Chapter IV: Part 4

So weak they seemed,—and all her passion owning.
The fourth, a ripe, luxurious maiden, came,
Half for such homage to the dead atoning

By smiles on one who fanned a later flame
In her slight soul, her fickle steps attended.
The fifth and sixth were sisters; at the same

Wild moment both above the image bended,
And with immortal hatred each on each
Glared, and therewith her exultation blended,

To know the dead had ’scaped the other’s reach!
Meanwhile, through all the words of anguish spoken,
One lowly form had given no sound of speech,

Through all the signs of woe, no sign nor token;
But when they came to bear him to his rest,
They found her beauty paled,—her heart was broken:

And in the Silent Land his shade confest
That she, of all the seven, loved him best.

THE OLD LOVE AND THE NEW.

Once more on the fallow hillside, as of old, I lie at rest
For an hour, while the sunshine trembles through the walnut-tree to
the west,—
Shakes on the rocks and fragrant ferns, and the berry-bushes around;
And I watch, as of old, the cattle graze in the lower pasture-ground.

Of the Saxon months of blossom, when the merle and mavis sing,
And a dust of gold falls everywhere from the soft mid-summer’s wing,
I only know from my poets, or from pictures that hither come,
Sweet with the smile of the hawthorn-hedge and the scent of the
harvest-home.

But July in our own New England—I bask myself in its prime,
As one in the light of a face he loves, and has not seen for a time!
Again the perfect blue of the sky; the fresh green woods; the call
Of the crested jay; the tangled vines that cover the frost-thrown wall:

Sounds and shadows remembered well! the ground-bee’s droning hum;
The distant musical tree-tops; the locust beating his drum;
And the ripened July warmth, that seems akin to a fire which stole,
Long summers since, through the thews of youth, to soften and harden
my soul.

Here it was that I loved her—as only a stripling can,
Who doats on a girl that others know no mate for the future man;
It was well, perhaps, that at last my pride and honor outgrew her art,
That there came an hour, when from broken chains I fled—with a broken
heart.

’Twas well: but the fire would still flash up in sharp, heat-lightning
gleams,
And ever at night the false, fair face shone into passionate dreams;
The false, fair form, through many a year, was somewhere close at my
side,
And crept, as by right, to my very arms and the place of my patient
bride.

Bride and vision have passed away, and I am again alone;
Changed by years; not wiser, I think, but only different grown:
Not so much nearer wisdom is a man than a boy, forsooth,
Though, in scorn of what has come and gone, he hates the ways of his
youth.

In seven years, I have heard it said, a soul shall change its frame;
Atom for atom, the man shall be the same, yet not the same;
The last of the ancient ichor shall pass away from his veins,
And a new-born light shall fill the eyes whose earlier lustre wanes.

In seven years, it is written, a man shall shift his mood;
Good shall seem what was evil, and evil the thing that was good:
Ye that welcome the coming and speed the parting guest,
Tell me, O winds of summer! am I not half-confest?

For along the tide of this mellow month new fancies guide my helm,
Another form has entered my heart as rightful queen of the realm;
From under their long black lashes new eyes—half-blue, half-gray—
Pierce through my soul, to drive the ghost of the old love quite away.

Shadow of years! at last it sinks in the sepulchre of the past,—
A gentle image and fair to see; but was my passion so vast?
“For you,” I said, “be you false or true, are ever life of my life!”
Was it myself or another who spoke, and asked her to be his wife?

For here, on the dear old hillside, I lie at rest again,
And think with a quiet self-content of all the passion and pain,
Of the strong resolve and the after-strife; but the vistas round me seem
So little changed that I hardly know if the past is not a dream.

Can I have sailed, for seven years, far out in the open world;
Have tacked and drifted here and there, by eddying currents whirled;
Have gained and lost, and found again; and now, for a respite, come
Once more to the happy scenes of old, and the haven I voyaged from?

Blended, infinite murmurs of True Love’s earliest song,
Where are you slumbering out of the heart that gave you echoes so long?
But chords that have ceased to vibrate the swell of an ancient strain
May thrill with a soulful music when rightly touched again.

Rock and forest and meadow,—landscape perfect and true!
O, if ourselves were tender and all unchangeful as you,
I should not now be dreaming of seven years that have been,
Nor bidding old love good by forever, and letting the new love in!

ESTELLE.

“How came he mad?”—HAMLET.

Of all the beautiful demons who fasten on human hearts
To fetter the bodies and souls of men with exquisite, mocking arts,
The cruellest, and subtlest, and fairest to mortal sight,
Is surely a woman called Estelle, who tortures me day and night.

The first time that I saw her she passed with sweet lips mute,
As if in scorn of the vacant praise of those who made her suit;
A hundred lustres flashed and shone as she rustled through the crowd,
And a passion seized me for her there,—so passionless and proud.

The second time that I saw her she met me face to face;
Her bending beauty answered my bow in a tremulous moment’s space;
With an upward glance that instantly fell she read me through and
through,
And found in me something worth her while to idle with and subdue;

Something, I know not what: perhaps the spirit of eager youth,
That named her a queen of queens at once, and loved her in very truth;
That threw its pearl of pearls at her feet, and offered her, in a breath,
The costliest gift a man can give from his cradle to his death.

The third time that I saw her—this woman called Estelle—
She passed her milk-white arm through mine and dazzled me with her spell;
A blissful fever thrilled my veins, and there, in the moon-beams white,
I yielded my soul to the fierce control of that maddening delight!

And at many a trysting afterwards she wove my heart-strings round
Her delicate fingers, twisting them, and chanting low as she wound;
The rune she sang rang sweet and clear like the chime of a witch’s bell;
Its echo haunts me even now, with the word, Estelle! Estelle!

Ah, then, as a dozen before me had, I lay at last at her feet,
And she turned me off with a calm surprise when her triumph was all
complete:
It made me wild, the stroke which smiled so pitiless out of her eyes,
Like lightning fallen, in clear noonday, from cloudless and bluest skies!

The whirlwind followed upon my brain and beat my thoughts to rack:
Who knows the many a month I lay ere memory floated back?
Even now, I tell you, I wonder whether this woman called Estelle
Is flesh and blood, or a beautiful lie, sent up from the depths of hell.

For at night she stands where the pallid moon streams into this grated
cell,
And only gives me that mocking glance when I speak her name—_Estelle_!
With the old resistless longing often I strive to clasp her there,
But she vanishes from my open arms and hides I know not where.

And I hold that if she were human she could not fly like the wind,
But her heart would flutter against my own, in spite of her scornful
mind:
Yet, oh! she is not a phantom, since devils are not so bad
As to haunt and torture a man long after their tricks have made him mad!

EDGED TOOLS.

Well, Helen, quite two years have flown
Since that enchanted, dreamy night,
When you and I were left alone,
And wondered whether they were right
Who said that each the other loved;
And thus debating, yes and no,
And half in earnest, as it proved,
We bargained to pretend ’twas so.

Two sceptic children of the world,
Each with a heart engraven o’er
With broken love-knots, quaintly curled,
Of hot flirtations held before;
Yet, somehow, either seemed to find,
This time, a something more akin
To that young, natural love,—the kind
Which comes but once, and breaks us in.

What sweetly stolen hours we knew,
And frolics perilous as gay!
Though lit in sport, Love’s taper grew
More bright and burning day by day.
We knew each heart was only lent,
The other’s ancient scars to heal:
The very thought a pathos blent
With all the mirth we tried to feel.

How bravely, when the time to part
Came with the wanton season’s close,
Though nature with our mutual art
Had mingled more than either chose,
We smothered Love, upon the verge
Of folly, in one last embrace,
And buried him without a dirge,
And turned, and left his resting-place.

Yet often (tell me what it means!)
His spirit steals upon me here,
Far, far away from all the scenes
His little lifetime held so dear;
He comes: I hear a mystic strain
In which some tender memory lies;
I dally with your hair again;
I catch the gleam of violet eyes.

Ah, Helen! how have matters been
Since those rude obsequies, with you?
Say, is my partner in the sin
A sharer of the penance too?
Again the vision’s at my side:
I drop my head upon my breast,
And wonder if he really died,
And why his spirit will not rest.

THE SWALLOW.

Had I, my love declared, the tireless wing
That wafts the swallow to her northern skies,
I would not, sheer within the rich surprise
Of full-blown Summer, like the swallow, fling
My coyer being; but would follow Spring,
Melodious consort, as she daily flies,
Apace with suns, that o’er new woodlands rise
Each morn—with rains her gentler stages bring.
My pinions should beat music with her own;
Her smiles and odors should delight me ever,
Gliding, with measured progress, from the zone
Where golden seas receive the mighty river,
Unto yon lichened cliffs, whose ridges sever
Our Norseland from the arctic surge’s moan.

REFUGE IN NATURE.

When the rude world’s relentless war has pressed
Fiercely upon them, and the hot campaign
Closes with battles lost, some yield their lives,
Or linger in the ruins of the fight—
Unwise, and comprehending not their fate,
Nor gathering that affluent recompense
Which the all-pitying Earth has yet in store.
Surely such men have never known the love
Of Nature; nor had recourse to her fount
Of calm delights, whose influences heal
The wounded spirits of her vanquished sons;
Nor ever—in those fruitful earlier days,
Wherein her manifest forms do most enrich
Our senses void of subtler cognizance—
Wandered in summer fields, climbed the free hills,
Pursued the murmuring music of her streams,
And found the borders of her sounding sea.

But thou—when, in the multitudinous lists
Of traffic, all thine own is forfeited
At some wild hazard, or by weakening drains
Poured from thee; or when, striving for the meed
Of place, thou failest, and the lesser man
By each ignoble method wins thy due;
When the injustice of the social world
Environs thee; when ruthless public scorn,
Black slander, and the meannesses of friends
Have made the bustling practice of the world
To thee a discord and a mockery;
Or even if that last extremest pang
Be thine, and, added to such other woes,
The loss of that forever faithful love
Which else had balanced all: the putting out,
Untimely, of the light in dearest eyes;—
At such a time thou well may’st count the days
Evil, and for a season quit the field;
Yet not surrendering all human hopes,
Nor the rich physical life which still remains
God’s boon and thy sustainer. It were base
To join alliance with the hosts of Fate
Against thyself, crowning their victory
By loose despair, or seeking rest in death.

More wise, betake thee to those sylvan haunts
Thou knewest when young, and, once again a child,
Let their perennial loveliness renew
Thy natural faith and childhood’s heart serene.
Forgetting all the toilsome pilgrimage,
Awake from strife and shame, as from a dream
Dreamed by a boy, when under waving trees
He sleeps and dreams a languid afternoon.
Once more from these harmonious beauties gain
Repose and ransom, and a power to feel
The immortal gladness of inanimate things.

There is the mighty Mother, ever young
And garlanded, and welcoming her sons.
There are her thousand charms to soothe thy pain,
And merge thy little, individual woe
In the broad health and happy fruitfulness
Of all that smiles around thee. For thy sake
The woven arches of her forests breathe
Perpetual anthems, and the blue skies smile
Between, to heal thee with their infinite hope.
There are her crystal waters: lave thy brows,
Hot with long turmoil, in their purity;
Wash off the battle-dust from those poor limbs
Blood-stained and weary. Holy sleep shall come
Upon thee; waking, thou shalt find in bloom
The lilies, fresh as in the olden days;
And once again, when Night unveils her stars,
Thou shalt have sight of their high radiance,
And feel the old, mysterious awe subdue
The phantoms of thy pain.

And from that height
A voice shall whisper of the faith, through which
A man may act his part until the end.
Anon thy ancient yearning for the fight
May come once more, tempered by poise of chance,
And guided well with all experience.
Invisible hands may gird thy armor on,
And Nature put new weapons in thy hands,
Sending thee out to try the world again,—
Perchance to conquer, being cased in mail
Of double memories; knowing smaller griefs
Can add no sorrow to the woful past;
And that, howbeit thou mayest stand or fall,
Earth proffers men her refuge everywhere,
And Heaven’s promise is for aye the same.

MONTAGU.

Queen Katherine of Arragon
In gray Kimbolton dwelt,
A joyous bride, ere bluff King Hal
To Anne’s beauty knelt.

Still in her haughty Spanish eyes
Their childhood’s lustre shone,
That lit with love two royal hearts,
And won the English throne.

From gray Kimbolton’s castle-gate
She rode, each summer’s day,
And blithely led the greenwood chase
With hawk and hound away.

And ever handsome Montagu,
Her Master of the Horse,
To guard his mistress kept her pace
O’er heather, turf, and gorse.

O, who so brave as Montagu
To leap the hedges clear!
And who so fleet as he to find
The coverts of the deer!

And who so wild as Montagu,
To seek his sovereign’s love!
More hopeless than a child, who craves
The brightest star above.

Day after day her presence fed
The fever at his heart;
Yet loyally the young knight scorned
To play a traitor’s part.

Only, when at her palfrey’s side
He bowed him by command,
Lightening her footfall to the earth,
He pressed her dainty hand;

A tender touch, as light as love,
Soft as his heart’s desire;
But aye, in Katherine’s artless blood,
It woke no answering fire.

King Hal to gray Kimbolton came
Erelong, and true love’s sign,
Unused in colder Arragon,
She prayed him to divine:

“Canst tell me, Sire,” she said, “what mean
The gentry of your land,
When softly, thus, and thus, they take
And press a lady’s hand?”

“Ha! ha!” laughed Hal, “but tell me, Chick,
Each answering in course,
Do any press your hand?” “O yes,
My Master of the Horse.”

Off to the wars her gallant went,
And pushed the foremost dikes,
And gashed his fair young form against
A score of Flemish pikes.

Heart’s blood ebbed fast; but Montagu,
Dipping a finger, wove
These red words in his shield: “Dear Queen,
I perish of your love!”

Kimbolton, after many a year,
Again met Katherine’s view:
The banished wife, with half a sigh,
Remembered Montagu.

WILD WINDS WHISTLE.

1. Sir Ulric a Southern dame has wed;
_Wild winds whistle and snow is come_;
He has brought her home to his bower and bed.
_Hither and thither the birds fly home._

Her hair is darker than thick of night;
_Wild winds whistle, &c._
Her hands are fair, and her step is light.
_Hither and thither, &c._

From out his castel in the North
Sir Ulric to hunt rode lightly forth.

Three things he left her for good or ill,—
A bonny bird that should sing at will,

With carol sweeter than silver bell,
Day and night in the old castel;

A lithe little page to gather flowers;
And a crystal dial to mark the hours.

2. Lady Margaret watched Sir Ulric speed
Away to the chase on his faithful steed.

From morning till night, the first day long,
She sat and listened the bonny bird’s song.

The second day long, with fingers fair,
She curled and combed her page’s hair.

The third day’s sun rose up on high;
By the dial she was seated nigh:

She loathed the bird and the page’s face,
And counted the shadow’s creeping pace.

3. The strange knight drew his bridle-rein;
He looked at the sky and he looked at the plain.

“O lady!” he said, “’twas a sin and shame
To leave for the chase so fair a dame.

“O lady!” he said, “we two will flee
To the blithesome land of Italie;

“There the orange grows, and the fruitful vine,
And a bower of myrtle shall be thine.”

He has taken her hand and kissed her mouth:
Now Ho! sing Ho! for the sunny South.

He has kissed her mouth and clasped her waist:
Now, good gray steed, make haste, make haste!

4. Sir Ulric back from the chase has come,
And sounds the horn at his castel-home.

Or ever he drew his bridle-rein,
He saw the dial split in twain;

The bonny blithe bird was stark and dead,
And the lithe little page hung down his head.

The lithe little page hung down his head;
_Wild winds whistle and snow is come_;
“O where, Sir Page, has my lady fled?”
_Hither and thither the birds fly home._

PETER STUYVESANT’S NEW YEAR’S CALL.

1 JAN. A. C. 1661.

Where nowadays the Battery lies,
New York had just begun,
A new-born babe, to rub its eyes,
In Sixteen Sixty-One.
They christened it Nieuw Amsterdam,
Those burghers grave and stately,
And so, with schnapps and smoke and psalm,
Lived out their lives sedately.

Two windmills topped their wooden wall,
On Stadthuys gazing down,
On fort, and cabbage-plots, and all
The quaintly gabled town;
These flapped their wings and shifted backs,
As ancient scrolls determine,
To scare the savage Hackensacks,
Paumanks, and other vermin.

At night the loyal settlers lay
Betwixt their feather-beds;
In hose and breeches walked by day,
And smoked, and wagged their heads.
No changeful fashions came from France,
The vrouwleins to bewilder;
No broad-brimmed burgher spent for pants
His every other guilder.

In petticoats of linsey-red,
And jackets neatly kept,
The vrouws their knitting-needles sped
And deftly spun and swept.
Few modern-school flirtations there
Set wheels of scandal trundling,
But youths and maidens did their share
Of staid, old-fashioned bundling.

—The New Year opened clear and cold;
The snow, a Flemish ell
In depth, lay over Beeckman’s Wold
And Wolfert’s frozen well.
Each burgher shook his kitchen-doors,
Drew on his Holland leather,
Then stamped through drifts to do the chores,
Beshrewing all such weather.

But—after herring, ham, and kraut—
To all the gathered town
The Dominie preached the morning out,
In Calvanistic gown;
While tough old Peter Stuyvesant
Sat pewed in foremost station,—
The potent, sage, and valiant
Third Governor of the nation.

Prayer over, at his mansion hall,
With cake and courtly smile
He met the people, one and all,
In gubernatorial style;
Yet missed, though now the day was old,
An ancient fellow-feaster,—
Heer Govert Loockermans, that bold
Brewer and burgomeester;

Who, in his farm-house, close without
The picket’s eastern end,
Sat growling at the twinge of gout
That kept him from his friend.
But Peter strapped his wooden peg,
When tea and cake were ended
(Meanwhile the sound remaining leg
Its high jack-boot defended),

A woolsey cloak about him threw,
And swore, by wind and limb,
Since Govert kept from Peter’s view,
Peter would visit him;
Then sallied forth, through snow and blast,
While many a humble greeter
Stood wondering whereaway so fast
Strode bluff Hardkoppig Pieter.

Past quay and cowpath, through a lane
Of vats and mounded tans,
He puffed along, with might and main,
To Govert Loockermans;
Once there, his right of entry took,
And hailed his ancient crony:
“Myn Gott! in dese Manhattoes, Loock,
Ve gets more snow as money!”

To which, till after whiffs profound,
The other answered not;
At last there came responsive sound:
“Yah, Peter; yah, Myn Gott!”
Then goedevrouw Marie sat her guest
Beneath the chimney-gable,
And courtesied, bustling at her best
To spread the New Year’s table.

She brought the pure and genial schnapps,
That years before had come—
In the “Nieuw Nederlandts,” perhaps—
To cheer the settlers’ home;
The long-stemmed pipes; the fragrant roll
Of pressed and crispy Spanish;
Then placed the earthen mugs and bowl,
Nor long delayed to vanish.

Thereat, with cheery nod and wink,
And honors of the day,
The trader mixed the Governor’s drink
As evening sped away.
That ancient room! I see it now:
The carven nutwood dresser;
The drawers, that many a burgher’s vrouw
Begrudged their rich possessor;

The brace of high-backed leathern chairs,
Brass-nailed at every seam;
Six others, ranged in equal pairs;
The bacon hung abeam;
The chimney-front, with porcelain shelft;
The hearty wooden fire;
The picture, on the steaming delft,
Of David and Goliah.

I see the two old Dutchmen sit
Like Magog and his mate,
And hear them, when their pipes are lit,
Discuss affairs of state:
The clique that would their sway demean;
The pestilent importation
Of wooden nutmegs, from the lean
And losel Yankee nation.

But when the subtle juniper
Assumed its sure command,
They drank the buxom loves that were,—
They drank the Motherland;
They drank the famous Swedish wars,
Stout Peter’s special glory,
While Govert proudly showed the scars
Of Indian contests gory.

Erelong, the berry’s power awoke
Some music in their brains,
And, trumpet-like, through rolling smoke,
Rang long-forgotten strains,—
Old Flemish snatches, full of blood,
Of phantom ships and battle;
And Peter, with his leg of wood,
Made floor and casement rattle.

Then round and round the dresser pranced,
The chairs began to wheel,
And on the board the punch-bowl danced
A Netherlandish reel;
Till midnight o’er the farm-house spread
Her New-Year’s skirts of sable,
And, inch by inch, each puzzled head
Dropt down upon the table.

But still to Peter, as he dreamed,
That table spread and turned;
The chimney-log blazed high, and seemed
To circle as it burned;
The town into the vision grew
From ending to beginning;
Fort, wall, and windmill met his view,
All widening and spinning.

The cowpaths, leading to the docks,
Grew broader, whirling past,
And checkered into shining blocks,—
A city fair and vast;
Stores, churches, mansions, overspread
The metamorphosed island,
While not a beaver showed his head
From Swamp to Kalchook highland.

Eftsoons the picture passed away;
Hours after, Peter woke
To see a spectral streak of day
Gleam in through fading smoke;
Still slept old Govert, snoring on
In most melodious numbers;
No dreams of Eighteen Sixty-One
Commingled with his slumbers.

But Peter, from the farm-house door,
Gazed doubtfully around,
Rejoiced to find himself once more
On sure and solid ground.
The sky was somewhat dark ahead,
Wind east, and morning lowery;
And on he pushed, a two-miles’ tread,
To breakfast at his Bouwery.

TRANSLATION.

TRANSLATION.

JEAN PROUVAIRE’S SONG AT THE BARRICADE.

“While the men were making cartridges and the women lint; while a large frying-pan, full of melted pewter and lead, destined for the bullet-mould, was smoking over a burning furnace; while the videttes were watching the barricades with arms in their hands; while Enjolras, whom nothing could distract, was watching the videttes,—Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Jean Prouvaire, Feuilly Bossuet, Joly, Bahorel, a few others besides, sought each other and got together, as in the most peaceful days of their student-chats, and in a corner of this wine-shop changed into a casemate, within two steps of the redoubt which they had thrown up, their carbines, primed and loaded, resting on the backs of their chairs, these gallant young men, so near their last hour, began to sing love-rhymes.... The hour, the place, these memories of youth recalled, the few stars which began to shine in the sky, the funereal repose of these deserted streets, the imminence of the inexorable event, gave a pathetic charm to these rhymes, murmured in a low tone in the twilight by Jean Prouvaire, who, as we have said, was a sweet poet.”—_Les Miserables: Saint Denis_, Book XII. Chapter VI.

Do you remember our charming times,
When we were both at the age which knows,
Of all the pleasures of Paris, none
Like making love in one’s Sunday clo’es;

When all your birthdays, added to mine,
A total of forty would not bring,
And when, in our humble and cosey roost,
All, even the Winter, to us was Spring?

Rare days! then prudish Manuel stalked,
Paris feasted each saintsday in;
Foy thundered away; and—ah, your waist
Pricked me well with a truant pin!

Every one ogled you. At Prado’s,
Where you and your briefless barrister dined,
You were so fair that the roses, I thought,
Turned to look at you from behind.

They seemed to whisper: “How handsome she is!
What wavy tresses! what sweet perfume!
Under her mantle she hides her wings;
Her flower of a bonnet is just in bloom!”

I roamed with you, pressing your dainty arm,
And the passers thought that Love, in play,
Had mated, in unison so sweet,
The gallant April with gentle May.

We lived so coseyly, all by ourselves,
On love,—that choice forbidden fruit,—
And never a word my lips could speak
But your heart already had followed suit.

The Sarbonne was that bucolic place
Where night till day my passion throve:
’Tis thus that an ardent youngster makes
The Student’s Quarter a Realm of Love.

O Place Maubert! O Place Dauphine!
Sky-parlor reaching heavenward far,
In whose depths, when you drew your stocking on,
I saw a twinkling morning-star.

Hard-learned Plato I’ve long forgot:
Neither Malebranche nor Lamennais
Could teach me such faith in Providence
As the flower which in your bosom lay.

You were my servant and I your slave:
O golden attic! O joy, to lace
Your corset; to watch you showing, at morn,
The ancient mirror your youthful face!

Ah! who indeed could ever forget
That sky and dawn commingling still;
That rìbbony, flowery, gauzy glory,
And Love’s sweet nonsense talked at will?

Our garden a pot of tulips was;
Your petticoat curtained the window-pane;
I took the earthen bowl of my pipe
And gave you a cup of porcelain.

What huge disasters to make us fun!
Your muff afire; your tippet lost;
And that cherished portrait of Shakespeare, sold,
One hungry evening, at half its cost.

I was a beggar and you were kind:
A kiss from your fair round arms I’d steal,
While the folio-Dante we gayly spread
With a hundred chestnuts, our frugal meal.

And oh! when first my favored mouth
A kiss to your burning lips had given,
You were dishevelled and all aglow;
I, pale with rapture, believed in Heaven.

Do you remember our countless joys,
Those neckerchiefs rumpled every day?
Alas, what sighs from our boding hearts
The infinite skies have borne away!

THE BLAMELESS PRINCE AND OTHER POEMS.

1869.

Affectionately Enscribed
TO
RICHARD HENRY STODDARD.

THE BLAMELESS PRINCE.

PRELUDE.

_Poet, wherefore hither bring_
_Old romance, while others sing_
_Sweeter idyls of to-day?_
_Why not picture in your lay_
_Western woods and waters grand,_
_Clouds and skies of this fair land?_
_Are there fairer far away?_

I have many another song
Of those regions where belong,
First of all, my heart and home.
If for once my fancy roam,
Trust me, in the land I view
Falls the sunshine, falls the dew,
And the Spring and Summer come.

_Why from yonder stubble glean_
_Ancient names of King and Queen,_
_Knightly men and maidens fair?_
_Are there in our time no rare_
_Beauteous women, heroes brave?_
_Is there naught this side the grave_
_Worth the dust you gather there?_

Nay, but these were human too,
Strong or wayward, false or true.
Art will seek through every clime
For her picture or her rhyme;
Yes, nor looking far around,
But to-day I sought and found
These who lived in that old time.

_Why should we again be told_
_Dross will mingle with all gold?_
_That which time nor test can stain_
_Was not smelted quite in vain._
_What of Albert’s blameless heart,_
_Arthur’s old heroic part,_
_Saxon Alfred’s glorious reign?_

Yes, my Prince was such as they,
Part of gold, and part of clay,
Though his metal shone as bright,
And his dross was hid from sight.
He who brightest is, and best,
Still may fear the secret test
That shall try his heart aright.

Let me, then, of what befell
Hearts that loved, my story tell.
Turn the leaf that lies between
You who listen and the scene!
Your pity for the Lady, since
She died of sorrow; spare my Prince;
Love to the last my gentle Queen!

THE BLAMELESS PRINCE.

Long since, there was a Princess of the blood,
Sole heiress to the crown her father wore,—
Plucked from a dying stem, that one fair bud
Put forth, and withered ere it others bore;
And scarce the King her blossomed youth had seen,
When he, too, slept the sleep, and she was Queen.

Hers was a goodly realm, not stretched afar
In desert wilds by wolf and savage scoured,
But locked in generous limits, strong in war,
Serene in peace, with mountains walled and towered,
Fed by the tilth of many a fertile plain,
And veined with streams that proudly sought the main.

The open sea bore commerce to her marts,
Tumbling half round her borders with its tide;
Her vessels shot the surge; all noble arts
Of use and beauty in her towns were plied;
Her court was regal; lords and ladies lit
The palace with their graces and their wit.

Wise councillors devised each apt decree
That gained the potent sanction of her hand;
Great captains led her arms on shore and sea;
She was the darling of a loyal land;
Poets sang her praises, and in hut and hall
Her excellence was the discourse of all.

Her pride was suited to her high estate,
Her gentleness was equal with her youth,
Her wisdom in her goodness found its mate;
Her beauty was not that which brings to ruth
Men’s lives, yet pure and luminous;—and fair
Her locks, and over all a sovereign air.

Without, she bore herself as rulers should,
Queenly in walk and gesture and attire;
Within, she nursed her flower of maidenhood,
Sweet girlish thoughts and virginal desire:
No woman’s head so keen to work its will
But that the woman’s heart is mistress still.

Three years she ruled a nation well content
To have a maiden queen; then came a day
When those on whom her councils chiefly leant
Began to speak of marriage, and to pray
Their sovereign not to hold herself alone,
Nor trust the tenure of an heirless throne;

And then the people took the cry, nor lack
Was there of courtly suitors far or near,—
Kings, dukes, crown-princes,—swift upon the track,
Like huntsmen closing round a royal deer.
These she regarded not, but still, among
Her maids and missals, to her freedom clung.

And with the rest there came a puissant king,
Whose country pressed against her own domain,—
In strength its equal, but continuing
Its dearest foe through many a martial reign.
He sued to join his hand and realm with hers,
And end these wars; then all her ministers

Pleaded his suit; but, asking yet for grace,
And that her hand might wait upon her heart,
She halted, till the proud king turned his face
Homeward; and still the people, for their part,
Waited her choice, nor grudged her sex’s share
Of coyness to a queen so young and fair.

There was a little State that nestled close
Beside her boundaries, as wont to claim,
Though free, protection there from outer foes,
A Principality—at least in name—
Whose ruler was her father’s life-long friend
And firm ally, a statesman skilled to lend

Shrewd counsel, and who made, in days gone by,
A visit to this court, and with him led
His son, a gentle Prince, of years anigh
Her own,—twelve summers shone from either head;
And while their elders moved from place to place,—
The field-review, the audience, the chase,—

The Princess and the Prince, together thrown,
With their companions held a mimic court,
And with that sweet equality, the crown
Of Childhood,—which discovers in its sport
No barriers of rank or wealth or power,—
He named himself her consort. From that hour

The mindful Princess never quite forgot
Those joyous days, nor him, the fair-haired Prince;
And though she well had learned her greater lot,
And haply from his thought had passed long since
Her girlish image, chance, that moves between
Two courts, had brought his portrait to the Queen.

This from her cabinet she took one morn,
When they still urged the suit of that old king,
And said, half jesting, with a pretty scorn,
“Why mate your wilful Queen with mouldering
And crabbed Age? Now were he shaped like this,
With such a face, he were not so amiss.

“Queens are but women; ’tis a sickly year
That couples frost and thaw, our minstrels sing.”—
“Ho!” thought the graybeards, “sets the wind so near?”
And thought again: “Why not? the schemeful king
Perchance would rule us where he should be ruled;
A humbler consort will be sooner schooled.”

Forewarned are those whom Fortune’s gifts await.
Ere waned a moon the elder prince had learned—
From half the weathercocks which gilt the state,
Spying the wind and shifting where it turned—
That for love’s simple sake his son could gain
The world’s chief prize, which kings had sought in vain.

How could he choose but clutch it? Yet the son
Seemed worthy, for his parts were of that mould
Oft-failing Nature strives to join in one,
And shape a hero,—pure and wise and bold:
In arts and arms the wonder of his peers,
The flower of princes, prince of cavaliers;

Tall, lithe of form, and of a Northern mien,
Gentle in speech and thought,—while thus he shone,
A rising star, though chosen of a queen,
Why seek the skies less tranquil than his own?
Why should he climb beside her perilous height,
And in that noonday blaze eclipse his light?

Ah, why?—one’s own life may be bravely led,
But not another’s. Yet, as to and fro
The buzzing private embassies were sped,
And when the Queen’s own pages, bowing low,
Told in his ear a sweet and secret story,
The Prince, long trained to seek his house’s glory,

Let every gracious sentence seem a plume
Of love and beckoning beauty for his helm.
So passed a season; then the cannon’s boom
And belfry’s peal delivered to the realm
The Queen’s betrothal, and the councils met,
And for the nuptial rites a day was set.

* * * * *

Now when the time grew ripe, the favored Prince
Rides forth, and through the little towns that mourn
His loss, and past the boundaries; and, since
To ape the pomp to which he was not born
Seemed in his soul a foolish thing and vain,
A few near comrades, only, made his train.

Nor pressed the populace along the ways;
But—for he wished it so—unheralded
He rode from post to post through many days,
Yet gained a greatness as the distance fled,
As some dim comet, drawing near its bound,
Takes lustre from the orb it courses round.

And league by league his fantasies outran
His progress, brooding on his mistress’ power,
Until his own estate the while began
To seem of lesser worth each passing hour;
And with misdoubt this fortune weighed him down,
As though a splendid mantle had been thrown

About him, which he knew not well to wear,
And might not forfeit. Yet he spurred apace,
And reached a country-seat that bordered near
The Capital. Here, for a little space,
He was to rest from travel, and await
His day of entrance at the city’s gate.

Upon these grounds a gray-haired noble dwelt,
A ribboned courtier of the former reign;
A tedious proper man, who glibly knelt
To royalty,—this ancient chamberlain,—
Yoked with a girlish wife, and, for the rest,
Proud of the charge that made a prince his guest.

The highway ran beside a greenwood keep
That reached, herefrom, quite to the city’s edge;
Across, the fields with golden corn were deep;
The level sunset pierced the wayside hedge;
The banks were all abloom; a pheasant whirred
Far in the bush; anon, some tuneful bird

Broke into song, or, from a covert dark,
A bounding deer its dappled haunches showed
As though it heard the stag-hound’s distant bark.
The wistful Prince with loitering purpose bode,
And thought how good it were to spend one’s life
Far off from men, nor jostled with their strife.

Even as he mused he saw his host ahead,
Speeding to welcome him, in lordly wont,
And all the household in a line bestead;
And lightly with that escort, at the front,
A peerless woman rode across the green;
Then the Prince thought, “It surely is the Queen,

Who comes to meet me of her loving grace!”
And his blood mounted; but he knew how fair
The royal locks, and, when she neared his place,
He saw the lady’s prodigal dark hair
And wondrous loveliness were wide apart
From the sweet, tranquil picture next his heart.

And when the chamberlain, with halted suit,
Made reverence, and was answered courteous-wise,
The lady to her knightly guest’s salute
Turned her face full, so that he marked her eyes,—
How dewy gray beneath each long, black lid,
And danger somewhere in their light lay hid.

There are some natures housed so chaste within
Their placid dwellings that their heads control
The tumult of their hearts; and thus they win
A quittance from this pleading of the soul
For Love, whose service does so wound and heal;
How should they crave for what they cannot feel?

From passion and from pain enfranchised quite,
Alike from gain and never-stanched Regret,
Calm as the blind who have not seen the light,
The dumb who hear no precious voice; and yet
The sun forever pours his lambent fire
And the high winds are vocal with desire.

And there are those whose fervent souls are wed
To glorious bodies, panoplied for love,
Born to hear sweetest words that can be said,
To give and gather kisses, and to move
All men with longing after them,—to know
What flowers of paradise for lovers grow.

The Vestal, with her silvery content,
The Lesbian, with the passion and the pain,—
Which creature hath their one Creator lent
More light of heaven? Who would dare restrain
The beams of either? who the radiance mar
Of the white planet or the burning star?

If in its innocence a life is bound
With cords that thrall its birthright and design,
Let those whose hands the evil meshes wound
Pray that it cast no look beyond their line;
That no strong voice too late may enter in
Its prison-range, to teach what might have been.

Was there no conscious spirit thus to plead
For this bright lady, as the wondering guest
Closed with his welcomers, and each took heed
Of each, and horse to horse they rode abreast,
Nearing a fair and spacious house that stood,
Half hidden, in the edges of the wood?

And while, the last court-tidings running o’er,
Their talk on this and that at random fell,
And the trains joined behind, the lady bore
Her beauteous head askance, yet wist full well
How the Prince looked and spoke; unwittingly,
With the strange female sense and secret eye,

Made of him there her subtile estimate,
Forecast his lot, and thought how all things flow
To those who have a surfeit. Could the great,
The perfect Queen, she marvelled, truly know
And love him at his value? In his turn,
He read her face as ’twere a marble urn

Embossed with Truth and blushful Innocence,
Yet with the wild Loves carven in repose;
And as he looked he felt, and knew not whence,
A thought like this come as the wind that blows:
“A face to lose one’s life for; ay, and more,
To live for!”—So they reached the sculptured door

And casements gilded with the dying light.
That eve the host spread out a stately board,
And with his household far into the night
Feasted the Prince. The lady, next her lord,
Drooped like a musk-rose trained beside a tomb.
Loath was the guest that night to seek his room.

* * * * *

Ah! wherefore tell again an oft-told tale,—
That of the sleeping knight who lost his wage
In the enchanted land, though cased with mail,
And bore the sacred shrine an empty gage?
How this thing went it were not worth to view
But for the triple coil which thence outgrew;

How, with the morn, the ancient chamberlain
Made off, and on the marriage business moved;
How day by day those young hearts fed amain
Upon the food of lovers, till—they loved.
Beneath the mists of duty and degree
A warmth of passion crept deliciously

About the twain; and there, within the gleam
Of those gray languid eyes, his nearing fate
Seemed to the one a far, unquiet dream.
So when the heralds said, “All things await
Your princely coming,” the glad summons broke
Upon him like a harsh bell’s jangling stroke,

And waked him, and he knew he must be gone
And put that honeyed chalice quite away;
Yet once more met the lady, and alone,
It chanced, within the grounds. The two, that day,
Lured by a falling water’s sound, went deep
Beyond the sunlight, in the forest-keep.

Here from a range of wooded uplands leapt
A mountain brook and far-off meadows sought;
Now under firs and tasselled chestnuts crept,
Then on through jagged rocks a passage fought,
Until it clove this shadowy gorge and cool
In one white cataract,—with a dark, broad pool

Beneath, the home of mottled trout. One side
Rose the cliff’s hollowed height, and overhung
An open sward across that basin wide.
The liberal sun through slanting larches flung
Rich spots of gold upon the tufted ground,
And the great royal forest gloomed around.

The Prince, divided from the world so far,
Sat with the lady on a fallen tree;
They looked like lovers, yet a prison-bar
Between them had not made the two less free.
Only their eyes told what they could not say,
For still their lips spoke alien words that day.

She told a legend of an early king
Who knew the fairy of this wildwood glen,
And often sought her haunt, far off to fling
His grandeur, and be loved like common men.
He died long since, the lady said; but she,
Who could not die, how weary she must be!

They talked of the strange beauty of the spot,
The light that glinted through the ancient trees,
Their own young lives, the Prince’s future lot;
Then jested with false laughs. Like tangled bees,
Each other and themselves they sweetly stung;
They sung fond songs, and mocked the words they sung.

At last he hung his picture by a chain
About her neck, and on it graved the date.
Her merry eyes grew soft with tender pain;
She heard him sigh, “Alas, by what rude fate
Our lives, like ships at sea, an instant meet,
Then part forever on their courses fleet!”

And in sheer pity of herself she dropped
Her lovely head; and, though with self she strove,
One hot tear fell. The shadow, which had stopped
On her life’s dial, moved again, and Love
Went sobbing by, and only left his wraith;
For both were loyal to their given faith.

Farewells they breathed and self-reproaches found,
Half gliding with the current to the fall,
Yet struggling for the shore. Was she not bound?
Did not his plighted future, like a wall,
Jut ’cross the stream? They feared themselves, and rose,
And through the forest gained the mansion-close

Unmissed, and parted thus, nor met anew;
For on the morrow, when the Prince took horse,
The lady feigned an illness, or ’twas true,—
Yet maybe from her oriel marked his course,
Watching his plume, that into distance past,
Like some dear sail which sinks from sight at last.

He rode beneath their arch, where pennons flared
And standards with his colors blazoned in.
Then thousands shouted welcome; trumpets blared;
He felt the glories of his life begin!
Far, far behind, that eddy in its stream
Now seemed; its vanished shores, in turn, a dream.

Enough; he passed the ways and reached the Queen.
With pomp and pageantry the vows were said
Leave to the chroniclers the storied scene,
The church, the court, the masks and jousts that sped;
Not theirs, but ours, to follow Love apart,
Where first the bridegroom held his bride to heart,

And saw her purity and regnant worth
Thus kept for him and yielded to his care.
What marvel that of all who dwelt on earth
He seemed most fortunate and she most fair
That self-same hour? And “By God’s grace,” he thought,
“May I to some ignoble end be brought,

“Unless I so reward her for her choice,
And shape my future conduct in this land
By her deserving, that the world’s great voice
Proclaim me not unworthy! Let my hand
Henceforward make her tasks its own; my life
Be merged in this fair ruler, precious wife,

“The paragon and glory of her kind!”
Who reads his own heart will not think it strange
He put that yester romance from his mind
So readily. Men’s lives, like oceans, change
In shifting tides, and ebb from either shore
Till the strong planet draws them on once more.

* * * * *

And as a pilgrim, shielded by the wings
Of some bright angel, crosses perilous ground,
Through unknown ways, and, while she leads and sings,
Forgets the past, nor sees what pits surround
His footsteps, so the young Prince cast away
That self-distrust, and with his sovereign May

The gladness joined, and with her sat in state,
Beneath the ancient scutcheons of her throne,
And welcome gave, and led the revels late;
But when the still and midnight heavens shone
They fled the masquers, and the city’s hum
Was silent, and the palace halls grew dumb,

And Love and Sleep in that serene eclipse
Moved, making prince and clown of one degree,
Then was she all his own; then from her lips
He learned with what a sweet humility
She, whose least word a spacious kingdom ruled,
In Love’s free vassalage would fain be schooled.

How poor, she said, her sovereignty seemed,
Unless it made her richer in his eye!
And poor his life, until her sunlight beamed
Upon it, said the Prince. So months went by;
They were a gracious pair; the Queen was glad;
Peace smiled, and the wide land contentment had.

And for a time the courteous welcome paid
The chosen consort, and the people’s joy
In the Queen’s joy, kept silent those who weighed
The Prince’s make, and sought to find alloy
In his fine gold; but, when the freshness fled
From these things told, some took new thought and said:

“Look at the Queen: her heart is wholly set
Upon the Prince! what if he warp her mind
To errant policies, and rule us yet
By proxy?” “What and if he prove the kind
Of trifling gallant,” others said, “to slight
Our mistress, for each new and base delight?

“Ay, we will watch him, lest he do her wrong!”
And his due station, even from the first,
The peers of haughty rank and lineage long,
Jealous of one whose blossom at a burst
Outflamed their own, begrudged him; till their pique
grew plain, and sent proud color to his cheek.

So now he fared as some new actor fares,
Who through dark arras gains the open boards,
Facing the lights, and feels a thousand stares
Come full upon him; and the great throng hoards
Its plaudits; and, as he begins his tale,
His rivals wait to mock him if he fail.

But here a brave simplicity of soul
And careless vigilance, by honor bred,
Stayed him, and o’er his actions held control.
A host of generous virtues stood in stead,
To help him on; with patient manliness
He kept his rank, no greater and no less;

His life was as a limpid rivulet;
His thoughts, like golden sands, were through it seen,
Not on himself in poor ambition set,
But on his chosen country and the Queen;
And with such gentle tact he bore a sense
Of conduct due, nor took nor gave offence,

That, as time went, he earned their trust, who first
Withheld it him, and brought them, one by one,
To seek him for a comrade; but he nursed
His friendships with such equal care that none
Could claim him as their own; nor was his word
Of counsel dulled by being often heard;

Nor would he sully his fresh youth among
The roisterers and pretty wanton dames
Who strove to win him; nor with ribald tongue
Joined in the talk that round a palace flames;
Nor came and went alone, save—’twas his wont
In his own land—he haply left the hunt

On forest days, and, plunging down the wood,
There in the brakes and copses half forgot
The part he bore, and caught anew the mood
Of youth, and felt a heart for any lot;
Then, loitering cityward behind the train,
With fresher courage took his place again.

His pure life made the wits about the court
Find in its very blamelessness a fault
That lacked the generous failings of their sort.
“With so much sweet,” they swore, “a grain of salt
Were welcome! lighter tongue and freer mood
Were something more of man, if less of prude!”

And others to his praises would oppose
Suspicion of his prowess, and they said,
“Our rose of princes is a thornless rose,
A woman’s toy!” and, when the months were sped,
And the glad Queen was childed with a son,
Light jests upon his mission well begun

They bandied; yet the Prince, who felt the sting,
Bided his time. Till on the land there brake
A sudden warfare; for that haughty king,
Gathering a mighty armament to take
Revenge for his lost suit, with sword and flame
Against the borders on short pretext came.

Then with hot haste the Queen’s whole forces poured
To meet him. With the call to horse and blade
The Prince, deep-chafed in spirit, placed his sword
At orders of the General, and prayed
A humble station, but, as due his rank,
Next in command was made, and led the flank.

And so with doubtful poise a fierce war raged,
Till on a day encountered face to face
The two chief hosts, and dreadful battle waged
To close the issue. In its opening space
Death smote the General, and in tumult sore
The line sank back; but swiftly, at the fore

Placing himself, the Prince right onward hurled
The strife once more, and with his battle-shout
Woke victory; again his forces whirled
The hostile troops, and drove them on in rout.
The strength of ten battalions seemed to yield
Before his arm; and so he won that field,

And slew with his own hand the vengeful king,
And with that death-stroke brought the war to end,
Conquering the common foe, and conquering
The hate, from which he would not else defend
His clear renown than with such manful deeds
As fall to faith and valor at their needs.

Again—this time the chaplet was his own—
The people wreathed their laurels for his brow;
His horses trod on flowers; the city shone
With flags of victory; and none but now—
As with no vaunting mien he wore his bays—
Confessed him brave as good, and gave their praise.

Peace smiled anew; the kingdom was at rest.
Ah, happy Queen! whom every matron’s tongue
Ran envious of, with such a consort blest
As wins the heart of women, old and young;
So gallant, yet so good, the gentlest maid
By this fair standard her own suitor weighed.