Chapter II: Part 2

So the land had rest! and the cloud of that heart-sore struggle and pain Rose from her ancient hills, and peace shone o'er her again, Sunlike chasing the plagues wherewith the land was defiled; And the leprosy fled, and her flesh came again, as the flesh of a child. --They were stern and stark, the three children of Rolf, the first from Anjou: For their own sake loving the land, mayhap, but loving her true; France the wife, and England the handmaid; yet over the realm Their eyes were in every place, their hands gripp'd firm on the helm. Villein and earl, the cowl and the plume, they were bridled alike; One law for all, but arm'd law,--not swifter to aid than to strike. Lo, in the twilight transept, the holy places of God, Not with sunset the steps of the altar are dyed, but with scarlet of blood! Clang of iron-shod feet, and sheep for their shepherd who cry; Curses and swords that flash, and the victim proffer'd to die! --Bare thy own back to the smiter, O king, at the shrine of the dead: Thy friend thou hast slain in thy folly; the blood of the Saint on thy head: Proud and priestly, thou say'st;--yet tender and faithful and pure; True man, and so, true saint;--the crown of his martyrdom sure:-- As friend with his friend, he could brave thee and warn; thou hast silenced the voice, Ne'er to be heard again:--nor again will Henry rejoice! Green Erin may yield her, fair Scotland submit; but his sunshine is o'er; The tooth of the serpent, the child of his bosom, has smote him so sore:-- Like a wolf from the hounds he dragg'd off to his lair, not turning to bay:-- Crying 'shame on a conquer'd king!'--the grim ghost fled sullen away. --Then, as in gray Autumn the heavens are pour'd on the rifted hillside, When the Rain-stars mistily gleam, and torrents leap white in their pride, And the valley is all one lake, and the late, unharvested shocks Are rapt to the sea, the dwellings of man, the red kine and the flocks,-- O'er England the ramparts of law, the old landmarks of liberty fell, As the brothers in blood and in lust, twin horror begotten of hell, Suck'd all the life of the land to themselves, like Lofoden in flood, One in his pride, in his subtlety one, mocking England and God. Then tyranny's draught--once only--we drank to the dregs!--and the stain Went crimson and black through the soul of the land, for all time, not in vain! We bore the bluff many-wived king, rough rival and victor of Rome; We bore the stern despot-protector, whose dawning and sunset were gloom; For they temper'd the self of the tyrant with love of the land, Some touch of the heart, some remorse, refraining the grip of the hand. But John's was blackness of darkness, a day of vileness and shame; Shrieks of the tortured, and silence, and outrage the mouth cannot name. --O that cry of the helpless, the weak that writhe under the foe, Wrong man-wrought upon man, dumb unwritten annals of woe! Cry that goes upward from earth as she rolls through the peace of the skies 'How long? Hast thou forgotten, O God!' . . . and silence replies! Silence:--and then was the answer;--the light o'er Windsor that broke, The Meadow of Law--true Avalon where the true Arthur awoke! --Not thou, whose name, as a seed o'er the world, plume-wafted on air, Britons on each side sea,--Caerlleon and Cumbria,--share, Joy of a downtrod race, dear hope of freedom to-be, Dream of poetic hearts, whom the vision only can see! . . . For thine were the fairy knights, fair ideals of beauty and song; But ours, in the ways of men, walk'd sober, and stumbling, and strong;-- Stumbling as who in peril and twilight their pathway trace out, Hard to trace, and untried, and the foe above and about; For the Charter of Freedom, the voice of the land in her Council secure All doing, all daring,--and, e'en when defeated, of victory sure! Langton, our Galahad, first, stamp'd Leader by Rome unaware, Pembroke and Mowbray, Fitzwarine, Fitzalan, Fitzwalter, De Clare:-- --O fair temple of Freedom and Law!--the foundations ye laid:-- But again came the storm, and the might of darkness and wrong was array'd, A warfare of years; and the battle raged, and new heroes arose From a soil that is fertile in manhood's men, and scatter'd the foes, And set in their place the bright pillars of Order, Liberty's shrine, O'er the land far-seen, as o'er Athens the home of Athena divine. --So the land had rest:--and the cloud of that heart-sore struggle and pain Sped from her ancient hills, and peace shone o'er her again, Sunlike chasing the plagues wherewith the land was defiled: And the leprosy fled, and her flesh came again, as the flesh of a child. For lo! the crown'd Statesman of Law, Justinian himself of his realm, Edward, since Alfred our wisest of all who have watch'd by the helm! He who yet preaches in silence his life-word, the light of his way, From his marble unadorn'd chest, in the heart of the West Minster gray, _Keep thy Faith_ . . . In the great town-twilight, this city of gloom, --O how unlike that blithe London he look'd on!--I look on his tomb, In the circle of kings, round the shrine, where the air is heavy with fame, Dust of our moulder'd chieftains, and splendour shrunk to a name. Silent synod august, ye that tried the delight and the pain, Trials and snares of a throne, was the legend written in vain? Speak, for ye know, crown'd shadows! who down each narrow and strait As ye might, once guided,--a perilous passage,--the keel of the State, Fourth Henry, fourth Edward, Elizabeth, Charles,--now ye rest from your toil, Was it best, when by truth and compass ye steer'd, or by statecraft and guile? Or is it so hard, that steering of States, that as men who throw in With party their life, honour soils his own ermine, a lie is no sin? . . . --Not so, great Edward, with thee,--not so!--For he learn'd in his youth The step straightforward and sure, the proud, bright bearing of truth:-- Arm'd against Simon at Evesham, yet not less, striking for Law,-- Ages of temperate freedom, a vision of order, he saw!-- --Vision of opulent years, a murmur of welfare and peace: Orchard golden-globed, plain waving in golden increase; Hopfields fairer than vineyards, green laughing tendrils and bine; Woodland misty in sunlight, and meadow sunny with kine;-- Havens of heaving blue, where the keels of Guienne and the Hanse Jostle and creak by the quay, and the mast goes up like a lance, Gay with the pennons of peace, and, blazon'd with Adria's dyes, Purple and orange, the sails like a sunset burn in the skies. Bloodless conquests of commerce, that nation with nation unite! Hand clasp'd frankly in hand, not steel-clad buffets in fight: On the deck strange accents and shouting; rough furcowl'd men of the north, Genoa's brown-neck'd sons, and whom swarthy Smyrna sends forth: Freights of the south; drugs potent o'er death from the basilisk won, Odorous Phoenix-nest, and spice of a sunnier sun:-- Butts of Malvasian nectar, Messene's vintage of old, Cyprian webs, damask of Arabia mazy with gold: Sendal and Samite and Tarsien, and sardstones ruddy as wine, Graved by Athenian diamond with forms of beauty divine. To the quay from the gabled alleys, the huddled ravines of the town, Twilights of jutting lattice and beam, the Guild-merchants come down, Cheapening the gifts of the south, the sea-borne alien bales, For the snow-bright fleeces of Leom'ster, the wealth of Devonian vales; While above them, the cavernous gates, on which knight-robbers have gazed Hopeless, in peace look down, their harrows of iron upraised; And Dustyfoot enters at will with his gay Autolycus load, And the maidens are flocking as doves when they fling the light grain on the road. Low on the riverain mead, where the dull clay-cottages cling To the tall town-ward and the towers, as nests of the martin in spring, Where the year-long fever lurks, and gray leprosy burrows secure, Are the wattled huts of the Friars, the long, white Church of the poor: --Haven of wearied eyelids; of hearts that care not to live; Shadow and silence of prayer; the peace which the world cannot give! Tapers hazily gloaming through fragrance the censers outpour; Chant ever rising and rippling in sweetness, as waves on the shore; Casements of woven stone, with more than the rainbow bedyed; Beauty of holiness! Spell yet unbroken by riches and pride! --Ah! could it be so for ever!--the good aye better'd by Time:-- First-Faith, first-Wisdom, first-Love,--to the end be true to their prime! . . Far rises the storm o'er horizons unseen, that will lay them in dust, Crashings of plunder'd cloisters, and royal insatiate lust:-- Far, unseen, unheard!--Meanwhile the great Minster on high Like a stream of music, aspiring, harmonious, springs to the sky:-- Story on story ascending their buttress'd beauty unfold, Till the highest height is attain'd, and the Cross shines star-like in gold, Set as a meteor in heaven; a sign of health and release:-- And the land rejoices below, and the heart-song of England is Peace.

This date has been chosen as representing at once the culminating point in the reign of Edward, and of Mediaevalism in England. The sound, the fascinating elements of that period rapidly decline after the thirteenth century in Church and State, in art and in learning.

'In the person of the great Edward,' says Freeman, 'the work of reconciliation is completed. Norman and Englishman have become one under the best and greatest of our later Kings, the first who, since the Norman entered our land, . . . followed a purely English policy.'

_The three children_; William I and II, and Henry I.

_The transept_; of Canterbury Cathedral, after Becket's death named the 'Martyrdom.'

_Nor again_; See the _Early Plantagenets_, by Bishop Stubbs: one of the very few masterpieces among the shoal of little books on great subjects in which a declining literature is fertile.

_Britons on each side sea_; Armorica and Cornwall, Wales and Strathclyde, all share in the great Arthurian legend.

_Justinian_; 'Edward,' says Dr. Stubbs, 'is the great lawgiver, the great politician, the great organiser of the mediaeval English polity:' (_Early Plantagenets_).

_Keep thy Faith_; 'Pactum serva' may be still seen inscribed on the huge stone coffin of Edward I.

_The keels of Guienne . . . Adria's dyes_; The ships of Gascony, of the Hanse Towns, of Genoa, of Venice, are enumerated amongst those which now traded with England.

_Malvasian nectar_; 'Malvoisie,' the sweet wine of the Southern Morea, gained its name from Monemvasia, or Napoli di Malvasia, its port of shipment.

_Sendal_; A thin rich silk. _Samite_; A very rich stuff, sometimes wholly of silk, often crimson, interwoven with gold and silver thread, and embroidered. _Tarsien_; Silken stuff from Tartary.

_Athenian diamond_; A few very fine early gems ascribed to Athens, are executed wholly with diamond-point.

_The snow-bright fleeces_; Those of Leominster were very long famous.

_Devonian vales_; The ancient mining region west of Tavistock.

_Dustyfoot_; Old name for pedlar.

CRECY

August 26: 1346

At Crecy by Somme in Ponthieu
High up on a windy hill
A mill stands out like a tower;
King Edward stands on the mill.
The plain is seething below
As Vesuvius seethes with flame,
But O! not with fire, but gore,
Earth incarnadined o'er,
Crimson with shame and with fame!--
To the King run the messengers, crying
'Thy Son is hard-press'd to the dying!'
--'Let alone: for to-day will be written in story
To the great world's end, and for ever:
So let the boy have the glory.'

Erin and Gwalia there
With England are one against France;
Outfacing the oriflamme red
The red dragons of Merlin advance:--
As harvest in autumn renew'd
The lances bend o'er the fields;
Snow-thick our arrow-heads white
Level the foe as they light;
Knighthood to yeomanry yields:--
Proud heart, the King watches, as higher
Goes the blaze of the battle, and nigher:--
'To-day is a day will be written in story
To the great world's end, and for ever!
Let the boy alone have the glory.'

Harold at Senlac-on-Sea
By Norman arrow laid low,--
When the shield-wall was breach'd by the shaft,
--Thou art avenged by the bow!
Chivalry! name of romance!
Thou art henceforth but a name!
Weapon that none can withstand,
Yew in the Englishman's hand,
Flight-shaft unerring in aim!
As a lightning-struck forest the foemen
Shiver down to the stroke of the bowmen:--
--'O to-day is a day will be written in story
To the great world's end, and for ever!
So, let the boy have the glory.'

Pride of Liguria's shore
Genoa wrestles in vain;
Vainly Bohemia's King
Kinglike is laid with the slain.
The Blood-lake is wiped-out in blood,
The shame of the centuries o'er;
Where the pride of the Norman had sway
The lions lord over the fray,
The legions of France are no more:--
--The Prince to his father kneels lowly;
--'His is the battle! his wholly!
For to-day is a day will be written in story
To the great world's end, and for ever:--
So, let him have the spurs, and the glory!'

_Erin and Gwalia_; Half of Edward's army consisted of light armed footmen from Ireland and Wales--the latter under their old Dragon-flag.

_Chivalry_; The feudal idea of an army, resting 'on the superiority of the horseman to the footman, of the mounted noble to the unmounted churl,' may be said to have been ruined by this battle: (_Green_, B. IV: ch. iii).

_Liguria_; 15,000 cross-bowmen from Genoa were in Philip's army.

_The Blood-lake_; Senlac; Hastings.

THE BLACK SEATS

1348-9

Blue and ever more blue
The sky of that summer's spring:
No cloud from dawning to night:
The lidless eyeball of light
Glared: nor could e'en in darkness the dew
Her pearls on the meadow-grass string.
As a face of a hundred years,
Mummied and scarr'd, for the heart
Is long dry at the fountain of tears,
Green earth lay brown-faced and torn,
Scarr'd and hard and forlorn.
And as that foul monster of Lerna
Whom Heracles slew in his might,
But this one slaying, not slain,
From the marshes, poisonous, white,
Crawl'd out a plague-mist and sheeted the plain,
A hydra of hell and of night.
--Whence upon men has that horror past?
From Cathaya westward it stole to Byzance,--
The City of Flowers,--the vineyards of France;--
O'er the salt-sea ramparts of England, last,
Reeking and rank, a serpent's breath:--
What is this, men cry in their fear, what is this that cometh?
'Tis the Black Death, they whisper:
The black black Death!

The heart of man at the name
To a ball of ice shrinks in,
With hope, surrendering life:--
The husband looks on the wife,
Reading the tokens of doom in the frame,
The pest-boil hid in the skin,
And flees and leaves her to die.
Fear-sick, the mother beholds
In her child's pure crystalline eye
A dull shining, a sign of despair.
Lo, the heavens are poison, not air;
And they fall as when lambs in the pasture
With a moan that is hardly a moan,
Drop, whole flocks, where they stand;
And the mother lays her, alone,
Slain by the touch of her nursing hand,
Where the household before her is strown.
--Earth, Earth, open and cover thy dead!
For they are smitten and fall who bear
The corpse to the grave with a prayerless prayer,
And thousands are crush'd in the common bed:--
--Is it Hell that breathes with an adder's breath?
Is it the day of doom, men cry, the Judge that cometh?
--'Tis the Black Death, God help us!
The black black Death.

Maid Alice and maid Margaret
In the fields have built them a bower
Of reedmace and rushes fine,
Fenced with sharp albespyne;
Pretty maids hid in the nest; and yet
Yours is one death, and one hour!
Priest and peasant and lord
By the swift, soft stroke of the air,
By a silent invisible sword,
In plough-field or banquet, fall:
The watchers are flat on the wall:--
Through city and village and valley
The sweet-voiced herald of prayer
Is dumb in the towers; the throng
To the shrine pace barefoot; and where
Blazed out from the choir a glory of song,
God's altar is lightless and bare.
Is there no pity in earth or sky?
The burden of England, who shall say?
Half the giant oak is riven away,
And the green leaves yearn for the leaves that die.
Will the whole world drink of the dragon's breath?
It is the cup, men cry, the cup of God's fury that cometh!
'Tis the Black Death, Lord help us!
The black black Death.

In England is heard a moan,
A bitter lament and a sore,
Rachel lamenting her dead,
And will not be comforted
For the little faces for ever gone,
The feet from the silent floor.
And a cry goes up from the land,
Take from us in mercy, O God,
Take from us the weight of Thy hand,
The cup and the wormwood of woe!
'Neath the terrible barbs of Thy bow
This England, this once Thy beloved,
Is water'd with life-blood for rain;
The bones of her children are white,
As flints on the Golgotha plain;
Not slain as warriors by warriors in fight,
By the arrows of Heaven slain.
We have sinn'd: we lift up our souls to Thee,
O Lord God eternal on high:
Thou who gavest Thyself to die,
Saviour, save! to Thy feet we flee:--
Snatch from the hell and the Enemy's breath,
From the Prince of the Air, from the terror by night that cometh:--
From the Black Death, Christ save us!
The black black Death!

_That foul monster_; The Lernaean Hydra of Greek legend.

_From the marshes_; The drought which preceded the plague in England, and may have predisposed to its reception, was followed by mist, in which the people fancied they saw the disease palpably advancing.

_From Cathaya_; The plague was heard of in Central Asia in 1333; it reached Constantinople in 1347.

_The City of Flowers_; Florence, where the ravages of the plague were immortalized in the _Decamerone_ of Boccaccio.

_The pest boil_; Seems to have been the enlarged and discharging gland by which the specific blood-poison of the plague relieved itself. A 'muddy glistening' of the eye is noticed as one of the symptoms.

_The common bed_; More than 50,000 are said to have been buried on the site of the Charter House.

_Albespyne_; Hawthorn.

_Half the giant oak_; 'Of the three or four millions who then formed the population of England, more than one-half were swept away': (_Green_, B. IV: ch. iii).

THE PILGRIM AND THE PLOUGHMAN

1382

It is a dream, I know:--Yet on the past Of this dear England if in thought we gaze, About her seems a constant sunshine cast; In summer calm we see and golden haze The little London of Plantagenet days; Quaint labyrinthine knot of toppling lanes, And thorny spires aflame with starlike vanes.

Our silver Thames all yet unspoil'd and clear; The many-buttress'd bridge that stems the tide; Black-timber'd wharves; arcaded walls, that rear Long, golden-crested roofs of civic pride:-- While flaunting galliots by the gardens glide, And on Spring's frolic air the May-song swells, Mix'd with the music of a thousand bells.

Beyond the bridge a mazy forest swims, Great spars and sails and flame-tongued flags on high, Wedged round the quay, a-throng with ruddy limbs And faces bronzed beneath another sky: And 'mid the press sits one with aspect shy And downcast eyes of watching, and, the while, The deep observance of an inward smile.

In hooded mantle gray he smiled and sate, With ink-horn at his knees and scroll and pen. And took the toll and register'd the freight, 'Mid noise of clattering cranes and strife of men: And all that moved and spoke was in his ken, With lines and hues like Nature's own design'd Deep in the magic mirror of his mind.

Thence oft, returning homeward, on the book,-- His of Certaldo, or the bard whose lays Were lost to love in Scythia,--he would look Till his fix'd eyes the dancing letters daze: Then forth to the near fields, and feed his gaze On one fair flower in starry myriads spread, And in her graciousness be comforted:--

Then, joyous with a poet's joy, to draw With genial touch, and strokes of patient skill, The very image of each thing he saw:-- He limn'd the man all round, for good or ill, Having both sighs and laughter at his will; Life as it went he grasp'd in vision true, Yet stood outside the scene his pencil drew.

--Man's inner passions in their conscience-strife, The conflicts of the heart against the heart, The mother yearning o'er the infant's life, The maiden wrong'd by wealth and lecherous art, The leper's loathsome cell from man apart, War's hell of lust and fire, the village-woe, The tinsel chivalry veiling shame below,--

Not his to draw,--to see, perhaps:--Our eyes Hold bias with our humour:--His, to paint With Nature's freshness, what before him lies: The knave, the fool; the frolicsome, the quaint: His the broad jest, the laugh without restraint, The ready tears, the spirit lightly moved; Loving the world, and by the world beloved.

So forth fared Chaucer on his pilgrimage Through England's humours; in immortal song Bodying the form and pressure of his age, Tints gay as pure, and delicate as strong; Still to the Tabard the blithe travellers throng, Seen in his mind so vividly, that we Know them more clearly than the men we see.

Fair France, bright Italy, those numbers train'd; First in his pages Nature wedding Art Of all our sons of song; yet he remain'd True English of the English at his heart:-- He stood between two worlds, yet had no part In that new order of the dawning day Which swept the masque of chivalry away.

O Poet of romance and courtly glee And downcast eager glance that shuns the sky, Above, about, are signs thou canst not see, Portents in heaven and earth!--And one goes by With other than thy prosperous, laughing eye, Framing the rough web of his rueful lays, The sorrow and the sin--with bitter gaze

As down the Strand he stalks, a sable shade Of death, while, jingling like the elfin train, In silver samite knight and dame and maid Ride to the tourney on the barrier'd plain; And he must bow in humble mute disdain, And that worst woe of baffled souls endure, To see the evil that they may not cure.

For on sweet Malvern Hill one morn he lay, Drowsed by the music of the constant stream:-- Loud sang the cuckoo, cuckoo!--for the May Breathed summer: summer floating like a dream From the far fields of childhood, with a gleam Of alien freshness on her forehead fair, And Heaven itself within the common air.

Then on the mead in vision Langland saw A pilgrim-throng; not missal-bright as those Whom Chaucer's hand surpass'd itself to draw, Gay as the lark, and brilliant as the rose;-- But such as dungeon foul or spital shows, Or the serf's fever-den, or field of fight, When festering sunbeams on the wounded smite.

No sainted shrine the motley wanderers seek, Pilgrims of life upon the field of scorn, Mocking and mock'd; with plague and hunger weak, And haggard faces bleach'd as those who mourn, And footsteps redden'd with the trodden thorn; Blind stretching hands that grope for truth in vain, Across a twilight demon-haunted plain.

A land whose children toil and rot like beasts, Robbers and robb'd by turns, the dreamer sees:-- Land of poor-grinding lords and faithless priests, Where wisdom starves and folly thrones at ease 'Mid lavishness and lusts and knaveries; Times out of joint, a universe of lies, Till Love divine appear in Ploughman's guise

To burn the gilded tares and save the land, Risen from the grave and walking earth again:-- --And as he dream'd and kiss'd the nail-pierced hand, A hundred towers their Easter voices rain In silver showers o'er hill and vale and plain, And the air throbb'd with sweetness, and he woke And all the dream in light and music broke.

--He look'd around, and saw the world he left When to that visionary realm of song His spirit fled from bonds of flesh bereft; And on the vision he lay musing long, As o'er his soul rude minstrel-echoes throng, Old measures half-disused; and grasp'd his pen, And drew his cottage-Christ for homely men.

Thus Langland also took his pilgrimage; Rough lone knight-errant on uncourtly ways, And wrong and woe were charter'd on his page, With some horizon-glimpse of sweeter days. And on the land the message of his lays Smote like the strong North-wind, and cleansed the sky With wholesome blast and bitter clarion-cry,

Summoning the people in the Ploughman's name. --So fought his fight, and pass'd unknown away; Seeking no other praise, no sculptured fame Nor laureate honours for his artless lay, Nor in the Minster laid with high array;-- But where the May-thorn gleams, the grasses wave, And the wind sighs o'er a forgotten grave.

Langland, whom I have put here in contrast with Chaucer, is said to have lived between 1332 and 1400. His _Vision of Piers the Plowman_ (who is partially identified with our blessed Saviour), with some added poems, forms an allegory on life in England, in Church and State, as it appeared to him during the dislocated and corrupt age which followed the superficial glories of Edward the Third's earlier years.

_Took the toll_; Amongst other official employments, Chaucer was Comptroller of the Customs in the Port of London. See his _House of Fame_; and the beautiful picture of his walks at dawning in the daisy- meadows: Prologue to the _Legend of Good Women_.

_His of Certaldo, . . . in Scythia_; Boccaccio:--and Ovid, who died in exile at Tomi:--to both of whom Chaucer is greatly indebted for the substance of his tales.

_Picture-like_; 'It is chiefly as a comic poet, and a minute observer of manners and circumstances, that Chaucer excels. In serious and moral poetry he is frequently languid and diffuse, but he springs like Antaeus from the earth when his subject changes to coarse satire or merry narrative' (Hallam, _Mid. Ages_: Ch. IX: Pt. iii).

_The Tabard_; Inn in Southwark whence the pilgrims to Canterbury start.

_Down the Strand_; It is thus that Langland describes himself and his feelings of dissatisfaction with the world.

_That worst woe_; Literature, even ancient literature, has no phrase more deeply felt and pathetic than the words which the Persian nobleman at the feast in Thebes before Plataea addressed to Thersander of Orchomenus:--[Greek text]: (_Herodotus_, IX: xvi).

_One morn he lay_; The _Vision_ opens with a picture of the poet asleep on Malvern Hill: the last of the added poems closing as he wakes with the Easter chimes.

_Old measures_; Langland's metre 'is more uncouth than that of his predecessors' (Hallam, _Mid. Ag_. Ch. IX: Pt. iii).

_In the Minster_; Chaucer was buried at the entrance of S. Benet's Chapel in Westminster Abbey.

JEANNE D'ARC

1424

So many stars in heaven,-- Flowers in the meadow that shine; --This little one of Domremy, What special grace is thine? By the fairy beech and the fountain What but a child with thy brothers? Among the maids of the valley Art more than one among others?

Chosen darling of Heaven, Yet at heart wast only a child! And for thee the wild things of Nature Sot aside their nature wild:-- The brown-eyed fawn of the forest Came silently glancing upon thee; The squirrel slipp'd down from the fir, And nestled his gentleness on thee.

_Angelus_ bell and _Ave_, Like voices they follow the maid As she follows her sheep in the valley From the dawn to the folding shade:-- For the world that we cannot see Is the world of her earthly seeing; From the air of the hills of God She draws her breath and her being.

Dances by beech tree and fountain, They know her no longer:--apart Sitting with thought and with vision In the silent shrine of the heart. And a voice henceforth and for ever Within, without her, is sighing 'Pity for France, O pity, France the beloved, the dying!'

--Now between church-wall and cottage What comes in the blinding light, --Rainbow plumes and armour, Face as the sun in his height . . . 'Angel that pierced the red dragon, Pity for France, O pity! Holy one, thou shalt save her, Vineyard and village and city!'

Poor sweet child of Domremy, In thine innocence only strong, Thou seest not the treason before thee, The gibe and the curse of the throng,-- The furnace-pile in the market That licks out its flames to take thee;-- For He who loves thee in heaven On earth will not forsake thee!

Poor sweet maid of Domremy, In thine innocence secure, Heed not what men say of thee, The buffoon and his jest impure! Nor care if thy name, young martyr, Be the star of thy country's story:-- Mid the white-robed host of the heavens Thou hast more than glory!

_Angel that pierced_; 'She _had pity_, to use the phrase for ever on her lip, _on the fair realm of France_. She saw visions; St. Michael appeared to her in a flood of blinding light': (_Green_, B. IV: ch. vi).

_The buffoon_; Voltaire.

TOWTON FIELD

Palm Sunday: 1461

Love, Who from the throne above Cam'st to teach the law of love, Who Thy peaceful triumph hast Led o'er palms before Thee cast, E'en in highest heaven Thine eyes Turn from this day's sacrifice! Slaughter whence no victor host Can the palms of triumph boast; Blood on blood in rivers spilt,-- English blood by English guilt!

From the gracious Minster-towers
Of York the priests behold afar
The field of Towton shimmer like a star
With light of lance and helm; while both the powers
Misnamed from the fair rose, with one fell blow,
--In snow-dazed, blinding air
Mass'd on the burnside bare,--
Each army, as one man, drove at the opposing foe.

Ne'er since then, and ne'er before,
On England's fields with English hands
Have met for death such myriad myriad bands,
Such wolf-like fury, and such greed of gore:--
No natural kindly touch, no check of shame:
And no such bestial rage
Blots our long story's page;
Such lewd remorseless swords, such selfishness of aim

--Gracious Prince of Peace! Yet Thou
May'st look and bless with lenient eyes
When trodden races 'gainst their tyrant rise,
And the bent back no more will deign to bow:
Or when they crush some old anarchic feud,
And found the throne anew
On Law to Freedom true,
Cleansing the land they love from guilt of blood by blood.

Nor did Heaven unmoved behold
When Hellas, for her birthright free
Dappling with gore the dark Saronian sea,
The Persian wave back, past Abydos, roll'd:--
But in this murderous match of chief 'gainst chief
No chivalry had part,
No impulse of the heart;
Nor any sigh for Right triumphant breathes relief.

--Midday comes: and no release,
No carnage-pause to blow on blow!
While through the choir the palm-wreathed children go,
And gay hosannas hail the Prince of Peace:--
And evening falls, and from the Minster height
They see the wan Ouse stream
Blood-dark with slaughter gleam,
And hear the demon-struggle shrieking through the night.

Love, o'er palms in triumph strown Passing, through the crowd alone,-- Silent 'mid the exulting cry,-- At Jerusalem to die: Thou, foreknowing all, didst know How Thy blood in vain would flow! How our madness oft would prove Recreant to the law of love: Wrongs that men from men endure Doing Thee to death once more!

'On the 29th of March 1461 the two armies encountered one another at Towton Field, near Tadcaster. In the numbers engaged, as well as in the terrible obstinacy of the struggle, no such battle had been seen in England since the field of Senlac. The two armies together numbered nearly 120,000 men': (_Green_, B. IV: ch. vi).

_Saronian sea_; Scene of the battle of Salamis, B.C. 480.

_They see the wan Ouse stream_; Mr. R. Wilton, of Londesborough, has kindly pointed out to me that _Wharfe_, which from a brook received the bloodshed of Towton, does not discharge into _Ouse_ until about ten miles south of York. The _gleam_ is, therefore, visionary: (1889).

GROCYN AT OXFORD

_THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE_

1491

As she who in some village-child unknown,
With rustic grace and fantasy bedeck'd
And in her simple loveliness alone,
A sister finds;--and the long years' neglect
Effaces with warm love and nursing care,
And takes her heart to heart,
And in her treasured treasures bids her freely share,

And robes with radiance new, new strength and grace:--
Hellas and England! thus it was with ye!
Though distanced far by centuries and by space,
Sisters in soul by Nature's own decree.
And if on Athens in her glory-day
The younger might not look,
Her living soul came back, and reinfused our clay.

--It was not wholly lost, that better light,
Not in the darkest darkness of our day;
From cell to cell, e'en through the Danish night,
The torch ran on its firefly fitful way;
And blazed anew with him who in the vale
Of fair Aosta saw
The careless reaper-bands, and pass'd the heavens' high pale,

And supp'd with God, in vision! Or with him,
Earliest and greatest of his name, who gave
His life to Nature, in her caverns dim
Tracking her soul, through poverty to the grave,
And left his Great Work to the barbarous age
That, in its folly-love,
With wizard-fame defamed his and sweet Vergil's page.

But systems have their day, and die, or change
Transform'd to new: Not now from cloister-cell
And desk-bow'd priest, breathes out that impulse strange
'Neath which the world of feudal Europe fell:--
Throes of new birth, new life; while men despair'd
Or triumph'd in their pride,
As in their eyes the torch of learning fiercely flared.

For now the cry of Homer's clarion first
And Plato's golden tongue on English ears
And souls aflame for that new doctrine burst,
As Grocyn taught, when, after studious years,
He came from Arno to the liberal walls
That welcomed me in youth,
And nursed in Grecian lore, long native to her halls.

O voice that spann'd the gulf of vanish'd years,
Evoking shapes of old from night to light,
Lo at thy spell a long-lost world appears,
Where Rome and Hellas break upon our sight:--
The Gothic gloom divides; a glory burns
Behind the clouds of Time,
And all that wonder-past in beauty's glow returns.

--For when the Northern floods that lash'd and curl'd
Around the granite fragments of great Rome
Outspread Colossus-like athwart the world,
Foam'd down, and the new nations found their home,
That earlier Europe, law and arts and arms,
Fell into far-off shade,
Or lay like some fair maid sleep-sunk in magic charms.

And as in lands once flourishing, now forlorn,
And desolate capitals, the traveller sees
Wild tribes, in ruins from the ruins torn
Hutted like beasts 'mid marble palaces,
Unknowing what those relics mean, and whose
The goblets gold-enchased
And images of the gods the broken vaults disclose;

So in the Mid-age from the Past of Man
The Present was disparted; and they stood
As on some island, sever'd from the plan
Of the great world, and the sea's twilight flood
Around them, and the monsters of the unknown;
Blind fancy mix'd with fact;
Faith in the things unseen sustaining them alone.

Age of extremes and contrasts!--where the good
Was more than human in its tenderness
Of chivalry;--Beauty's self the prize of blood,
And evil raging round with wild excess
Of more than brutal:--A disjointed time!
Doubt with Hypocrisy pair'd,
And purest Faith by folly, childlike, led to crime.

O Florentine, O Master, who alone
From thy loved Vergil till our Shakespeare came
Didst climb the long steps to the imperial throne,
With what immortal dyes of angry flame
Hast blazon'd out the vileness of the day!
What tints of perfect love
Rosier than summer rose, etherealize thy lay!

--Now, as in some new land when night is deep
The pilgrim halts, nor knows what round him lies
And wakes with dawn, and finds him on the steep,
While plains beneath and unguess'd summits rise,
And stately rivers widening to the sea,
Cities of men and towers,
Abash'd for very joy, and gazing fearfully;--

New worlds, new wisdom, a new birth of things
On Europe shine, and men know where they stand:
The sea his western portal open flings,
And bold Sebastian strikes the flowery land:
Soon, heaven its secret yields; the golden sun
Enthrones him in the midst,
And round his throne man and the planets humbly run.

New learning all! yet fresh from fountains old,
Hellenic inspiration, pure and deep:
Strange treasures of Byzantine hoards unroll'd,
And mouldering volumes from monastic sleep,
Reclad with life by more than magic art:
Till that old world renew'd
His youth, and in the past the present own'd its part.

--O vision that ye saw, and hardly saw,
Ye who in Alfred's path at Oxford trod,
Or in our London train'd by studious law
The little-ones of Christ to Him and God,
Colet and Grocyn!--Though the world forget
The labours of your love,
In loving hearts your names live in their fragrance yet.

O vision that our happier eyes have seen!
For not till peace came with Elizabeth
Did those fair maids of holy Hippocrene
Cross the wan waves and draw a northern breath:
Though some far-echoed strain on Tuscan lyres
Our Chaucer caught, and sang
Like her who sings ere dawn has lit his Eastern fires;--

Herald of that first splendour, when the sky
Was topaz-clear with hope, and life-blood-red
With thoughts of mighty poets, lavishly
Round all the fifty years' horizon shed:--
Now in our glades the Aglaian Graces gleam,
Around our fountains throng,
And change Ilissus' banks for Thames and Avon stream.

Daughters of Zeus and bright Eurynome,
She whose blue waters pave the Aegaean plain,
Children of all surrounding sky and sea,
A larger ocean claims you, not in vain!
Ye who to Helicon from Thessalia wide
Wander'd when earth was young,
Come from Libethrion, come; our love, our joy, our pride!

Ah! since your gray Pierian ilex-groves
Felt the despoiling tread of barbarous feet,
This land, o'er all, the Delian leader loves;
Here is your favourite home, your genuine seat:--
In these green western isles renew the throne
Where Grace by Wisdom shines;
--We welcome with full hearts, and claim you for our own!

If, looking at England, one point may be singled out in that long movement, generalized under the name of the Renaissance, as critical, it is the introduction of the Greek and Latin literature:--which has remained ever since conspicuously the most powerful and enlarging element, the most effectively educational, among all blanches of human study.

_In the vale Of fair Aosta_; See Anselm's youthful vision of the gleaners and the palace of heaven (Green: _History_, B. II: ch. ii).

_His Great Work_; Roger Bacon's so-named _Opus Majus_: 'At once,' says Whewell, 'the Encyclopaedia and the Novum Organum of the thirteenth century.' Like Vergil, Bacon passed at one time for a magician.

_That new doctrine_; Grocyn was perhaps the first Englishman who studied Greek under Chalcondylas the Byzantine at Florence; certainly the first who lectured on Greek in England. This was in the Hall of Exeter College, Oxford, in 1491. To him Erasmus (1499) came to study the language.--See the brilliant account of the revival of learning in Green, _Hist_. B. V: ch. ii.

_Master, who alone_; See _The Poet's Euthanasia_.

_Sebastian_; Cabot, who, in 1497, sailed from Bristol, and reached Florida.

_The golden sun_; Refers to Copernicus; whose solar system was, however, not published till 1543.

_The little-ones_; Colet, Dean of S. Paul's, founded the school in 1510. 'The bent of its founder's mind was shown by the image of the Child Jesus over the master's chair, with the words _Hear ye Him_ graven beneath it' (Green: B. V: ch. iv).

_Fifty years_; Between 1570 and 1620 lies almost all the glorious production of our so-called Elizabethan period.

_From Libethrion_;--_Nymphae, noster amor, Libethrides_! . . . What a music is there in the least little fragment of Vergil's exquisite art!

MARGARET TUDOR

_PROTHALAMION_

1503

Love who art above us all, Guard the treasure on her way, Flower of England, fair and tall, Maiden-wise and maiden-gay, As her northward path she goes; Daughter of the double rose.

Look with twofold grace on her Who from twofold root has grown, Flower of York and Lancaster, Now to grace another throne, Rose in Scotland's garden set,-- Britain's only Margaret.

Exile-child from childhood's bower, Pledge and bond of Henry's faith, James, take home our English flower, Guard from touch of scorn and skaith; Bearing, in her slender hands, Palms of peace to hostile lands.

Safe by southern smiling shires, Many a city, many a shrine; By the newly kindled fires Of the black Northumbrian mine; Border clans in ambush set; Carry thou fair Margaret.

--Land of heath and hill and linn, Land of mountain-freedom wild, She in heart to thee is kin, Tudor's daughter, Gwynedd's child! In her lively lifeblood share Gwenllian and Angharad fair.

East and West, from Dee to Yare, Now in equal bonds are wed: Peace her new-found flower shall wear, Rose that dapples white with red; North and South, dissever'd yet, Join in this fair Margaret!

Ocean round our Britain roll'd, Sapphire ring without a flaw, When wilt thou one realm enfold, One in freedom, one in law? Will that ancient feud be sped, Brothers' blood by brothers shed?

--Land with freedom's struggle sore, Land to whom thy children cling With a lover's love and more, Take the gentle gift we bring! Pearl in thy crown royal set; Scotland's other Margaret.

Margaret Tudor, daughter to Henry VII, married in 1502 to James IV, and afterwards to Lord Angus, was thus great-grandmother on both sides to James I of England.

_Gwynedd's child_; The Tudors intermarried with the old royal family of North Wales, in whose pedigree occur the girl-names Gwenllian and Angharad.

_Other Margaret_; Sister to Edgar the Etheling, and wife to Malcolm. Her life and character are in contrast to the unhappy and unsatisfactory career of Margaret Tudor, whom I have here only treated as at once representing and uniting England, Scotland, and Wales.

LONDON BRIDGE

July 6: 1535

The midnight moaning stream Draws down its glassy surface through the bridge That o'er the current casts a tower'd ridge, Dark sky-line forms fantastic as a dream; And cresset watch-lights on the bridge-gate gleam, Where 'neath the star-lit dome gaunt masts upbuoy No flag of festive joy, But blanching spectral heads;--their heads, who died Victims to tyrant-pride, Martyrs of Faith and Freedom in the day Of shame and flame and brutal selfish sway.

And one in black array Veiling her Rizpah-misery, to the gate Comes, and with gold and moving speech sedate Buys down the thing aloft, and bears away Snatch'd from the withering wind and ravens' prey: And as a mother's eyes, joy-soften'd, shed Tears o'er her young child's head, Golden and sweet, from evil saved; so she O'er this, sad-smilingly, Mangled and gray, unwarm'd by human breath, Clasping death's relic with love passing death.

So clasping now! and so When death clasps her in turn! e'en in the grave Nursing the precious head she could not save, Tho' through each drop her life-blood yearn'd to flow If but for him she might to scaffold go:-- And O! as from that Hall, with innocent gore Sacred from roof to floor, To that grim other place of blood he went-- What cry of agony rent The twilight,--cry as of an Angel's pain,-- _My father, O my father_! . . . and in vain!

Then, as on those who lie Cast out from bliss, the days of joy come back, And all the soul with wormwood sweetness rack, So in that trance of dreadful ecstasy The vision of her girlhood glinted by:-- And how the father through their garden stray'd, And, child with children, play'd, And teased the rabbit-hutch, and fed the dove Before him from above Alighting,--in his visitation sweet, Led on by little hands, and eager feet.

Hence among those he stands, Elect ones, ever in whose ears the word _He that offends these little ones_ . . . is heard, With love and kisses smiling-out commands, And all the tender hearts within his hands; Seeing, in every child that goes, a flower From Eden's nursery bower, A little stray from Heaven, for reverence here Sent down, and comfort dear: All care well paid-for by one pure caress, And life made happy in their happiness.

He too, in deeper lore Than woman's in those early days, or yet,-- Train'd step by step his youthful Margaret; The wonders of that amaranthine store Which Hellas and Hesperia evermore Lavish, to strengthen and refine the race:-- For, in his large embrace, The light of faith with that new light combined To purify the mind:-- A crystal soul, a heart without disguise, All wisdom's lover, and through love, all-wise.

--O face she ne'er will see,-- Gray eyes, and careless hair, and mobile lips From which the shaft of kindly satire slips Healing its wound with human sympathy; The heart-deep smile; the tear-concealing glee! O well-known furrows of the reverend brow! Familiar voice, that now She will not hear nor answer any more,-- Till on the better shore Where love completes the love in life begun, And smooths and knits our ravell'd skein in one!

Blest soul, who through life's course Didst keep the young child's heart unstain'd and whole, To find again the cradle at the goal, Like some fair stream returning to its source;-- Ill fall'n on days of falsehood, greed, and force! Base days, that win the plaudits of the base, Writ to their own disgrace, With casuist sneer o'erglossing works of blood, Miscalling evil, good; Before some despot-hero falsely named Grovelling in shameful worship unashamed.

--But they of the great race Look equably, not caring much, on foe And fame and misesteem of man below; And with forgiving radiance on their face, And eyes that aim beyond the bourn of space, Seeing the invisible, glory-clad, go up And drink the absinthine cup, Fill'd nectar-deep by the dear love of Him Slain at Jerusalem To free them from a tyrant worse than this, Changing brief anguish for the heart of bliss.

_Envoy_

--O moaning stream of Time, Heavy with hate and sin and wrong and woe As ocean-ward dost go, Thou also hast thy treasures!--Life, sublime In its own sweet simplicity:--life for love: Heroic martyr-death:-- Man sees them not: but they are seen above.

_One in black array_; Sir T. More's daughter, Margaret Roper.

_That Hall_; Westminster, where More was tried: _That other place_; Tower Hill.

_The vision of her girlhood_; More taught his own children, and was like a child with them. He 'would take grave scholars and statesmen into the garden to see his girls' rabbit-hutches. . . . _I have given you kisses enough_, he wrote to his little ones, _but stripes hardly ever_': (Green, B. V: ch. ii).

_The wonders_; See first note to _Grocyn at Oxford_.

_In his large embrace_; More may be said to have represented the highest aim and effort of the 'new learning' in England. He is the flower of our Renaissance in genius, wisdom, and beauty of nature. 'When ever,' says Erasmus in a famous passage, 'did Nature mould a character more gentle, endearing, and happy, than Thomas More's?'

AT FOUNTAINS

1539-1862

Blest hour, as on green happy slopes I lie, Gray walls around and high, While long-ranged arches lessen on the view, And one high gracious curve Of shaftless window frames the limpid blue.

--God's altar erst, where wind-set rowan now Waves its green-finger'd bough, And the brown tiny creeper mounts the bole With curious eye alert, And beak that tries each insect-haunted hole,

And lives her gentle life from nest to nest, And dies undispossess'd: Whilst all the air is quick with noise of birds Where once the chant went up; Now musical with a song more sweet than words.

Sky-roof'd and bare and deep in dewy sod, Still 'tis the house of God! Beauty by desolation unsubdued:-- And all the past is here, Thronging with thought this holy solitude.

I see the taper-stars, the altars gay; And those who crouch and pray; The white-robed crowd in close monastic stole, Who hither fled the world To find the world again within the soul.

Yet here the pang of Love's defeat, the pride Of life unsatisfied, Might win repose or anodyne; here the weak, Armour'd against themselves, Exchange true guiding for obedience meek.

Through day, through night, here, in the fragrant air, Their hours are struck by prayer; Freed from the bonds of freedom, the distress Of choice, on life's storm-sea They gaze unharm'd, and know their happiness.

Till o'er this rock of refuge, deem'd secure, --This palace of the poor, Ascetic luxury, wealth too frankly shown,-- The royal robber swept His lustful eye, and seized the prey his own.

--Ah, calm of Nature! Now thou hold'st again Thy sweet and silent reign! And, as our feverish years their orbit roll, This pure and cloister'd peace In its old healing virtue bathes the soul.

1539 is the year when the greater monasteries, amongst which Fountains in Yorkshire held a prominent place, were confiscated and ruined by Henry VIII.

_The tiny creeper_; Certhia Familiaris; the smallest of our birds after the wren. It belongs to a class nearly related to the woodpecker.

_White-robed_; The colour of the Cistercian order, to which Fountains belonged.

SIR HUGH WILLOUGHBY

1553-4

Two ships upon the steel-blue Arctic seas
When day was long and night itself was day,
Forged heavily before the South West breeze
As to the steadfast star they curved their way;
Two specks of man, two only signs of life,
Where with all breathing things white Death keeps endless strife.

The Northern Cape is sunk: and to the crew
This zone of sea, with ice-floes wedged and rough,
Domed by its own pure height of tender blue,
Seems like a world from the great world cut off:
While, round the horizon clasp'd, a ring of white,
Snow-blink from snows unseen, walls them with angry light.

Now that long day compact of many days
Breaks up and wanes; and equal night beholds
Their hapless driftage past uncharted bays,
And in her chilling, killing arms enfolds:
While the near stars a thousand arrowy darts
Bend from their diamond eyes, as the low sun departs.

Or the weird Northern Dawn in idle play
Mocks their sad souls, now trickling down the sky
In many-quivering lines of golden spray,
Then blazing out, an Iris-arch on high,
With fiery lances fill'd and feathery bars,
And sheeny veils that hide or half-reveal the stars.

A silent spectacle! Yet sounds, 'tis said,
On their forlornness broke; a hissing cry
Of mockery and wild laugh, as, overhead,
Those blight fantastic squadrons flaunted by:--
And that false dawn, long nickering, died away,
And the Sun came not forth, and Heaven withheld the day.

O King Hyperion, o'er the Delphic dale
Reigning meanwhile in glory, Ocean know
Thine absence, and outstretch'd an icy veil,
A marble pavement, o'er his waters blue;
Past the Varangian fiord and Zembla hoar,
And from Petsora north to dark Arzina's shore:--

An iron ridge o'erhung with toppling snow
And giant beards of icicled cascade:--
Where, frost-imprison'd as the long mouths go,
The _Good Hope_ and her mate-ship lay embay'd;
And those brave crews knew that all hope was gone;
England be seen no more; no more the living sun.

A store that daily lessens 'neath their eyes;
A little dole of light and fire and food:--
While Night upon them like a vampyre lies
Bleaching the frame and thinning out the blood;
And through the ships the frost-bit timbers groan,
And the Guloine prowls round, with dull heart-curdling moan.

Then sometimes on the soul, far off, how far!
Came back the shouting crowds, the cannon-roar,
The latticed palace glittering like a star,
The buoyant Thames, the green, sweet English shore,
The heartful prayers, the fireside blaze and bliss,
The little faces bright, and woman's last, last kiss.

--O yet, for all their misery, happy souls!
Happy in faith and love and fortitude:--
For you, one thought of England dear controls
All shrinking of the flesh at death so rude!
Though long at rest in that far Arctic grave,
True sailor hero hearts, van of our bravest brave.

And one by one the North King's searching lance
Touch'd, and they stiffen'd at their task, and died;
And their stout leader glanced a farewell glance;
'God is as close by sea as land,' he cried,
'In His own light not nearer than this gloom,'--
And look'd as one who o'er the mountains sees his home.

Home!--happy sound of vanish'd happiness!
--But when the unwilling sun crept up again,
And loosed the sea from winter and duresse,
The seal-wrapt race that roams the Lapland main
Saw in Arzina, wondering, fearing more,
The tatter'd ships, in snows entomb'd and vaulted o'er: