Chapter XXI

Far better, yea, to me it seems, to die!
To set glad lips against the lips of Death--
The only thing God gives that comforteth,
The only thing we do not find a lie.

THE LAST SONG

She sleeps: he sings to her: the day was long,
And, tired out with too much happiness,
She fain would have him sing of old Provence;
Old songs, that spoke of love in such soft tones,
Her restless soul was straight besieged of dreams,
And her wild heart beleaguered of deep peace,
And heart and soul surrendered unto sleep.--
Like perfect sculpture in the moon she lies,
Its pallor on her through heraldic panes
Of one tall casement's guléd quarterings.--
Beside her couch, an antique table, weighed
With gold and crystal; here, a carven chair,
Whereon her raiment,--that suggests sweet curves
Of shapely beauty,--bearing her limbs' impress,
Is richly laid: and, near the chair, a glass,
An oval mirror framed in ebony:
And, dim and deep,--investing all the room
With ghostly life of woven women and men,
And strange, fantastic gloom, where shadows move,--
Dark tapestry,--which in the gusts--that twinge
A dropping cresset's slender star of light--
Seems swayed of cautious hands, assassin-like,
That bide their hour.

She alone, deep-haired
As golden dawn, and whiter than a rose,
Divinely breasted as the Queen of Love,
Lies robeless in the glimmer of the moon,
Like Danaë within the golden shower.
Seated beside her aromatic rest,
In silence musing on her loveliness,
Her knight and troubadour. A lute, aslope
The curious baldric of his tunic, glints
Pearl-caught reflections of the moon, that seem
The voiceless ghosts of long-dead melodies.
In purple and sable, slashed with solemn gold,
Like stately twilight over slopes of snow,
He leans above her.--

Have his hands forgot
Their craft, that now they pause upon the strings?
His lips, their art, that they cease, speechless there?--
His eyes are set ... What is it stills to stone
His hands? his lips? and mails him, head and heel,
In terrible marble, motionless and cold?--
Behind the arras, can it be he feels,
Black-browed and grim, with eyes of sombre fire,
Death towers above him with uplifted sword?

THE DREAM OF RODERICK

Below, the tawny Tagus swept
Past royal gardens, breathing balm:
Upon his couch the monarch slept;
The world was still; the night was calm.

Gray, Gothic-gated, in the ray
Of moonrise, tower and castle-crowned,
The city of Toledo lay
Beneath the terraced palace-ground.

Again, he dreamed, in kingly sport
He sought the tree-sequestered path,
And watched the ladies of his Court
Within the marble-basined bath.

Its porphyry stairs and fountained base
Shone, houried with voluptuous forms,
Where Andalusia vied in grace
With old Castile, in female charms.

And laughter, song, and water-splash
Rang round the place, with rock arcaded,
As here a breast or limb would flash
Where beauty swam or beauty waded.

And then, like Venus, from the wave
A maiden came, and stood below;
And by her side a woman slave
Bent down to dry her limbs of snow.

Then on the tesselated bank,
Robed on with fragrance and with fire,--
Like some exotic flower--she sank,
The type of all divine desire.

Then her dark curls, that sparkled wet,
She parted from her perfect brows,
And, lo, her eyes, like lamps of jet
Lit in an alabaster house.

And in his sleep the monarch sighed,
"Florinda!"--Dreaming still he moaned,
"Ah, would that I had died, had died!
I have atoned! I have atoned!"...

And then the vision changed: O'erhead
Tempest and darkness were unrolled,
Full of wild voices of the dead,
And lamentations manifold.

And wandering shapes of gaunt despair
Swept by; and faces pale with pain,
Whose eyes wept blood and seemed to glare
Fierce curses on him through the rain.

And then, it seemed, 'gainst blazing skies
A necromantic tower sate,
Crag-like on crags, of giant size;
With adamatine wall and gate.

And from the storm a hand of might,
Red-rolled in thunder, reached among
The gate's huge bolts, that burst--and night
Clanged ruin as its hinges swung.

Then far away a murmur trailed,--
As of sad seas on cavern'd shores,--
That grew into a voice that wailed,
"They come! they come! the Moors! the Moors!"

And with deep boom of atabals
And crash of cymbals and wild peal
Of battle-bugles, from its walls
An army rushed in glimmering steel.

And where it trod he saw the torch
Of conflagration stalk the skies,
And in the vanward of its march
The monster form of Havoc rise.

And Paynim war-cries rent the storm,
Athwart whose firmament of flame
Destruction reared an earthquake form
On wreck and death without a name....

And then again the vision changed:
Where flows the Guadelete, see,
The champions of the Cross are ranged
Against the Crescent's chivalry.

With roar of trumpets and of drums
They meet; and in the battle's van
He fights; and, towering towards him, comes
Florinda's father, Julian;

And one-eyed Taric, great in war:
And where these couch their burning spears,
The Christian phalanx, near and far,
Goes down like corn before the shears.

The Moslem wins: the Christian flies:
"Allah il Allah," hill and plain
Reverberate: the rocking skies,
"Allah il Allah," shout again.

And then he dreamed the swing of swords
And hurl of arrows were no more;
And stranger than the howling hordes
Deep silence fell on field and shore.

And through the night, it seemed, he fled,
Upon a white steed like a star,
Across a field of endless dead,
Beneath a blood-red scimitar

Of sunset: And he heard a moan,
Beneath, around, on every hand--
"Accurséd! Yea, what hast thou done
To bring this curse upon thy land?"

And then an awful sense of wings:
And, lo! the answer--"'Twas his lust
That was his crime. Behold! e'en kings
Must reckon with Me. God is just."

ZYPS OF ZIRL

The Alps of the Tyrol are dark with pines,
Where, foaming under the mountain spines,
The Inn's long water sounds and shines.

Beyond, are peaks where the morning weaves
An icy rose; and the evening leaves
The golden ghosts of a thousand sheaves.

Deep vines and torrents and glimmering haze,
And sheep-bells tinkling on mountain ways,
And fluting shepherds make sweet the days.

The rolling mist, like a wandering fleece,
The great, round moon in a mountain crease,
And a song of love make the nights all peace.

Beneath the blue Tyrolean skies
On the banks of the Inn, that foams and flies,
The storied city of Innsbruck lies.

With its mediæval streets, that crook,
And its gabled houses, it has the look
Of a belfried town in a fairy book.

So wild the Tyrol that oft, 'tis said,
When the storm is out and the town in bed,
The howling of wolves sweeps overhead.

And oft the burgher, sitting here
In his walled rose-garden, hears the clear
Shrill scream of the eagle circling near.

And this is the tale that the burghers tell:--
The Abbot of Wiltau stood at his cell
Where the Solstein lifts its pinnacle.

A mighty summit of bluffs and crags
That frowns on the Inn; where the forest stags
Have worn a path to the water-flags.

The Abbot of Wiltau stood below;
And he was aware of a plume and bow
On the precipice there in the morning's glow,

A chamois, he saw, from span to span
Had leapt; and after it leapt a man;
And he knew 'twas the Kaiser Maximilian.

But, see! though rash as the chamois he,
His foot less sure. And verily
If the King should miss ... "Jesu! Marie!

"The King hath missed!"--And, look, he falls!
Rolls headlong out to the headlong walls.
What Saint shall save him on whom he calls?

What Saint shall save him, who struggles there
On the narrow ledge by the eagle's lair,
With hook'd hands clinging 'twixt earth and air?

The Abbot crosses himself in dread--
"Let prayers go up for the nearly dead,
And the passing-bell be tolled," he said.

"For the House of Hapsburg totters! See,
How raveled the thread of its destiny,
Sheer hung between cloud and rock!" quoth he.

But hark! where the steeps of the peak reply,
Is it an eagle's echoing cry?
And the flitting shadow, its plumes on high?

No voice of the eagle is that which rings!
And the shadow, a wiry man who swings
Down, down where the desperate Kaiser clings.

The _crampons_ bound to his feet, he leaps
Like a chamois now; and again he creeps
Or twists, like a snake, o'er the fearful deeps.

"By his cross-bow, baldric, and cap's black curl,"
Quoth the Abbot below, "I know the churl!
'Tis the hunted outlaw Zyps of Zirl.

"Upon whose head, or dead or alive,
The Kaiser hath posted a price.--Saints shrive
The King!" quoth Wiltau. "Who may contrive

"To save him now that his foe is there?"--
But, hark! again through the breathless air
What words are those that the echoes bear?

"Courage, my King!--To the rescue, ho!"
The wild voice rings like a twanging bow,
And the staring Abbot stands mute below.

And, lo! the hand of the outlaw grasps
The arm of the King--and death unclasps
Its fleshless fingers from him who gasps.

And how he guides! where the clean cliffs wedge
Them flat to their brows; by chasm and ledge
He helps the King from the merciless edge.

Then up and up, past bluffs that shun
The rashest chamois; where eagles sun
Great wings and brood; where the mists are spun.

And safe at last stand Kaiser and churl
On the mountain path where the mosses curl--
And this the revenge of Zyps of Zirl.

THE GLOW-WORM

How long had I sat there and had not beheld
The gleam of the glow-worm till something compelled!...

The heaven was starless, the forest was deep,
And the vistas of darkness stretched silent in sleep.

And late 'mid the trees had I lingered until
No thing was awake but the lone whippoorwill.

And haunted of thoughts for an hour I sat
On a lichen-gray rock where the moss was a mat.

And thinking of one whom my heart had held dear,
Like terrible waters, a gathering fear

Came stealing upon me with all the distress
Of loss and of yearning and powerlessness:

Till the hopes and the doubts and the sleepless unrest
That, swallow-like, built in the home of my breast,

Now hither, now thither, now heavenward flew,
Wild-winged as the winds are: now suddenly drew

My soul to abysses of nothingness where
All light was a shadow, all hope, a despair:

Where truth, that religion had set upon high,
The darkness distorted and changed to a lie:

And dreams of the beauty ambition had fed
Like leaves of the autumn fell withered and dead.

And I rose with my burden of anguish and doom,
And cried, "O my God, had I died in the womb!

"Than born into night, with no hope of the morn,
An heir unto shadows, to live so forlorn!

"All effort is vain; and the planet called Faith
Sinks down; and no power is real but death.

"O light me a torch in the deepening dark
So my sick soul may follow, my sad heart may mark!"--

And then in the darkness the answer!--It came
From Earth, not from Heaven--a glimmering flame,

Behold; at my feet! In the shadow it shone
Mysteriously lovely and dimly alone:

An ember; a sparkle of dew and of glower;
Like the lamp that a spirit hangs under a flower:

As goldenly green as the phosphorous star
A fairy may wear in her diadem's bar:

An element essence of moonlight and dawn
That, trodden and trampled, burns on and burns on.

And hushed was my soul with the lesson of light
That God had revealed to me there in the night:

Though mortal its structure, material its form,
The spiritual message of worm unto worm.

A FOREST IDYLL

I

Beneath an old beech-tree
They sat together,
Fair as a flower was she
Of summer weather.
They spoke of life and love,
While, through the boughs above,
The sunlight, like a dove,
Dropped many a feather.

II

And there the violet,
The bluet near it,
Made blurs of azure wet--
As if some spirit,
Or woodland dream, had gone
Sprinkling the earth with dawn,
When only Fay and Faun
Could see or hear it.

III

She with her young, sweet face
And eyes gray-beaming,
Made of that forest place
A spot for dreaming:
A spot for Oreads
To smooth their nut-brown braids,
For Dryads of the glades
To dance in, gleaming.

IV

So dim the place, so blest,
One had not wondered
Had Dian's moonéd breast
The deep leaves sundered,
And there on them a while
The goddess deigned to smile,
While down some forest aisle
The far hunt thundered.

V

I deem that hour, perchance,
Was but a mirror
To show them Earth's romance
And draw them nearer:
A mirror where, meseems,
All that this Earth-life dreams,
All loveliness that gleams,
Their souls saw clearer.