded that an angry God,
Roused by the sinful greatness of my love,
Would claim her life, the more my love increased.
It came, it came, the awful summons came!
It was the dead of night: I lay awake;
And in the soundless darkness, all at once,
While on my flesh the hair from fear stood up,
I heard the awful voice: it cried, “Arise,
Take up thy knife, and sacrifice thy child
Whom I bestowed; for I the Lord thy God,
I am a jealous God, and bid thee strike.”

Then came three days of human agony;
The flesh contending with the will of God,
And writhing upward like a trodden snake
Beneath religion’s heel: for I believed
That God would pardon me three days’ delay
To conquer human nature. Once I thought
To tell her all--to ask her for her life--
To call on her obedience to submit--
To shift upon her shoulders half the weight
Of agony and horror; but I looked
Upon her face and set aside the plan,
Misdoubting woman’s strength. In Edith’s eyes
I saw a strange suspicious look--a look
Which told me that the tempest in my soul
Was finding outward vent upon my face.
I caught her watching me, and understood
That if I struck not soon, perchance my arm
Would be restrained by man; so I prepared.
There was a spot beside the sedgy stream,
A solitary spot, which in our walks
We sometimes crossed. I led her out that way.
It was a hot close day; no ray of sun
Shone through the lowering clouds, and now and then
The thunder’s distant rumble met the ear.
We reached the lonely river-bank. I stopped,
And was about to do it, when she laid
Her hand upon my arm with a caress,
And asked me in her sweet familiar voice
To pluck a water-lily, which I did,
And then walked on, for somehow I was balked;
I could not do it.

With the fall of night
The pent-up tempest burst; and in its roar
I seemed to hear God’s formidable wrath.
I heard it in the howling of the wind;
I heard it in the pelting of the rain
Against the windows; and each rattling peal,
Each burst of rolling echo in the dark
Which made me cower like a chastened hound
Recalled me to obedience. But the flesh,
The strong rebellious flesh, oh how it writhed
Against the spirit! How the natural love,
The common human instinct, fought and fought,
And, backed by Satan’s whisper, held its own!
At length the spirit conquered, and I rose
To do the will of God; but, in my crushed
And humbled anguish, I implored the Lord
To stay my lifted arm, and at the last
To save her life as Isaac’s had been saved.
Then I went up the stairs, as if each step
Were a delay, a respite, and a hope,
And sought the chamber where my Edith slept.
The walk had worn her limbs; her sleep was deep.
The storm had not aroused her; nor did I.
I kissed her, and I slew her; for the Lord
Did not vouchsafe to stay His servant’s arm.
For one short moment after she was dead,
I thought perchance that He would bring her back
To life. But all was silent there.

And now,
Ye righteous judges of this Christian land,
Ye godly Elders, look me in the face.
Ye know ye dare not hang me. Will ye dare
To place me in the madhouse for a deed
Which God Himself exacted--which ye teach
Your children to revere in Abraham
From year to year? Ye know ye dare not do it.
And if ye ask me how I knew God’s voice,
Ask of the shepherd’s watch-dog how he knows
His master’s call when darkness girds the fold!
Ye know that Abraham of old, if now
He stood before you, could at your command
Give you no other answer. It was God
Who, putting to the test His servant’s faith,
Impelled my hand. Ye may not judge this deed.

AN ODE OF THE TUSCAN SHORE.

When the Spirits that are masters
Of the ever-ready storm,
And that love to hound the waters,
To destroy and to deform,
See a mortal in their power
They prepare a joyous hour,
Venting their primeval hatred
Of the thing whose blood is warm.

And they lay on ocean’s surface
Their innumerable hands,
And each hand creates a billow
That advances and expands;
Till, amid the petrel’s screaming,
Rope and tattered sail are streaming
High above the seething water
From the mast that still withstands.

But then hate is blind: they know not
What each human prey is worth:
Not more cruel than impartial
Is their elemental mirth:
And their fury is not keener
O’er the greater than the meaner,
Though their victim were a Shelley
And the glory of the earth.

Look around thee in the sunshine;
Watch this satin-surfaced deep,
Which alone some rolling dolphins
Stir out yonder in its sleep,
Till upon the sea shall settle
Sunset hues of molten metal,
Red and bright as crater gleamings,
And the noon shall cease to creep.

Here was washed ashore the greatest
Of the victims snatched away
By the Spirits that are masters
Of the wind and of the spray;
When the waves might have exulted
O’er the body they insulted
With a shriller wilder clamour
Than since Nature’s earliest day!

Cæsar braved the great Sea Spirits,
And he bade his men row on;
And he cried: “Ye carry Cæsar:
Then why tremble and turn wan?”
And the great waves roared more loudly;
But his galley sailed out proudly
From the peril of the tempest
Like an onward-hurried swan.

Yet the world would scarce have missed him--
There be Cæsars more than one:
But a poet like to Shelley,
Where be such beneath the sun?
And mankind had lost a treasure
Past all mourning and all measure,
When the beach-waves gently shelved him
With a moan for what was done.

For an English ear, the breakers
On this fatal Tuscan shore
Seemed to lisp the name of Shelley,
And to mourn it evermore;
And the name appears to mingle
With the rolling of the shingle
And with every sound of Nature
Which he lived but to adore.

Oh, I hear it in the murmur
Of the fragrant woods of pine
As the sea-breeze softly hurries
Through their long-extended line;
And I hear it faintly coming
From the never-ending humming
Of the world of busy insects
That the undergrowths confine.

’Tis the spot; and nought discordant
Mars its beauty and repose.
All along the tideless margin
Pine or bay or ilex grows,
Filled with an eternal warble;
While Carrara’s crags of marble,
Bare and lofty, print the azure,
And, to landward, all enclose.

All is peace and glorious sunshine;
Nature seems redeemed from war.
Nothing stirs from beach to offing,
Where a few feluccas are,
Waiting for the breeze that’s lazy;
While beyond, where all is hazy,
Like the ghost of dwindled power
Loometh Elba, faint and far.

But his genius knew no Elba,
And his star, without decline,
Was extinguished at its zenith
In the wild and tossing brine;
Not war’s red and lurid planet
As of incandescent granite,
But a star of whiter radiance,
Clear, effulgent and divine.

Mighty treasures lie for ever
In each slimy ocean cave;
Galleons with their gold lie buried
Where the dark depth knows no wave;
But the total of their measure
Matches not the matchless treasure
That in yonder stretch of water
Has for ever found a grave:

There the great unwritten poems
Of a mighty poet lie--
Unborn children of a lineage
Which, once born, may never die.
But the water mirrors heaven
With the smile of one forgiven,
While the breakers in the sunshine
Sing an endless lullaby.

SWORD AND SICKLE.

“_’Mid the harvest-shining plain_
_Where the peasant heaps his grain_
_In the garner of his foe._”

In the noontide, safe and free,
Basks the plain of Lombardy.
Never now, nor near nor far
Looms the lurid form of War
That to overspread it came
With her wings of smoky flame.
Unmanured with blood the plain
Yields in peace its yearly grain;
And the milk-white broad-browed pair
Of huge bullocks in the glare
Drag the fruit of Freedom’s tillage
Through each straggling Lombard village
Which no Croat thirsts to pillage.
Not a foe, save where unseen
In the rice-swamp’s treacherous green
Fever lurks, while wade and reap
Through the sparkling waters deep
Girls ill-sheltered from the sun,
Which shoots down to scorch and stun,
By their crimson kerchiefs light,
And who there in Fever’s spite
Cheer their souls with laugh and song
As the noontide creeps along;
Not a foe, save when o’erflows
Adige big with melted snows,
Or when Po’s dark whirling foam
Threatens many a thriving home,
Rolling all its bridges under
With a dull unceasing thunder,
Till it sweeps ere close of day
Bridge and dyke and home away.

Through the broad Subalpine plain
Peace and work and freedom reign.
Here and there in monstrous heaps
Some vast ossuary keeps
For men’s wondering eyes the bones
Of the nation’s slaughtered sons;
But no other traces show
Where a few short years ago
Countless balls of iron ploughed
Through the serried quivering crowd--
Where the broadcast Austrian lead
Fell on furrows live and dead--
Where for miles and miles were heaped
The human harvests freshly reaped--
Where the routed fled like chaff
At the canon’s thunderous laugh,
While the gun-wheels made red mud
Of men weltering in their blood.
Times are changed, and memories hold
In the breasts but of the old.
On Custozza’s once red earth
By the Lombard peasant’s hearth
Now the Austrian may sit
Where no brows with hate shall knit:
Who would dream that there can be
Such a thing as tyranny?
Italy appeals no longer
To God’s throne against the stronger;
And the Poet loves her now
For the beauty of her brow,
Not for that great crown of woe
Whence the blood-drops used to flow.

Lands are freed, and lands enslaved;
But your name is there engraved
In the hearts of those now freed
Ye who helped them in their need!
Nor do they remember now
Those who lent them all the glow
Of their genius and their feeling,
And Compassion’s balm that’s healing,
And the thunder of their curse
In a heaven-shaking verse.
Reckon not on thanks for long,
Ye who fight with sword or song
For the weak against the strong:
Give your help for justice’ sake,
Caring no reward to take.
Freedom’s face is not less fair
For remembering not your share;
And the sheaves of sacred wheat,
Which spring up beneath her feet
From the liberated plain,
Not less full of golden grain.

Years ago one day I stood,
In the autumn’s sunset flood,
Looking down with sweeping sight
From a bastion’s terraced height
On the then unconquered plain
Of the fair and French Lorraine.
Scarce was autumn’s first leaf yellow;
Ripened Earth had made air mellow.
Like a snake inert and blue,
Winding slowly corn-fields through,
Wound the broad Moselle afar
To the horizon’s utmost bar,
Catching on each burnished fold
Restless gleams of molten gold
Till the sun was near to sink,
When it caught a flaming pink
From the crimson clouds slow sailing
Where the amber light was failing.
And surveying that expanse,
What, I thought, is fair as France?
Now the Prussian sentries stand
Where I stood, and scan the land,
Which for ever seems their own,
With their ugly Prussian frown;
And the sullen land has nought
But the freedom of its thought,
Of its thought that hopes and hates
And from year to year awaits.

And what of thee upon whose head
All evil’s phials have been shed--
Thou whom those who now have gotten
Their own freedom, have forgotten--
Thou whose name is never heard,
Thou whose hope is aye deferred,
Thou whose tongue thy foes outroot,
Thou whose sons they chain and shoot--
Poland, heiress of the knout?
Lo, the century grows old
And thy hour has not yet tolled.
On thy form benumbed and bruised,
Whence the life-blood half has oozed,
Lies the dark Colossus still
Whom his own sons now would kill--
Tormentors that like vipers start
From his huge frame’s every part;
But he holds thee all the tighter
While thy bloodless face grows whiter,
And his limbs that on thee weigh
Grow more rotten day by day.

Hark! I hear a muffled sound
Deep beneath the frozen ground
Where a buried Poland pines
In the dark Siberian mines,
In the sunless vaults that ape
Those of Hell in gloom and shape,
Where the gangs who death await
Unlearn to think, but not to hate:
Is’t a growl of joy that runs
Where are chained half Poland’s sons?
Ay, a growl of joy it is
To each mine’s extremities,
And for once Despair has laughed
In each black pestiferous shaft:
He who sent them there lies dead
On his gory Imperial bed--
He who made them walk in chains,
In long goaded staggering trains,
Through the endless snow-clad plains
To the grave in which they lie,
Not yet dead, but soon to die:
Even he has found his hour,
Murdered in his boundless power
By his own, and rots in death
As they rot who here draw breath.

A PAGEANT OF SIENA.

The old red, towered walls climb round the hills
On which Siena stands in lonely state,
Scanning the ridgy plain, where gleam no rills
And loom no towns, but only endless lines
Of livid furrowed hillocks which the great
White, ploughing bullocks speck. From gate to gate
A few tall cypresses and scattered pines
Climb too, where, guarding streets that silence fills,
The old red, towered walls climb round the hills.

Silent and empty in the August glare
The old depopulated city sleeps;
Its dizzy belfry climbs the fiery air
Into the sky’s inexorable blue;
Across its great scooped shell-shaped square there creeps
No living soul, nor up the high paved steeps
That be its streets; perhaps some carts sway through
Its dusty gates, behind a huge-horned pair,
Creaking and empty in the August glare.

O for the pageantry of olden days,
Thou silent square--ye palaces that wind
Up to the still cathedral, where the rays,
Now gentler, kiss the marble and the gold!
O for the throngs that Time has left behind,
Ye buttressed lanes, ye lofty archways lined
With faded saints; show those ye used to hold
When the strong prosperous city loved displays
And gaudy pageantry in olden days.

I hear a hum of men, a tramp and tread;
The city’s Districts muster. First appears
The District of the Panther--white and red
Its men-at-arms and pages, fifes and drums;
And next the yellow-liveried troop that bears
The Ghibelline standard of the Eagle nears;
Then Tortoise, Hedgehog, Snail and Glowworm come;
And the Guelf She-Wolf, with her arms ahead
All black and silver, comes with tramp and tread.

The Districts muster for the August race,
And take their glossy racers to be blessed,
Each in its own rich church, where, held in trace
Of gold, the startled barb with hoof-steps loud
Is led through flaunting banner, shield and crest
To the high altar’s rail, where kneel close pressed
The pages and the soldiers and the crowd,
Who scan the gleaming limbs that shall efface
Last year’s defeat and win the August race.

The huge old square scooped like a palmer’s shell,
Siena’s forum and its hippodrome,
Echoes a roar that drowns the mighty bell
From battlemented belfry in the sky;
The ring of olden palaces, become
Ablaze with crimson hangings, looks like some
Enchanted Coliseum, in which vie
Scutcheon and standard; so you scarce could tell
The strange old square scooped like a palmer’s shell.

In bright procession ere the race is run
The rival Districts wind around the course,
Each with its banner in the evening sun,
Its clarions, and its Captain capped with steel,
Its pages and its men that lead the horse
Caparisoned and guarded by a force
Of gaudy pikemen; while the clarions peal
And the crowd cheers the Panther that has won
Its fickle favour ere the race is run.

And as the standard-bearers one and all
March by in motley blazonry, they cast
Their standards high in air, and as they fall
Catch them above the throng with rapid hand
And twirl and twist them dexterously and fast
In one unceasing play, until at last
The whole vast square is by the bright silk fanned,
And they have marched before the great Town Hall
Where stand the city’s rulers one and all.

Then comes, drawn by six bullocks of huge size
All white as milk, with many-coloured strings
About their horns, broad brows and large black eyes,
The old Republic’s standard-bearing wain,
With its great Martinella bell that rings
Oft o’er the battle’s roar, and whose sound brings
Fear to the heart of her who plots in vain,
Perfidious Florence. From its high mast flies
Siena’s She-Wolf’s standard of huge size.

And now the course is clear, and those who don
The colours of the Panther feel no fear;
A hundred thousand partizans look on
With inborn urban rivalry, and hail
The horses one by one as they appear,
And hoot the Shell, or Wave, or wildly cheer
The Hedgehog, or the Dragon, or the Snail,
Or the great Eagle that so oft has won,
Whose knaves and rider yellow colours don.

At last they start, and at terrific pace
In dreadful crush adown the slope they tear,
The Tortoise leading for a little space;
Then from the crowd the Panther shooting out,
Maintains the lead thrice round the perilous square;
Then suddenly a great shout rends the air:
“The Snail! The Snail!” all cry; and in hushed doubt
All watch the two. The Snail has won the race,
And slowly slackens its terrific pace.

And in the District of the Snail to-night
Is revelry and feasting in the street;
From great wrought-iron torch-holders the light
Falls red and flaring on grim palace walls
Decked with bright banners; boards where all may eat
Who care, are crowded; while the old repeat
Many an oft-told story that recalls
What things the Snail had done in race and fight.
Sleep shuns the District of the Snail to-night.

THE WONDER OF THE WORLD.

When this shall reach you I shall be no more;
For do not men in presence of some score
Too great for payment constantly prefer
Quick death to base insolvency, and spur
A trembling self across life’s brink. And yet
They owe but gold--perhaps a paltry debt
To some vile Jew; while I, alas, alas!
Owe all mankind a thing which did surpass
All other treasures; a grand peerless thing
Beyond all pricing and all wondering,
Which should be man’s, but which to save my own
Mean life I sacrificed. And days have grown
To be long months, and months to be long years;
And with each year the frightful debt appears
More insupportable. Oh, how immense
Has grown its weight! How horrible the sense
Of utter helplessness! But I have now
To tell the fatal tale of when and how
I lost it for the world, and not to speak
Of these sad days when conscience loves to wreak
Her retribution on me in such vast
And unremitting anguish.

I had passed
Six idle years since taking my degree,
When I fell in at Athens casually
With one called Richard Strongclyffe, who had been
My college friend, but whom I had not seen
Since then, and who meanwhile had made a name
Through study of Greek Art. We soon became
As intimate as of old; and as no claim
Of work or pleasure summoned me elsewhere,
He let me roam through Greece with him, and share
His own strong daily life--the sheer reverse
Of my accustomed life of waste, and worse
Than waste, the aimless life of which my soul
Was more than sick; it had become so foul.
He had an iron will; his hand was rough;
His heart was gentle. God had used strong stuff
In making him--weak stuff in making me.
And yet I was not worthless utterly.
Spite all my sins there were some better strings
In my weak heart; the wind of angels’ wings
Made them vibrate--but with faint echo, like
Æolian chords that gusts too fitful strike.
Mine is a double nature, which depends
Wholly on its surroundings, and which blends
With good or evil, with the low or high,
With the same drifting weak facility.
In Strongclyffe’s hands my nature’s worthier side
Alone found vent; pure tastes that had not died
Grew strong, while half-forgotten culture found
A sudden use, and from all things around
Increased its wealth. I think that he enjoyed
His power over me; his strong soul toyed
With my soft malleable mind, which had,
In spite of degradations many and sad,
Affinities of taste, and could admire
And understand him. Oh what strength and fire
Beneath his quiet ways! What scorn could burst
From his cold lip! what ceaseless ceaseless thirst
He had for knowledge! Even as my mind
Grew intimate with his, new worlds defined
Their shape on my horizon, like the grey
Faint, shadowy Greek Isles which far away
Loomed through the mists of dawn, but which became,
As we approached them in the sunrise flame,
Each minute more distinct.

We seldom stayed
Long in one self-same spot; but we obeyed
The needs of Strongclyffe’s studies, which entailed
Research in many places; and we sailed
From isle to isle, or rode from place to place,
Now in the less-known parts of Greece and Thrace,
And now in rocky Lydia. Oh, what fields
Where men dig gold, what far Golconda yields
Such wealth, such gems, as those impoverished plains
In which the spade turns up the scant remains
Of bygone genius; where the obedient earth,
Summoned to yield her buried dead, gives birth,
As if compelled by an enchanter’s rod,
To what is ever young--now to some god
In all his strength and beauty, now to some
Fantastic child of Pan, who seems fresh come
From dewy woods that long have ceased to be?
And Strongclyffe had the art to make one see
The hidden through the seen--to reconstruct
Past life and loveliness, and to conduct
The mind through perished worlds; and everywhere
He showed the same keen interest and a rare
Persistence of research. Yet what he did
Seemed somehow trifling; oft I thought it hid
Higher preoccupation--some great aim
Which time was ripening; so that when there came
One day a sudden change in him--when all
Was thrown aside, and when I heard him call
Upon my help, with triumph on his lips,
In a great enterprise which should eclipse
Even the greatest, I received his words
Not wholly unprepared.