DRAMATIC ROMANCES. INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP. I YOU know, we French stormed Ratisbon: A mile or so away, On a little mound, Napoleon Stood on our storming-day; With neck out-thrust, you fancy how, Legs wide, arms locked behind, As if to balance the prone brow Oppressive with its mind. II Just as pethaps he mused " My plans " That soar, to earth may fall, " Let once my army-leader Lannes " Waver at yonder wall,"- B 2 4 DRAMATIC ROMANCES Out 'twixt the battery-smokes there flew A rider, bound on bound Full-galloping; nor bridle drew Until he reached the mound. III Then off there flung in smiling joy, And held himself erect By just his horse's mane, a boy: You hardly could suspect-- (So tight he kept his lips compressed, Scarce any blood came through) You looked twice ere you saw his breast Was all but shot in two. IV. " Well," cried he, " Emperor, by God's grace " We've got you Ratisbon! " The Marshal's in the market-place, " And you'll be there anon " To see your flag-bird flap his vans " Where I, to heart's desire, " Perched him!" The chief's eye flashed; his plans Soared up again like fire. INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP 5 V. The chief's eye flashed; but presently Softened itself, as sheathes A film the mother-eagle's eye When her bruised eaglet breathes; " You're wounded !" " Nay," the soldier's pride Touched to the quick, he said: " I'm killed, Sire!" And his chief beside Smiling the boy fell dead. 6 DRAMATIC ROMANCES THE PATRIOT AN OLD STORY. I It was roses, roses, all the way, With myrtle mixed in my path like mad: The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway, The church-spires flamed, such flags they had, A year ago this very day. II The air broke into a mist with bells, The old walls rocked with time crowd and cries. Had I said," Good folk, mere noise repels- But give me your sun from yonder skies!" They had answered, " And afterward, what else?' III. Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun To give it my loving friends to keep! THE PATRIOT 7 Nought man could do, have I left undone: And you see my harvest, what I reap This very day, now a year is run. IV. There's nobody on the house-tops now-- just a palsied few at the windows set; For the best of the sight is, all allow, At the Shambles' Gate-or, better yet, By the very scaffold's foot, I trow. V. I go in the rain, and, more than needs, A rope cuts hoth my wrists behind: And I think, by the feel, my forebead bleeds, For they fling, whoever has a mind, Stones at me for my year's misdeeds. VI. Thus I entered, and thus I go: In triumphs, people have dropped down dead. " Paid by the world, what dost thou owe " Me?"-God might question; now instead, 'T is God shall repoy; I am safer so. 8 DRAMATIC ROMANCES MY LAST DUCHESS. FERRARA THAT'S my last Duchess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive. I call That piece a wonder, now: Fr\a Pandolf's hands Worked busily a day,and there she stands. Will't please you sit and look at her? I said " Fr\a Pandolf" by design, for never read Strangers like you that pictured countenance, The depth and passion of its earnest glance, But to myself they turned (since none puts by The curtain I have drawn for you, but I) And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst, How such a glance came there; so, not the first Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir,'twas not Her husband's presence only, called that spot Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps Fr\a Pandolf chanced to say " Her mantle laps " Over my lady's wrist too much," or " Paint " Must never hope to reproduce the faint MY LAST DUCHESS 9 " Half-flush that dies along her throat:" such stuff Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough For calling up that spot of joy. She had A heart-how shall I say?-too soon made glad, Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er She looked on, and her looks went everywhere. Sir, 't was all one! My favour at her breast, The dropping of the daylight in the West, The bough of cherries some officious fool Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule She rode with round the terrace-all and each Would draw from her alike the approving speech, Or blush, at least. She thanked men,-good! but thanked Somehow-I know not how-as if she ranked My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame This sort of trifling? Even had you skill In speech-(which I have not)-to make your will Quite clear to such an one, and say, " Just this " Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss, " Or there exceed the mark"-and if she let Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse, -- E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt, 10 DRAMATIC ROMANCES Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet The company below, then. I repeat, The Count your master's known munificence Is ample warrant that no just pretence Of mine for dowry will be disallowed; Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though, Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me! COUNT GISMOND. AIX IN PROVENCE. I. CHRIST God who savest man, save most Of men Count Gismond who saved me! Count Gauthier, when he chose his post, Chose time and place and company To suit it; when he struck at length My honour,'t was with all his strength. II. And doubtlessly ere he could draw All points to one, he must have schemed! That miserable morning saw Few half so happy as I seemed, While being dressed in queen's array To give our tourney prize away. 12 DRAMATIC ROMANCES III. I thought they loved me, did me grace To please themselves; 'twas all their deed; God makes, or fair or foul, our face; If showing mine so caused to bleed My cousins' hearts, they should have dropped A word, and straight the play had stopped. IV. They, too, so beauteous! Each a queen By virtue of her brow and breast; Not needing to be crowned, I mean, As I do. E'en when I was dressed, Had either of them spoke, instead Of glancing sideways with still head! V. But no: they let me laugh, and sing My birthday song quite through, adjust The last rose in my garland, fling A last look on the mirror, trust My arms to each arm of theirs, And so descend the castle-stairs-- COUNT GISMOND 13 VI. And come out on the morning-troop Of merry friends who kissed my cheek, And called me queen, and made me stoop Under the canopy-(a streak That pierced it, of the outside sun, Powdered with gold its gloom's soft dun)- VII. And they could let me take my state And foolish throne amid applause Of all come there to celebrate My queen's-day-Oh I think the cause Of much was, they forgot no crowd Makes up for parents in their shroud! VIII. However that be, all eyes were bent Upon me, when my cousins cast Theirs down; 't was time I should present The victor's crown, but. .. there,'t will last No long time... the old mist again Blinds me as then it did. How vain! 14 DRAMATIC ROMANCES IX. See! Gismond's at the gate, in talk With his two boys: I can proceed. Well, at that moment, who should stalk Forth boldly-to my face, indeed- But Gauthier, and he thundered " Stay!" And all stayed. " Bring no crowns, I say! X. " Bring torches! Wind the penance-sheet " About her! Let her shun the chaste, " Or lay herself before their feet! " Shall she whose body I embraced " A night long, queen it in the day? " For honour's sake no crowns, I say!" XI. I? What I answered? As I live, I never fancied such a thing As answer possible to give. What says the body when they spring Some monstrous torture-engine's whole Strength on it? No more says the soul. COUNT GISMOND 15 XII. Till out strode Gismond; then I knew That I was saved. I never met His face before, but, at first view, I felt quite sure that God had set Himself to Satan; who would spend A minute's mistrust on the end? XIII. He strode to Gauthier, in his throat Gave him the lie, then struck his mouth With one back-handed blow that wrote In blood men's verdict there. North, South, East, West, I looked. The lie was dead, And damned, and truth stood up instead. XIV. This glads me most, that I enjoyed The heart of the joy, with my content In watching Gismond unalloyed. By any doubt of the event: God took that on him-I was bid Watch Gismond for my part: I did. 16 DRAMATIC ROMANCES XV. Did I not watch him while he let His armourer just brace his greaves, Rivet his hauberk,on the fret The while! His foot... my memory leaves No least stamp out, nor how anon He pulled his ringing gauntlets on. XVI. And e'en before the trumpet's sound Was finished, prone lay the false knight, Prone as his lie, upon the ground: Gismond flew at him, used no sleight O' the sword, but open-breasted drove, Cleaving till out the truth he clove. XVII. Which done, he dragged him to my feet And said " Here die, but end thy breath " In full confession, lest thou fleet " From my first, to God's second death! " Say, hast thou lied?" And, " I have lied " To God and her," he said, and died. COUNT GISMOND 17 XVIII. Then Gismond, kneeling to me, asked --What safe my heart holds, though no word Could I repeat now, if I tasked My powers for ever, to a third Dear even as you are. Pass the rest Until I sank upon his breast. XIX. Over my head his arm he flung Against the world; and scarce I felt His sword (that dripped by me and swung) A little shifted in its belt: For be began to say the while How South our home lay many a mile. XX. So'mid the shouting multitude We two walked forth to never more Return. My cousins have pursued Their life, untroubled as before I vexed them. Gauthier's dwelling-place God lighten! May his soul find grace! C 18 DRAMATIC ROMANCES XXI. Our elder boy has got the clear Great brow; tho' when his brother's black Full eye shows scorn, it. . . Gismond here? And have you brought my tercel back? I just was telling Adela How many birds it struck since May. 19 THE BOY AND THE ANGEL. MORNING, evening, noon and night, " Praise God!" sang Theocrite. Then to his poor trade he turned, Whereby the daily meal was earned. Hard he laboured, long and well; O'er his work the boy's curls fell. But ever, at each period, He stopped and sang, " Praise God!" Then back again his curls he threw, And cheerful turned to work anew. Said Blaise, the listening monk, " Well done; " I doubt not thou art heard, my son: C2 20 DRAMATIC ROMANCES "As well as if thy voice to-day " Were praising God, the Pope's great way. " This Easter Day, the Pope at Rome " Praises God from Peter's dome." Said Theocrite, " Would God that I " Might praise him, that great way, and die ! " Night passed, day shone, And Theocrite was gone. With God a day endures alway, A thousand years are but a day. God said in heaven, " Nor day nor night " Now brings the voice of my delight." Then Gabriel, like a rainbow's birth, Spread his wings and sank to earth; Entered, in flesh, the empty cell, Lived there, and played the craftsman well; And morning, evening, noon and night, Praised God in place of Theocrite. THE BOY AND THE ANGEL 21 And from a boy, to youth he grew: The man put off the stripling's hue: The man matured and fell away Into the season of decay: And ever o'er the trade he bent, And ever lived on earth content. (He did God's will; to him, all one If on the earth or in the sun.) God said, "A praise is in mine ear; "There is no doubt in it, no fear: "So sing old worlds, and so " New worlds that from my footstool go. " Clearer loves sound other ways: "I miss my little human praise." Then forth sprang Gabriel's wings, off fell, The flesh disguise, remained the cell. 'T was Easter Day: he flew to Rome, And paused above Saint Peter's dome. 22 DRAMATIC ROMANCES In the tiring-room close by The great outer gallery, With his holy vestments dight Stood the new Pope, Theocrite And all his post career Came back upon him clear, Since when, a boy, he plied his trade, Till on his life the sickness weighed; And in his cell, when death drew near, An angel in a dream brought cheer: And rising from the sickness drear He grew a priest, and now stood here. To the East with praise he turned, And on his sight the angel burned. "I bore thee from thy craftsman's cell And set thee here; I did not well " Vainly I left my angel-sphere, " Vain was thy dream of many a year THE BOY AND THE ANGEL 23 " Thy voice's praise seemed weak; it dropped- " Creation's chorus stopped ! " Go back and praise again " The early way, while I remain. " With that weak voice of our disdain, " Take up creation's pausing strain. " Back to the cell and poor employ : " Resume the craftsman and the boy !" Theocrite grew old at home; A new Pope dwelt in Peter's dome. One vanished as the other died: They sought God side by side. 24 DRAMATIC ROMANCES INSTANS TYRANNUS. I. OF the million or two, more or less, I rule and possess, One man, for some cause undefined, Was least to my mind. II. I struck him, he grovelled of course--- For, what was his force? I pinned him to earth with nmy weight And persistence of hate: And he lay, would not moan, would not curse, As his lot might be worse. III. " Were the object less mean, would he stand " At the swing of my hand! INSTANS TYRANNUS 25 " For obscurity helps him and blots " The hole where he squats." So, I set my five wits on the stretch To inveigle the wretch. All in vain! Gold and jewels I threw, Still he couched there perdue; I tempted his blood and his flesh, Hid in roses my nmesh, Choicest cates and the flagon's best spilth: Still he kept to his filth. IV. Had he kith now or kin, were access To his heart, did I press: Just a son or a nmother to seize! No such booty as these. Were it simply a friend to pursue 'Mid my million or two, Who could pay nme in person or pelf What he owes me himself! No: I could not but smile through my chafe: For the fellow lay safe As his mates do, the midge and the nit, ---Through minuteness, to wit. 26 DRAMATIC ROMANCES V. Then a humour more great took its place At the thought of his face, The droop, the low cares of the mouth, The trouble uncouth Twixt the brows, all that air one is fain To put out of its pain, And, " no!" I admonished myself, " Is one mocked by an elf, " Is one baffled by toad or by rat? " The gravamen's in that! " How the lion, who crouches to suit " His back to my foot, " Would admire that I stand in debate! " But the small turns the great " If it vexes you,---that is the thing! " Toad or rat vex the king? " Though I waste half my realm to unearth " Toad or rat,'t is well worth!" VI So, I soberiy laid my last plan To extingnish the man. Round his creep-hole, with never a break INSTANS TYRANNUS 27 Ran my fires for his sake; Over-head, did my thunder combine With my underground mine: Will I looked from my labour content To enjoy the event. VII. When sudden... how think ye, the end? Did I say " without friend"? Say rather, from marge to blue marge The whole sky grew his targe With the sun's self for visible boss, While an Arm ran across Which the earth heaved beneath like a breast Where the wretch was safe prest! Do you see? just my vengeance-complete, The man sprang to his feet, Stood erect, caught at God's skirts, and prayed! ---So, I was afraid! 28 DRAMATIC ROMANCES MESMERISM I. ALL I believed is true! I am able yet All I want, to get By a method as strange as new Dare I trust the same to you? II. If at night, when doors are shut, And the wood-worm picks, And the death-watch ticks, And the bar has a flag of smut, And a cat's in the water-butt--- III. And the socket floats and flares, And the house-beams groan, And a foot unknown MESMERISM 29 Is surmised on the garret-stairs, And the locks slip unawares--- IV. And the spider, to serve his ends, By a sudden thread, Arms and legs outspread, On the table's midst descends, Comes to find, God knows what friends!- V If since eve drew in, I say, I have sat and brought (So to speak) my thought To bear on the woman away, Till I felt my hair turn grey-- VI Till I seemed to have and hold, In the vacancy 'Twixt the wall and me, From the hair-plait's chestnut gold To the foot in its muslin fold-- 30 DRAMATIC ROMANCES VII. Have and hold, then and there, Her, from head to foot, Breathing and mute, Passive and yet aware, In the grasp of my steady stare--- VIII. Hold and have, there and then, All her body and soul That completes my whole, All that women add to men, In the clutch of my steady ken--- IX. Having and holding, till I imprint her fast On the void at last As the sun does whom he will By the calotypist's skill--- X. Then,--if my heart's strength-serve, And through all and each Of the veils I reach MESMERISM 31 To her soul and never swerve, Knitting an iron nerve--- XI. Command her soul to advance And inform the shape Which has made escape And before my countenance Answers me glance for glance-- XII. I, still with a gesture fit Of my hands that best Do my soul's behest, Pointing the power from it, While myself do steadfast sit--- XIII. Steadfast and still the same On my object bent, While the hands give vent To my ardour and my aim And break into very flame--- 32 DRAMATIC ROMANCES XIV. Then I reach, I must believe, Not her soul in vain, For to me again It reaches, and past retrieve Is wound in the toils I weave; XV. And must follow as I require, As befits a thrall, Bringing flesh and all, Essence and earth-attire, To the source of the tractile fire: XVI. Till the house called hers, not mine, With a growing weight Seems to suffocate If she break not its leaden line And escape from its close confine. XVII. Out of doors into the night! On to the maze Of the wild wood-ways, MESMIERISM 33 Not turning to left nor right From the pathway, blind with sight--- XVIII. Making thro' rain and wind O'er the broken shrubs, 'Twixt the stems and stubs, With a still, composed, strong mind, Nor a care for the world behind--- XIX. Swifter and still more swift, As the crowding peace Doth to joy increase In the wide blind eyes uplift Thro' the darkness and the drift! XX. While I--to the shape, I too Feel my soul dilate Nor a whit abate, And relax not a gesture due, As I see my belief conme true. v. D 34 DRAMATIC ROMANCES XXI. For, there! have I drawn or no Life to that lip? Do my fingers dip In a flame which again they throw On the cheek that breaks a-glow? XXII. Ha! was the hair so first? What, unfilleted. Made alive, and spread Through the void with a rich outburst, Chestnut gold-interspersed? XXIII. Like the doors of a casket-shrine, See, on either side, Her two arms divide Till the heart betwixt makes sign, Take me, for I am thine! XXIV. " Now---now"--the door is heard! Hark, the stairs! and near--- Nearer--and here--- MESMERISM 35 " Now ! " and at call the third She enters without a word XXV. On doth she march and on To the fancied shape; It is, past escape, Herself, now: the dream is done And the shadow and she are one. XXVI. First I will pray. Do Thou That ownest the soul, Yet wilt grant control To another, nor disallow For a time, restrain me now! XXVII. I admonish me while I may, Not to squander guilt, Since require Thou wilt At my hand its price one day! What the price is, who can say? D2 36 DRAMATIC ROMANCES THE GLOVE. (PETER RONSARD loquitur.) " HEIOHO!" yawned one day King Francis, " Distance all value enhances! " When a man's busy, why, leisure " Strikes him as wonderful pleasure: " Faith, and at leisure once is he? " Straightway he wants to be busy. " Here we've got peace; and aghast I'm " Caught thinking war the true pastime. " Is there a reason in metre? " Give us your speech, master Peter!" I who, if mortal dare say so, Ne'er am at loss with my Naso, " Sire," I replied,"joys prove cloudlets: " Men are the merest Ixions"-- Here the King whistled aloud "Let's " --Heigho--go look at our lions !" Such are the sorrowful chances If you talk fine to King Francis. THE GLOVE 37 And so, to the courtyard proceeding, Our company, Francis was leading, Increased by new followers tenfold Before he arrived at the penfold; Lords, ladies, like clouds which bedizen At sunset the western horizon. And Sir De Lorge pressed 'mid the foremost With the dame he professed to adore most. Oh, what a face! One by fits eyed Her, and the horrible pitside; For the penfold surrounded a hollow Which led where the eye scarce dared follow, And shelved to the chamber secluded Where Bluebeard, the great lion, brooded. The King hailed his keeper, an Arab As glossy and black as a scarab, And bade him make sport and at once stir Up and out of his den the old monster. They opened a hole in the wire-work Across it, and dropped there a firework, And fled: one's heart's beating redoubled; A pause, while the pit's mouth was troubled, The blackness and silence so utter, By the firework's slow sparkling and sputter; Then earth in a sudden contortion Gave out to our gaze her abortion. 38 DRAMATIC ROMANCES Such a brute! Were I friend Clement Marot (Whose experience of nature's but narrow, And whose faculties move in no small mist When he versifies David the Psalmist) I should study that brute to describe you Illum Juda Leonem de Tribu. One's whole blood grew curdling and creepy To see the black mane, vast and heapy, The tail in the air stiff and straining, The wide eyes, nor waxing nor waning, As over the barrier which bounded His platform, and us who surrounded The barrier, they reached and they rested On space that rmight stand him in best stead: For who knew, he thought, what the amazement, The eruption of clatter and blaze meant, And if, in this minute of wonder, No outlet,'mid lightning and thunder, Lay broad, and, his shackles all shivered, The lion at last was delivered? Ay, that was the open sky o'erhead! And you saw by the flash on his forehead, By the hope in those eyes wide and steady, He was leagues in the desert already, Driving the flocks up the mountain, Or catlike couched hard by the fountain THE GLOVE 39 To waylay the date-gathering negress: So guarded he entrance or egress. " How he stands!" quoth the King: "we may well swear, (" No novice, we've won our spurs elsewhere " And so can afford the confession,) " We exercise wholesome discretion " In keeping aloof from his threshold, " Once hold you, those jaws want no fresh hold, " Their first would too pleasantly purloin " The visitor's brisket or surloin: " But who's he would prove so fool-hardy? " Not the best man of Marignan, pardie! " The sentence no sooner was uttered, Than over the rails a glove fluttered, Fell close to the lion, and rested: The dame 't was, who flung it and jested With life so, De Lorge had been wooing For months past; he sat there pursuing His suit, weighing out with nonchalance Fine speeches like gold from a balance. Sound the trumpet, no true knight's a tarrier! De Lorge made one leap at the barrier, Walked straight to the glove,--while the lion Ne'er moved, kept his far-reaching eye on 40 DRAMATIC ROMANCES The palm-tree-edged desert-spring's sapphire, And the musky oiled skin of the Kaffir,--- Picked it up, and as calmly retreated, Leaped back where the lady was seated, And full in the face of its owner Flung the glove. " Your heart's queen, you dethrone her? " So should I!"--cried the King---"'t was mere vanity, " Not love, set that task to humanity!" Lords and ladies alike turned with loathing From such a proved wolf in sheep's clothing. Not so, I; for I caught an expression In her brow's undisturbed self-possession Amid the Court's scoffing and merriment,--- As if from no pleasing experiment She rose, yet of pain not much heedful So long as the process was needful,--- As if she had tried in a crucible, To what "speeches like gold" were reducible, And, finding the finest prove copper, Felt the snmoke in her face was but proper; To know what she had not to trust to, Was worth all the ashes and dust too. THE GLOVE 41 She went out'mid hooting and laughter; Clement Marot stayed; I followed after, And asked, as a grace, what it all meant? If she wished not the rash deed's recalment? " For I"---so I spoke---"am a poet: " Human nature,---behoves that I know it!" She told me, "Too long had I heard " Of the deed proved alone by the word: " For my love--what De Lorge would not dare, " With my scorn--what De Lorge could compare! " And the endless descriptions of death " He would brave when my lip formed a breath, " I must reckon as braved, or, of course, " Doubt his word--and moreover, perforce, " For such gifts as no lady could spurn, " Must offer my love in return. " When I looked on your lion, it brought " All the dangers at once to my thought, " Encountered by all sorts of men, " Before he was lodged in his den,--- " From the poor slave whose club or bare hands " Dug the trap, set the snare on the sands, " With no King and no Court to applaud, " By no shame, should he shrink, overawed, " Yet to capture the creature made shift, 42 DRAMATIC ROMANCES " That his rude boys might laugh at the gift, "--To the page who last leaped o'er the fence " Of the pit, on no greater pretence " Than to get back the bonnet he dropped, " Lest his pay for a week should be stopped. " So, wiser I judged it to make " One trial what `death for my sake' " Really meant, while the power was yet mine, " Than to wait until time should define " Such a phrase not so simply as I, " Who took it to mean just `to die.' " The blow a glove gives is but weak: " Does the nmark yet discolour my cheek? " But when the heart suffers a blow, " Will the pain pass so soon, do you know?" I looked, as away she was sweeping, And saw a youth eagerly keeping As close as he dared to the doorway. No doubt that a noble should more weigh His life than befits a plebeian; And yet, had our brute been Nenmean-- (I judge by a certain calm fervour The youth stepped with, forward to serve her) He'd have scarce thought you did him the worst turn If you whispered " Friend, what you'd get, first earn ! THE GLOVE 43 And when, shortly after, she carried Her shame from the Court, and they married, To that marriage some happiness, maugre The voice of the Court, I dared augur. For De Lorge, he made women with men vie, Those in wonder and praise, these in envy; And in short stood so plain a head taller That he wooed and won... how do you call her? The beauty, that rose in the sequel To the King's love, who loved her a week well. And't was noticed he never would honour De Lorge (who looked daggers upon her) With the easy commission of stretching His legs in the service, and fetching His wife, from her chamber, those straying Said gloves she was always mislaying, While the King took the closet to chat in,--- But of course this adventure came pat in. And never the King told the story, How bringing a glove brought such glory, But the wife smiled--" His nerves are grown firmer: " Mine he brings now and utters no murmur " Venienti occurrite morbo! With which moral I drop my theorbo. 44 DRAMATIC ROMANCES TIME'S REVENGES. I've a Friend, over the sea; I like him, but he loves me. It all grew out of the books I write; They find such favour in his sight That he slaughters you with savage looks Because you don't admire my books. He does himself though,---and if some vein Were to snap to-night in this heavy brain, To-morrow month, if I lived to try, Round should I just turn quietly, Or out of the bedclothes stretch my hand Till I found him, come from his foreign land To be my nurse in this poor place, And make my broth and wash my face And light my fire and, all the while, Bear with his old good-humoured smile That I told him " Better have kept away " Than come and kill me, night and day, TIME'S REVENGES 45 " With, worse than fever throbs and shoots, " The creaking of his clumsy boots." I am as sure that this he would do, As that Saint Paul's is striking two. And I think I rather... woe is me! --Yes, rather would see him than not see, If lifting a hand could seat him there Before me in the empty chair To-night, when my head aches indeed, And I can neither think nor read Nor make these purple fingers hold The pen; this garret's freezing cold! And I've a Lady---there he wakes, The laughing fiend and prince of snakes Within me, at her name, to pray Fate send some creature in the way Of my love for her, to be down-torn, Upthrust and outward-borne, So I might prove myself that sea Of passion which I needs must be! Call my thoughts false and my fancies quaint And my style infirm and its figures faint, All the critics say, and more blame yet, And not one angry word you get. But, please you, wonder I would put 46 DRAMATIC ROMANCES My cheek beneath that lady's foot Rather than trample under mine The laurels of the Florentine, And you shall see how the devil spends A fire God gave for other ends! I tell you, I stride up and down This garret crowned with love's best crown, And feasted with love's perfect feast, To think I kill for her, at least, Body and soul and peace and fame, Alike youth's end and manhood's aim, --So is my spirit, as flesh with sin, Filled full, eaten out and in With the face of her, the eyes of her, The lips, the little chin, the stir Of shadow round her mouth; and she --I'll tell you,---calmly would decree That I should roast at a slow fire, If that would compass her desire And make her one whom they invite To the famous ball to-morrow night. There may be heaven; there must be hell; Meantime, there is our earth here---well! 47 THE ITALIAN IN ENGLAND THAT second time they hunted me From hill to plain, from shore to sea, And Austria, hounding far and wide HEr blood-hounds thro' the country-side, Breathed hot and instant on my trace,--- I made six days a hiding-place Of that dry green old aqueduct Where I and Charles, when boys, have plucked The fire-flies from the roof above, Bright creeping thro' the moss they love: --How long it seems since Charles was lost! Six days the soldiers crossed and crossed The country in my very sight; And when that peril ceased at night, The sky broke out in red dismay With signal fires; well, there I lay Close covered o'er in my recess, Up to the neCk in ferns and cress, 48 DRAMATIC ROMANCES Thinking on Metternich our friend, And Charles's miserable end, And much beside, two days; the third, Hunger o'ercame me when I heard The peasants from the village go To work among the maize; you know, With us in Lombardy, they bring Provisions packed on mules, a string With little bells that cheer their task And casks and boughs on every cask To keep the sun's heat from the wine; These I let pass in jingling line, And close on them dear noisy crew, The peasants from the village, too; For at the very rear would troop Their wives and sisters in a group To help, I knew. When these had passed, I threw my glove to strike the last, Taking the chance: she did not start, Much less cry out, but stooped apart, One instant rapidly glanced round, And saw me beckon from the ground: A wild bush grows and hides my crypt; She picked my glove up while she stripped A branch off, then rejoined the rest With that; my glove lay in her breast. THE ITALIAN IN ENGLAND 49 Then I drew breath; they disappeared: It was for Italy I feared. An hour, and she returned alone Exactly where my glove was thrown, Meanwhile came many thoughts: on me Rested the hopes of Italy. I had devised a certain tale Which, when't was told her, could not fail Persuade a peasant of its truth; I meant to call a freak of youth This hiding, and give hopes of pay, And no temptation to betray. But when I saw that woman's face, Its calm simplicity of grace, Our Italys own attitude In which she walked thus far, and stood, Planting each naked foot so firm, To crush the snake and spare the worm--- At first sight of her eyes, I said, " I am that man upon whose head " They fix the price, because I hate "The Austrians over us : the State " Will give you gold---oh, gold so much !--- " If you betray me to their clutch, " And be your death, for aught I know, 50 DRAMATIC ROMANCES " If once they find you saved their foe. " Now, you must bring me food and drink, " And also paper, pen and ink, " And carry safe what I shall write " To Padua, which you'll reach at night " Before the duonmo shuts; go in, " And wait till Tenebr|ae begin; " Walk to the third confessional, " Between the pillar and the wall, " And kneeling whisper,Whence comes peace? " Say it a second time, then cease; " And if the voice inside returns, " From Christ and Freedom,- what concerns " The cause of Peace ?---for answer, slip " My letter where you placed your lip; " Then come back happy we have done " Our mother service---I, the son, " As you the daughter of our land!" Three mornings more, she took her stand In the same place, with the same eyes: I was no surer of sun-rise Than of her coming. We conferred Of her own prospects, and I heard She had a lover--stout and tall, She said---then let her eyelids fall, THE ITALIAN IN ENGLAND 51 " He could do much "---as if some doubt Entered her heart,--then, passing out, " She could not speak for others, who " Had other thoughts; herself she knew:" And so she brought me drink and food. After four days, the scouts pursued Another path; at last arrived The help my Paduan friends contrived To furnish me: she brought the news. For the first time I could not choose But kiss her hand, and lay my own Upon her head---" This faith was shown " To Italy, our mother; she " Uses my hand and blesses thee." She followed down to the sea-shore; I left and never saw her more. How very long since I have thought Concerning--much less wished for--aught Beside the good of Italy, For which I live and mean to die! I never was in love; and since Charles proved false, what shall now convince My inmost heart I have a friend? However, if I pleased to spend Real wishes on myself--say, three--- 52 DRAMATIC ROMANCES I know at least what one should be. I would grasp Metternich until I felt his red wet throat distil In blood thro' these two hands. And next, ---Nor much for that am I perplexed--- Charles, perjured traitor, for his part, Should die slow of a broken heart Under his new employers. Last --Ah, there,what should I wish? For fast Do I grow old and out of strength. If I resolved to seek at length My father's house again, how scared They all would look, and unprepared! My brothers live in Austria's pay ---Disowned me long ago, men say; And all my early mates who used To praise me so--perhaps induced More than one early step of mine--- Are turning wise: while some opine " Freedom grows license," some suspect " Haste breeds delay," and recollect They always said, such premature Beginnings never could endure! So, with a sullen " All's for best," The land seems settling to its rest. I think then, I should wish to stand THE ITALIAN IN ENGLAND 53 This evening in that dear, lost land, Over the sea the thousand miles And know if yet that woman smiles With the calm smile; some little farm She lives in there, no doubt: what harm If I sat on the door-side bench, And, while her spindle made a trench Fantastically in the dust, Inquired of all her fortunes- just Her children's ages and their names, And what may be the husband's aims For each of them. I'd talk this out, And sit there, for an hour about, Then kiss her hand once more, and lay Mine on her head, and go my way. So much for idle wishing--how It steals the time! To business now. 54 DRAMATIC ROMANCES THE ENGLISHMAN IN ITALY. PIANO DI SORRENTO. FORT\U, Fort\u, my beloved one, Sit here by my side, On my knees put up both little feet! I was sure, if I tried, I could make you laugh spite of Scirocco. Now, open your eyes, Let me keep you amused till he vanish In black from the skies, With telling my memories over As you tell your beads; All the Plain saw me gather, I garland --The flowers or the weeds. Time for rain! for your long hot dry Autumn Had net-worked with brown The white skin of each grape on the bunches, Marked like a quail's crown, THE ENGLISHMAN IN ITALY 55 Those creatures you make such account of, Whose heads,--speckled white Over brown like a great spider's back, As I told you last night,-- Your mother bites off for her supper Red-ripe as could be, Pomegranates were chapping and splitting In halves on the tree: And betwixt the loose walls of great flintstone, Or in the thick dust On the path, or straight out of the rock-side, Wherever could thrust Some burnt sprig of bold hardy rock-flower Its yellow face up, For the prize were great butterflies fighting, Some five for one cup. So, I guessed, ere I got up this morning, What change was in store, By the quick rustle-down of the quail-nets Which woke me before I could open my shutter, made fast With a bough and a stone, And look thro' the twisted dead vine-twigs, Sole lattice that's known. Quick and sharp rang the rings down the net-poles, While, busy beneath, 56 DRAMATIC ROMANCES Your priest and his brother tugged at them, The rain in their teeth. And out upon ill the flat house-roofs Where split figs lay drying, The girls took the frails under cover: Nor use seemed in trying To get out the boats and go fishing, For, under the cliff, Fierce the black water frothed o'er the blind-rock. No seeing our skiff Arrive about noon from Amalfi, --Our fisher arrive, And pitch down his basket before us, All trembling alive With pink and grey jellies, your sea-fruit; You touch the strange lumps, And mouths gape there, eyes open, all manner Of horns and of humps, Which only the fisher looks grave at, While round him like imps Cling screaming the children as naked And brown as his shrimps; Himself too as bare to the middle ---You see round his neck The string and its brass coin suspended, That saves him from wreck. THE ENGLISHMAN IN ITALY 57 But to-day not a boat reached Salerno, So back, to a man, Came our friends, with whose help in the vineyards Grape-harvest began. In the vat, halfway up in our house-side, Like blood the juice spins, While your brother all bare-legged is dancing Till breathless he grins Dead-beaten in effort on effort To keep the grapes under, Since still when he seems all but master, In pours the fresh plunder From girls who keep coming and going With basket on shoulder, And eyes shut against the rain's driving; Your girls that are older,-- For under the hedges of aloe, And where, on its bed Of the orchard's black mould, the love-apple Lies pulpy and red, All the young ones are kneeling and filling Their laps with the snails Tempted out by this first rainy weather,--- Your best of regales, As to-night will be proved to my sorrow, When, supping in state, 58 DRAMATIC ROMANCES We shall feast our grape-gleaners (two dozen, Three over one plate) With lasagne so tempting to swallow In slippery ropes, And gourds fried in great purple slices, That colour of popes. Meantime, see the grape bunch they've brought you; The rain-water slips O'er the heavy bloom on each globe Which the wasp to your lips Still follows with fretful persistence: Nay, taste, while awake, This half of a curd-white smooth cheese-ball That peels, flake by flake, Like an onion, each smoother and whiter; Next, sip this weak wine From the thin green glass flask, with its stopper, A leaf of the vine; And end with the prickly-pear's red flesh That leaves thro' its juice The stony black seeds on your pearl-teeth. Scirocco is loose! Hark, the quick, whistling pelt of the olives Which, thick in one's track, Tempt the stranger to pick up and bite them, Tho' not yet half black! THE ENGLISHMAN IN ITALY 59 How the old twisted olive trunks shudder, The medlars let fall Their hard fruit, and the brittle great fig-trees Snap off, figs and all, For here comes the whole of the tempest! No refuge, but creep Back again to my side and my shoulder, And listen or sleep. O how will your country show next week When all the vine-boughs Have been stripped of their foliage to pasture The mules and the cows? Last eve, I rode over the mountains; Your brother, my guide, Soon left me, to feast on the myrtles That offered, each side, Their fruit-balls, black, glossy and luscious,--- Or strip from the sorbs A treasure, or, rosy and wondrous, Those hairy gold orbs ! But my mule picked his sure sober path out, Just stopping to neigh When he recognized down in the valley His mates on their way 60 DRAMATIC ROMANCES With the faggots and barrels of water; And soon we emerged From the plain, where the woods could scarce follow; And still as we urged Our way, the woods wondered, and left us, As up still we trudged Though the wild path grew wilder each instant, And place was e'en grudged 'Mid the rock-chasms and piles of loose stones Like the loose broken teeth Of some monster which climbed there to die From the ocean beneath--- Place was grudged to the silver-grey fume-weed That clung to the path, And dark rosemary ever a-dying That,'spite the wind's wrath, So loves the salt rock's face to seaward, And lentisks as staunch To the stone where they root and bear berries, And... what shows a branch Coral-coloured, transparent, with circlets Of pale seagreen leaves; Over all trod my mule with the caution Of gleaners o'er sheaves, Still, foot after foot like a lady, Till, round after round, THE ENGLISHMAN IN ITALY 61 He climbed to the top of Calvano, And God's own profound Was above me, and round me the mountains, And under, the sea And within me my heart to bear witness What was and shall be. Oh, heaven and the terrible crystal! No rampart excludes Your eye from the life to be lived In the blue solitudes. Oh, those mountains, their infinite movement! Still moving with you; For, ever some new head and breast of them Thrusts into view To observe the intruder; you see it If quickly you turn And, before they escape you surprise them. They grudge you should learn How the soft plains they look on, lean over And love (they pretend) --Cower beneath them, the flat sea-pine crouches, The wild fruit-trees bend, E'en the myrtle-leaves curl, shrink and shut: All is silent and grave: 'T is a sensual and timorous beauty, How fair! but a slave. 62 DRAMATIC ROMANCES So, I turned to the sea; and there slumbered As greenly as ever Those isles of the siren, your Galli; No ages can sever The Three, nor enable their sister To join them,--halfway On the voyage, she looked at Ulysses--- No farther to-day, Tho' the small one, just launched in the wave, Watches breast-high and steady From under the rock, her bold sister Swum halfway already. Fort\u, shall we sail there together And see from the sides Quite new rocks show their faces, new haunts Where the siren abides? Shall we sail round and round them, close over The rocks, tho' unseen, That ruffle the grey glassy water To glorious green? Then scramble from splinter to splinter, Reach land and explore, On the largest, the strange square black turret With never a door, Just a loop to admit the quick lizards; Then, stand there and hear THE ENGLISHMAN IN ITALY 63 The birds, quiet singing, that tells us What life is, so clear? ---The secret they sang to Ulysses When, ages ago, He heard and he knew this life's secret I hear and I know. Ah, see! The sun breaks o'er Calvano; He strikes the great gloom And flutters it o'er the mount's summit In airy gold fume. All is over. Look out, see the gipsy, Our tinker and smith, Has arrived, set up bellows and forge, And down-squatted forthwith. To his hammering, under the wall there; One eye keeps aloof The urchins that itch to be putting His jews'-harps to proof, While the other, thro' locks of curled wire, Is watching how sleek Shines the hog, come to share in the windfall ---Chew, abbot's own cheek! All is over. Wake up and come out now, And down let us go, 64 DRAMATIC ROMANCES And see the fine things got in order At church for the show Of the Sacrament, set forth this evening To-morrow's the Feast Of the Rosary's Virgin, by no means Of Virgins the least, As you'll hear in the off-hand discourse Which (all nature, no art) The Dominican brother, these three weeks, Was getting by heart. Not a pillar nor post but is dizened With red and blue papers; All the roof waves with ribbons, each altar A-blaze with long tapers; But the great masterpiece is the scaffold Rigged glorious to hold All the fiddlers and fifers and drummers And trumpeters bold, Not afraid of Bellini nor Auber, Who, when the priest's hoarse, Will strike us up something that's brisk For the feast's second course. And then will the flaxen-wigged Image Be carried in pomp Thro' the plain, while in gallant procession The priests mean to stomp. THE ENGLISHMAN IN ITALY 65 All round the glad church lie old bottles With gunpowder stopped, Which will be, when the Image re-enters, Religiously popped; And at night from the crest of Calvano Great bonfires will hang, On the plain will the trumpets join chorus, And more poppers bang. At all events, come--to the garden As far as the wall; See me tap with a hoe on the plaster Till out there shall fall A scorpion with wide angry nippers ! ---" Such trifles!" you say? Fort\u, in my England at home, Men meet gravely to-day And debate, if abolishing Corn-laws Be righteous and wise --If't were proper, Scirocco should vanish In black from the skies! v. F 66 DRAMATIC ROMANCES IN A GONDOLA. He sings I SEND my heart up to thee, all my heart In this my singing. For the stars help me, and the sea bears part; The very night is clinging Closer to Venice' streets to leave one space Above me, whence thy face May light my joyous heart to thee its dwelling- place. She speaks. Say after me, and try to say My very words, as if each word Came from you of your own accord, In your own voice, in your own way: " This woman's heart and soul and brain " Are mine as much as this gold chain " She bids me wear; which" (say again) " I choose to make by cherishing " A precious thing, or choose to fling IN A GONDOLA 67 " Over the boat-side, ring by ring." And yet once more say... no word more! Since words are only words. Give o'er! Unless you call me, all the same, Familiarly by my pet name, Which if the Three should hear you call, And me reply to, would proclaim At once our secret to them all. Ask of me, too, command me, blame-- Do, break down the partition-wall 'Twixt us, the daylight world beholds Curtained in dusk and splendid folds! What's left but--all of me to take ? I am the Three's: prevent them, slake Your thirst! 'T is said, the Arab sage, In practising with gems, can loose Their subtle spirit in his cruce And leave but ashes: so, sweet mage, Leave them my ashes when thy use Sucks out my soul, thy heritage! He sings. I. Past we glide, and past, and past! What's that poor Agnese doing F2 68 DRAMATIC ROMANCES Where they make the shutters fast? Grey Zanobi's just a-wooing To his couch the purchased bride: Past we glide ! II. Past we glide, and past, and past! Why's the Pucci Palace flaring Like a beacon to the blast? Guests by hundreds, not one caring If the dear host's neck were wried: Past we glide ! She sings. I. The moth's kiss, first ! Kiss me as if you made believe You were not sure, this eve, How my face, your flower, had pursed Its petals up; so, here and there You brush it, till I grow aware Who wants me, and wide ope I burst. II. The bee's kiss, now ! Kiss me as if you entered gay IN A GONDOLA 69 My head at some noonday, A bud that dares not disallow The claim, so all is rendered up, And passively its shattered cup Over your head to sleep I bow. He sings. I What are we two? I am a Jew, And carry thee, farther than friends can pursue, To a feast of our tribe; Where they need thee to bribe The devil that blasts them unless he imbibe Thy... Scatter the vision for ever! And now, As of old, I am I, thou art thou! II. Say again, what we are? The sprite of a star, I lure thee above where the destinies bar My plumes their full play Till a ruddier ray Than my pale one announce there is withering away 70 DRAMATIC ROMANCES Some . . Scatter the vision for ever! And now. As of old, I am I, thou art thou! He muses. Oh, which were best, to roam or rest? The land's lap or the water's breast? To sleep on yellow millet-sheaves, Or swim in lucid shallows just Eluding water-lily leaves, An inch from Death's black fingers, thrust To lock you, whom release he must; Which life were best on Summer eves? He speaks, musing. Lie back; could thought of mine improve you? From this shoulder let there spring A wing; from this, another wing; Wings, not legs and feet, shall move you! Snow-white must they spring, to blend With your flesh, but I intend They shall deepen to the end, Broader, into burning gold, Till both wings crescent-wise enfold Your perfect self, from'neath your feet To o'er your head, where, lo, they meet IN A GONDOLA 71 As if a million sword-blades hurled Defiance from you to the world! Rescue me thou, the only real! And scare away this mad ideal That caine, nor motions to depart! Thanks! Now, stay ever as thou art! Still he muses. I. What if the Three should catch at last Thy sereader? While there's cast Paul's cloak about my head, and fast Gian pinions me, Himself has past His stylet thro' my back; I reel; And. . . is it thou I feel? II. They trail me, these three godless knaves, Past every church that saints and saves, Nor stop till, where the cold sea raves By Lido's wet accursed graves, They scoop mine, roll me to its brink, And... on thy breast I sink! 72. DRAMATIC ROMANCES She replies, musing. Dip your arm o'er the boat-side, elbow-deep, As I do: thus: were death so unlike sleep, Caught this way? Death's to fear from flame or steel, Or poison doubtless; but from water--feel! Go find the bottom! Would you stay me? There! Now pluck a great blade of that ribbon-grass To plait in where the foolish jewel was, I flung away: since you have praised my hair, 'T is proper to be choice in what I wear. He speaks. Row home? must we row home? Too surely Know I where its front's demurely Over the Giudecca piled; Window just with window mating, Door on door exactly waiting, All's the set face of a child: But behind it, where's a trace Of the staidness and reserve, And formal lines without a curve, In the same child's playing-face? No two windows look one way IN A GONDOLA 73 O'er the small sea-water thread Below them. Ah, the autumn day I, passing, saw you overhead. First, out a cloud of curtain blew, Then a sweet cry, and last came you-- To catch your lory that must needs Escape just then, of all times then, To peck a tall plant's fleecy seeds, And make me happiest of men. I scarce could breathe to see you reach So far back o'er the balcony To catch him ere he climbed too high Above you in the Smyrna peach That quick the round smooth cord of gold, This coiled hair on your head, unrolled, Fell down you like a gorgeous snake The Roman girls were wont, of old, When Rome there was, for coolness' sake To let lie curling o'er their bosoms. Dear lory, may his beak retain Ever its delicate rose stain As if the wounded lotus-blossoms Had marked their thief to know again! Stay longer yet, for others' sake Than mine! What should your chamber do? 74 DRAMATIC ROMANCES ---With all its rarities that ache In silence while day lasts, but wake At night-time and their life renew, Suspended just to pleasure you Who brought against their will together These objects, and, while day lasts, weave Around them such a magic tether That dumb they look: your harp, believe, With all the sensitive tight strings Which dare not speak, now to itself Breathes slumberously, as if some elf Went in and out the chords, his wings Make murmur wheresoe'er they graze, As an angel may, between the maze Of midnight palace-pillars on And on, to sow God's plagues, have gone Through guilty glorious Babylon. And while such murmurs flow, the nymph Bends o'er the harp-top from her shell As the dry limpet for the lymph Come with a tune he knows so well. And how your statues' hearts must swell! And how your pictures must descend To see each other, friend with friend! Oh, could you take them by surprise, You'd find Schidone's eager Duke IN A GONDOLA 75 Doing the quaintest courtesies To that prim saint by Haste-thee-Luke! And, deeper into her rock den, Bold Castelfranco's Magdalen You'd find retreated from the ken Of that robed counsel-keeping Ser--- As if the Tizian thinks of her, And is not, rather, gravely bent On seeing for himself what toys Are these, his progeny invent, What litter now the board employs Whereon he signed a document That got him murdered! Each enjoys Its night so well, you cannot break The sport up, so, indeed must make More stay with me, for others' sake. She speaks. I. To-morrow, if a harp-string, say, Is used to tie the jasmine back That overfloods my room with sweets, Contrive your Zorzi somehow meets My Zanze! If the ribbon's black, The Three are watching; keep away ! 76 DRAMATIC ROMANCES II. Your gondola---let Zorzi wreathe A mesh of water-weeds about Its prow, as if he unaware Had struck some quay or bridge-foot stair! That I may throw a paper out As you and he go underneath. There's Zanze's vigilant taper; safe are we. Only one nminute more to-night with me? Resume your past self of a month ago! Be you the bashful gallant, I will be The lady with the colder breast than snow. Now bow you, as becomes, nor touch my hand More than I touch yours when I step to land, And say, " All thanks, Siora!"--- Heart to heart And lips to lips! Yet once more, ere we part, Clasp me and make me thine, as mine thou art! [He is surprised, and stabbed. It was ordained to be so, sweet!--and best Comes now, beneath thine eyes, upon thy breast. Still kiss me ! Care not for the cowards ! Care IN A GONDOLA 77 Only to put aside thy beauteous hair My blood will hurt ! The Three, I do not scorn To death, because they never lived: but I Have lived indeed, and so---(yet one more kiss)--- can die! 75 DRAMATIC ROMANCES WARING. I. I. WHAT'S become of Waring Since he gave us all the slip, Chose land-travel or seafaring, Boots and chest or staff and scrip, Rather than pace up and down Any longer London town? II. Who'd have guessed it from his lip Or his brow's accustomed bearing, On the night he thus took ship Or started landward?--little caring For us, it seems, who supped together (Friends of his too, I remember) And walked home thro' the merry weather, The snowiest in all December. WARING 79 I left his arm that night myself For what's-his-name's, the new prose-poet Who wrote the book there, on the shelf--- How, forsooth, was I to know it If Waring meant to glide away Like a ghost at break of day? Never looked he half so gay! III. He was prouder than the devil: How he must have cursed our revel! Ay and many other meetings, Indoor visits, outdoor greetings, As up and down he paced this London, With no work done, but great works undone, Where scarce twenty knew his name. Why not, then, have earlier spoken, Written, bustled? Who's to blame If your silence kept unbroken? " True, but there were sundry jottings, " Stray-leaves, fragments, blurrs and blottings, " Certain first steps were achieved " Already which"--(is that your meaning?) " Had well borne out whoe'er believed " In more to come!" But who goes gleaming; Hedgeside chance-blades, while full-sheaved 80 DRAMATIC ROMANCES Stand cornfields by him? Pride, o'erweening Pride alone,puts forth such claims O'er the day's distinguished names. IV. Meantime, how much I loved him, I find out now I've lost him. I who cared not if I moved him. Who could so carelessly accost him, Henceforth never shall get free Of his ghostly company, His eyes that just a little wink As deep I go into the merit Of this and that distinguised spirit-- His cheeks' raised colour, soon to sink, As long I dwell on some stupendous And tremendous (Heaven defend us !) Monstr'-inform'-ingens-horrend-ous Demoniaco-seraphic. Penman's latest piece of graphic. Nay, my very wrist grows warm With his dragging weight of arm. E'en so, swimmingly appears, Through one's after-supper musings, Some lost lady of old years WARING 81 With her beauteous vain endeavour And goodness unrepaid as ever; The face, accustomed to refusings, We, puppies that we were... Oh never Surely, nice of conscience, scrupled Being aught like false, forsooth, to? Telling aught but honest truth to? What a sin, had we centupled Its possessor's grace and sweetness! No ! she heard in its completeness Truth, for truth's a weighty matter, And truth, at issue, we can't flatter! Well, 't is done with; she's exempt From damning us thro' such a sally; And so she glides, as down a valley, Taking up with her contempt, Past our reach; and in, the flowers Shut her unregarded hours. V. Oh, could I have him back once more, This Waring, but one half-day more! Back, with the quiet face of yore, So hungry for acknowledgment Like mine! I'd fool him to his bent. Feed, should not he, to heart's content? V. G 82 DRAMATIC ROMANCES I'd say, " to only have conceived, " Planned your great works apart from progress, " Surpasses little works achieved!" I'd lie so, I should be believed. I'd make such havoc of the claims Of the day's distinguished names To feast him with, as feasts an ogress Her feverish sharp-toothed gold-crowned child! Or as one feasts a creature rarely Captured here, unreconciled To capture; and completely gives Its pettish humours license, barely Requiring that it lives. VI. Ichabod, Ichabod, The glory is departed! Travels Waring East away? Who, of knowledge, by hearsay, Reports a man upstarted Somewhere as a god, Hordes grown European-hearted, Millions of the wild made tame Oh a sudden at his fame? In Vishnu-land what Avatar? Or who in Moscow, toward the Czar, WARING 83 With the demurest of footfalls Over the Kremlin's pavement bright With serpentine and syenite, Steps, with five other Generals That simultaneously take snuff, For each to have pretext enough And kerchiefwise unfold his sash Which, softness' self, is yet the stuff To hold fast where a steel chain snaps, And leave the grand white neck no gash? Waring in Moscow, to those rough Cold northern natures born perhaps, Like the lambwhite maiden dear From the circle of mute kings Unable to repress the tear, Each as his sceptre down he flings, To Dian's fane at Taurica, Where now a captive priestess, she alway Mingles her tender grave Hellenic speech With theirs, tuned to the hailstone-beaten beach As pours some pigeon, from the myrrhy lands Rapt by the whirlblast to fierce Scythian strands Where breed thc swallows, her melodious cry Amid their barbarous twitter! In Russia? Never! Spain were fitter! Ay, most likely 't is in Spain 84 DRAMATIC ROMANCES That we and Waring meet again Now, while he turns down that cool narrow lane Into the blackness, out of grave Madrid All fire and shine, abrupt as when there's slid Its stiff gold blazing pall From some black coffin-lid. Or, best of all, I love to think The leaving us was just a feint; Back here to London did he slink, And now works on without a wink Of sleep, and we are on the brink Of something great in fresco-paint: Some garret's ceiling, walls and floor, Up and down and o'er and o'er He splashes, as none splashed before Since great Caldara Polidore. Or Music means this land of ours Some favour yet, to pity won By Purcell from his Rosy Bowers,--- " I Give me my so-long promised son, " Let Waring end what I begun !" Then down he creeps and out he steals Only when the night conceals His face; in Kent 't is cherry-time, Or hops are picking: or at prime WARING 85 Of March he wanders as, too happy, Years ago when he was young, Some mild eve when woods grew sappy And the early moths had sprung To life from many a trembling sheath Woven the warm boughs beneath; While small birds said to themselves What should soon be actual song, And young gnats, by tens and twelves, Made as if they were the throng That crowd around and carry aloft The sound they have nursed, so sweet and pure, Out of a myriad noises soft Into a tone that can endure Amid the noise of a July noon When all God's creatures crave their boon, All at once and all in tune, And get it, happy as Waring then, Having first within his ken What a man might do with men: And far too glad, in the even-glow, To mix with the world he meant to take Into his hand, he told you, so-- And out of it his world to make, To contact and to expand As he shut or oped his hand. 86 DRAMATIC ROMANCES Oh Waring, what's to really be? A clear stage and a crowd to see! Some Garrick,say,out shall not he The heart of Hamlet's mystery pluck? Or, where most unclean beasts are rife, Some Junius--am I right?--shall tuck His sleeve, and forth with flaying-knife Some Chatterton shall have the luck Of calling Rowley into life! Some one shall somehow run a muck With this old world for want of strife Sound asleep. Contrive, contrive To rouse us, Waring! Who's alive? Our men scarce seem in earnest now. Distinguished names!--but't is, somehow, As if they played at being names Still more distinguished, like the games Of children. Turn our sport to earnest With a visage of the sternest! Bring the real times back, confessed Still better than our very best! WARING 87 II. I. " WHEN I last saw Waring..." (How all turned to him who spoke! You saw Waring? Truth or joke? In land-travel or sea-faring?) II. " We were sailing by Triest " Where a day or two we harboured: " A sunset was in the West, " When, looking over the vessel's side, " One of our company espied " A sudden speck to larboard. " And as a sea-duck flies and swims " At once, so came the light craft up, " With its sole lateen sail that trims " And turns (the water round its rims " Dancing, as round a sinking cup) " And by us like a fish it curled, " And drew itself up close beside, 88 DRAMATIC ROMANCES " Its great sail on the instant furled, " And o'er its thwarts a shrill voice cried, " (A neck as bronzed as a Lascar's) " Buy wine of us, you English Brig? " `Or fruit, tobacco and cigars? " `A pilot for you to Triest? " `Without one, look you ne'er so big, " `They'll never let you up the bay! " `We natives should know best.' " I turned, and `just those fellows' way,' " Our captain said,` The 'long-shore thieves " `Are laughing at us in their sleeves,' III. " In truth, the boy leaned laughing back; " And one, half-hidden by his side " Under the furled sail, soon I spied, " With great grass hat and kerchief black, " Who looked up with his kingly throat, " Said somewhat, while the other shook " His hair back from his eyes to look " Their longest at us; then the boat, " I know not how, turned sharply round, " Laying her whole side on the sea " As a leaping fish does; from the lee " Into the weather, cut somehow WARING 89 " Her sparkling path beneath our bow " And so went off, as with a bound, " Into the rosy and golden half " O' the sky, to overtake the sun " And reach the shore, like the sea-calf " Its singing cave; yet I caught one " Glance ere away the boat quite passed, " And neither time nor toil could mar " Those features : so I saw the last " Of Waring ! "---You? Oh, never star Was lost here but it rose afar! Look East, where whole new thousands are! In Vishnu-land what Avatar? 90 DRAMATIC ROMANCES THE TWINS. " Give," and "It-shall-be-given-unto-you." I. GRAND rough old Martin Luther Bloomed fables--flowers on furze, The better the uncouther: Do roses stick like burrs? II. A beggar asked an alms One day at an abbey-door, Said Luther; but, seized with qualms, The abbot replied, " We're poor,! III. " Poor who had plenty once, "When gifts fell thick as rain: " But they gave us nought, for the nonce, "And how should we give again ?" THE TWINS 91 IV. Then the beggar, "See your sins! " Of old, unless I err, " Ye had brothers for inmates, twins, " Date and Dabitur. V. " While Date was in good case " Dabitur flourished too: " For Dabitur's lenten face " No wonder if Date rue VI. " Would ye retrieve the one? " Try and make plump the other! " When Date's penance is done, " Dalitur helps his brother. VII. " Only, beware relapse!" The Abbot hung his head. This beggar might be perhaps An angel, Luther said. 92 DRAMATIC ROMANCES A LIGHT WOMAN I So far as our story approaches the end, Which do you pity the most of us three?-- My friend, or the mistress of my friend With her wanton eyes, or me? II. My friend was already too good to lose, And seemed in the way of improvement yet When she crossed his path with her hunting-noose And over him drew her net. III. When I saw him tangled in her toils, A shame, said I, if she adds just him, To her nine-and-ninety other spoils, The hundredth for a whim! A LIGHT WOMAN 93 IV. And before my friend be wholly hers, How easy to prove to him, I said, An eagle's the game her pride prefers, Though she snaps at a wren instead ! V. So, I gave her eyes my own eyes to take, My hand sought hers as in earnest need, And round she turned for my noble sake, And gave me herself indeed. VI. The eagle am I, with my fame in the world, The wren is he, with his maiden face. --You look away and your lip is curled? Patience, a moment's space! VII. For see, my friend goes shaking and white; He eyes me as the basilisk: I have turned,it appears, his day to night, Eclipsing his sun's disk. 94 DRAMATIC ROMANCES VIII. And I did it, he thinks, as a very thief: " Though I love her--that, he comprehends " One should master one's passions, (love, in chief) " And be loyal to one's friends!" IX. And she --she lies in my hand as tame As a pear late basking over a wall; Just a touch to try and off it came; 'T is mine,---can I let it fall? X. With no mind to eat it, that's the worst! Were it thrown in the road, would the case assist? 'T was quenching a dozen blue-flies' thirst When I gave its stalk a twist. XI. And I,--what I seem to my friend, you see: What I soon shall seem to his love, you guess: What I seem to myself, do you ask of me? No hero, I confess. A LIGHT WOMAN 95 XI. 'T is an awkwa thing to play with souls, And matter enough to save one's own: Yet think of my friend, and the burning coals He played with for bits of stone! XIII. One likes to show the truth for the truth; That the woman was light is very true: But suppose she says,---Never mind that youth! What wrong have I done to you? XIV. Well, any how, here the story stays, So far at lesst as I understand; And, Robert Browning, you writer of plays, Here's a subject made to your hand! 96 DRAMATIC ROMANCES THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER. I. I SAID---Then, dearest, since't is so, Since now at length my fate I know, Since nothing all my love avails, Since all, my life seemed meant for, fails, Since this was written and needs must be-- My whole heart rises up to bless Your name in pride and thankfulness! Take back the hope you gave,---I claim Only a memory of the same, --And this beside, if you will not blame, Your leave for one more last ride with me. II. My mistress bent that brow of hers; Those deep dark eyes where pride demurs When pity would be softening through, Fixed me a breathing-while or two THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER 97 Woth life or death in the balance: right! The blood replenished me again; My last thought was at least not vain: I and my mistress, side by side Shall be together, breathe and ride, So,one day more am I deified. Who knows but the world may end to-night? III. Hush! if you saw some western cloud All billowy-bosomed, over--bowed By many benedictions--sun's And moon's and evening-star's at once--- And so, you, looking and loving best, Conscious grew, your passion drew Cloud, sunset, moonrise, star-shine too, Down on you, near and yet more near, Till flesh must fade for heaven was here!--- Thus leant she and lingered--joy and fear! Thus lay she a moment on my breast IV. Then we began to ride. My soul Smoothed itself out, a long-cramped scroll Freshening and fluttering in the wind. Past hopes already lay behind. V. H 98 DRAMATIC ROMANCES What need to strive with a life awry? Had I said that, had I done this, So might I gain, so might I miss. Might she have loved me? just as well She might have hated, who can tell! Where had I been now if the worst befell? And here we are riding, she and I. V. Fail I alone, in words and deeds? Why, all men strive and who succeeds? We rode; it seemed my spirit flew, Saw other regions, cities new, As the world rushed by on either side. I thought,---All labour, yet no less Bear up beneath their unsuccess. Look at the end of work, contrast The petty done, the undone vast, This present of theirs with the hopeful past! I hoped she would love me; here we ride. VI. What hand and brain went ever paired ? What heart alike conceived and dared? What act proved all its thought had been? What will but felt the fleshy screen? We ride and I see her bosom heave. THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER 99 There's many a crown for who can reach. Ten lines, a statesman's life in each! The flag stuck on a heap of bones, A soldier's doing! what atones? They stratch his name on the Abbey-stones. My riding is better, by their leave. VII. What does it all mean, poet? Well, Your brains beat into rhythm, you tell What we felt only; you expressed You hold things beautiful the best, And pace them in rhyme so,side by side. 'T is something, nat 't is much: but then, Have you yourself what's best for men? Are you--poor, sick, old ere your time-- Nearer one whit your own sublime Than we who never have turned a rhyme? Sing, ridin's a joy! For me, I ride. VIII. And you, great sculptor--so, you gave A score of years to Art, her slave, And thats's your Venus, whence we turn To yonder girl that fords the burn! You acquiesce, and shall I repine ? 100 DRAMATIC ROMANCES What, man of music, you grown grey With notes and nothing else to say, Is this your sole praise from a friend, " Greatly his opera's strains intend, " But in music we know how fashions end!" I gave my youth; but we ride, in fine IX. Who knows what's fit for us? Had fate Proposed bliss here should sublimate My being--had I signed the bond--- Still one must lead some life beyond, Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried. This foot once planted on the goal, This glory-garland round my soul, Could I descry such? Try and test! I sink back shuddering from the quest. Earth being so good, would heaven seem best? Now, heaven and she are beyond this ride. X. And yet---she has not spoke so long What if heaven be that, fair and strong At life's best, with our eyes upturned Whither life's flower is first discerned, We, fixed so, ever should so abide? THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER 101 What if we still ride on, we two With life for ever old yet new, Changed not in kind but in degree, The instant made eternity,--- And heaven just prove that I and she Ride, ride together, for ever ride? 102 DRAMATIC ROMANCES THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN: A CHILD'S STORY. (WRITTEN FOR, AND INSCRIBED TO, W. M. THE YOUNGER.) I. HAMELIN Town's in Brunswick, By famous Hanover city; The river Weser, deep and wide, Washes its wall on the southern side; A pleasanter spot you never spied; But, when begins my ditty, Almost five hundred years ago, To see the townsfolk suffer so From vermin, was a pity. II Rats! They fought the dogs and killed the cats, And bit the babies in the cradles, THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN 103 And ate the cheeses out of the vats, And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles, Spit open the kegs of salted sprats, Made nests inside men's Sunday hats, And even spoiled the women's chats By drowning their speaking With shrieking and squeaking In fifty different sharps and flats. III. At last the people in a body To the Town Hall came flocking: " 'T is clear," cried they, " our Mayor's a noddy; " And as for our Corporation --shocking " To think we buy gowns lined with ermine " For dolts that can't or won't determine " What's best to rid us of our vermine! " You hope, because you're old and obese, " To finf in the furry civic robe ease? " Rouse up, sirs! Give your brains a racking " To find the remedy we're lacking, " Or, sure as fate, we'll send you packing!" At this the Mayor and Coporation Quaked with a mighty consternation 104 DRAMATIC ROMANCES V. An hour they sat in council, At length the Mayor broke silence: " For a guilder I'd my ermine gown sell, " I wish I were a mile hence! " It's easy to bid one rack one's brain-- " I'm sure my poor head aches again, " I've scratched it so, and all in vain. " Oh for a trap, a trap, a trap! " Just as he said this, what should hap At the chamber door but a gentle tap? " Bless us," cried the Mayor, " what's that?" (With the Corporation as he sat, Looking little though wondrous fat, Nor brighter was his eye, nor moister Than a too-long-opened oyster, Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous For a plate of turtle green and glutinous) " Only a scraping of shoes on the mat? " Anything like the sound of a rat " Makes my heart go pit-a-pat!" V. " Come in! "---the Mayor cried, looking bigger And in did come the strangest figure! THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN 105 His queer long coat from heel to head Was half of yellow and half of red, And he himself was tall and thin, With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, And light loose hair,yet swarthy skin No tuft on cheek nor beard on chin, But lips where smiles went out and in; There was no guessing his kith and kin: And nobody could enough admire The tall man and his quaint attire. Quoth one: "It's as my great-grandsire, " Starting up at the Trump of Doom's tone, " Had walked this way from his painted tomb- stone!" VI. He advanced to the council-table. And, " Please your honours," said he, " I'm able, " By means of a secret charm, to draw " All creatures living beneath the sun, " That creep or swim or fly or run, " After me so as you never saw ! " And I chiefly use my charm " On creatures that do people harm, " The mole and toad and newt and viper; " And people call me the Pied Piper." 106 DRAMATIC ROMANCES (And here they noticed round his neck A scarf of red and yellow stripe, To match with his coat of the self-same cheque; And at the scarfs end hung a pipe; And his fingers, they noticed, were ever straying As if impatient to be playing Upon this pipe, as low it dangled Over his vesture so old fangled.) " Yet," said he, "poor piper as I am, " In Tartary I freed the Cham, "Last June, from his hige swarms of gnats; " I eased in Asia the Nizam "Of a monstrous brood of vampyre-bats: " And as for what your brain bewilders, "If I can rid your town of rats " Will you give me a thousand guilders?" " One? fifty thousand!"-- was the exclamation Of the astonished Mayor and Corporation. VII. Into the street the Piper stept, Smiling first a little smile, As if he knew what magic slept In his quiet pipe the while; Then, like a musical adept, THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN 107 To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled, And green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled, LiKe a candle-flame where salt is sprinkled: And ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered, You heard as if an army muttered; And the muttering grew to a grumbling; And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling; And out of the houses the rats came tumbling. Great rats, small rats, lean rats,brawny rats, Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats, Grave old plodders, gay young friskers, Fathers, mothers,uncles,cousins, Cocking tails and pricking whiskers, Families by tens and dozens, Brothers, sisters, husbands,wives-- Followed the Piper for their lives. From street to street he piped advancing, And step for step they followed dancing, Until they came to the river Weser, Wherein all plunged and perished! --Save one who, stout as Julius Caesar, Swam across and lived to carry (As he, the manuscript he cherished) To Rat-land home his commentary: Which was,"At the first shrill notes of the pipe, " I heard a sound as of scraping tripe, 108 DRAMATIC ROMANCES " And putting apples, wondrous ripe, " Into a cider-press's gripe: " And a moving away of pickle-tub-boards, " And a leaving ajar of conserve-cupboards, " And a drawing the corks of train-oil-flasks, " And a breaking the hoops of butter-casks: " And it seemed as if a voice " (Sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery " Is breathed) called out, " Oh rats, rejoice ! " ` The world is grown to one vast drysaltery " ` So munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon, " ` Breakfast, supper, dinner, luncheon!' " And just as a bulky sugar-puncheon, " All ready staved, like a great sun shone " Glorious scarce an inch before me, " Just as methought it said, I Come, bore me!' " ---I found the Weser rolling o'er me." VIII. You should have heard the Hamelin people Ringing the bells till they rocked the steeple. " Go," cried the Mayor, "and get long poles, " Poke out the nests and block up the holes ! " Consult with carpenters and builders, THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN 109 " And leave in our town not even a trace " Of the rats ! "--when suddenly, up the face Of the Piper perked in the market-place, With a, " First, if you please, my thousand guilders!" IX. A thousand guilders! The Mayor looked blue; So did the Corporation too. For council dinners made rare havoc With Claret, Mosele, Vin-de-Grave, Hock; And half the money would replenish Their cellar's biggest butt with Rhenish. To pay this sum to a wandering fellow With a gipsy coat of red and yellow ! " Beside," quoth the Mayor with a knowing wink, " Our business was done at the river's brink; " We saw with our eyes the vermin sink, " And what's dead can't come to life, I think. " So, friend, we're not the folks to shrink " From the duty of giving you something for drink, " And a matter of money to put in your poke; " But as for the guilders, what we spoke " Of them, as you very well know, was in joke. " Beside, our losses have made us thrifty. " A thousand guilders! Come, take fifty!" 110 DRAMATIC ROMANCES X. The Piper's face fell, and he cried " No trifling! I can't wait, beside! " I've proimised to visit by dinnertime " Bagdat, and accept tbe prime " Of the Head-Cook's pottage, all he's rich in, " For having left, in the Caliph's kitchen, " Of a nest of scorpions no survivor: " With him I proved no bargain-driver, " With you, don't think I'll bate a stiver! " And folks who put me in a passion " May find me pipe after another fashion." XI " How?" cried the Mayor, " d'ye think I brook " Being worse treated than a Cook? " Insulted by a lazy ribald " With idle pipe and vesture piebald? " You threaten us, fellow? Do your worst, " Blow your pipe there till you burst !" XII. Once more he stept into the street And to his lips again THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN 111 Laid his long pipe of smooth straight cane; And ere he blew three notes (such sweet Soft notes as yet musician's cunning Never gave the enraptured air) There was a rustling that seemed like a bustling Of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling, Small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering, Little hands clapping and little tongues chattering, And,like fowls in a farm-yard when barley is scattering, Out came the children running. All the little boys and girls, With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls, And sparkiling eyes and teeth like pearls, Tripping and skipping,ran merrily after The wonderful music with shouting and laughter. XIII. The Mayor was dumb, and the Council stood As if they were changed into blocks of wood, Unable to move a step, or cry To the children merrily skipping by, --Could only follow with the eye That joyous crowd at the Piper's back. But how the Mayor was on the rack, And the wretchcd Council's bosoms beat, As the Piper turned from the High Street 112 DRAMATIC ROMANCES To where the Weser rolled its waters Right in the way of their sons and daughters! However he turned from South to West, And to Koppelberg Hill his steps addressed, And after him the children pressed; Great was the joy in every breast. " He never can cross that mighty top! " He's forced to let the piping drop, " And we shall see our children stop ! " When, lo, as they reached the mountain-side, A wondrous portal opened wide, As if a cavern was suddenly hollowed; And the Piper advanced and the children followed, And when all were in to the very last, The door in the mountain-side shut fast. Did I say, all? No! One was lame, And could not dance the whole of the way; And in after years, if you would blame His sadness, he was used to say,--- " It's dull in our town since my playmates left! " I can't forget that I'm bereft " Of all the pleasant sights they see, " Which the Piper also promised me. " For he led us, he said, to a joyous land, " Joining the town and just at hand, " Where waters gushed and fruit-trees grew THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN 113 " And flowers put forth a fairer hue, " And evereything was strange and new; " The sparrows were brighter than peacocks here, " And their dogs outran our fellow deer, " And honey-bees had lost their stings, " And horses were born with eagles' wings: " And just as I became assured " My lame foot would be speedily cured, " The music stopped and I stood still, " And found myself outside the hill, " Left alone against my will, " To go now limping as before, " And never hear of that country more!" XIV. Alas, alas for Hamelin! There came into many a burghers pate A text which says that heaven's gate Opes to the rich it as easy rate As the needles eye takes a camel in! The Mayor sent East, West, North and South, To offer the Piper, by word of mouth, Whatever it was men's lot to find him, Silver and gold to his heart's content, If he'd only return the way he went, And bring the children behind him. 114 DRAMATIC ROMANCES But when they saw 't was a lost endeavour, And Piper and dancers were gone for ever, They made a decree that lawyers never Should think their records dated duly If, after the day of the month and year, These words did not as well appear, " And so long after what happened here " On the Twenty-second of July, " Thirteen hundred and seventy-six:" And the better in memory to fix The place of the children's last retreat, They called it, the Pied Piper's Street-- Where any one playing on pipe or tabor Was sure for the future to lose his labour. Nor suffered they hostelry or tavern To shock with mirth a street so solemn; But opposite the place of the cavern They wrote the story on a column, And on the great church-window painted The same, to make the world acquainted How their children were stolen away, And there it stands to this very day. And I must not omit to say That in Transylvania there's a tribe Of alien people who ascribe The outlandish ways and dress THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN 115 On which their neighbours lay such stress, To their fathers and mothers having risen Out of some subterraneous prison Into which they were trepanned Long time ago in a mighty band Out of Hamelin town in Brunswick land, But how or why, they don't understand. XV. So, Willy, let me and you be wipers Of scores out with all men--especially pipers! And, whether they pipe us free from rats or from mice, If we've promised them aught, let us keep our promise ! 116 DRAMATIC ROMANCES THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS. I YOU'RE my friend: I was the man the Duke spoke to; I helped the Duchess to cast off his yoke, too; So here's the tale from beginnig to end, My friend ! II. Ours is a great wild country: If you climb to our castle's top, I don't see where your eye can stop; For when you've passed the cornfield country, Where vineyards leave off, flocks are packed, And sheep-range leads to cattle-tract, And cattle-tract to open-chase, And open-chase to the very base Of the mountain where, at a funeral pace, Round about, solemn and slow, One by one, row after row, THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS 117 Up and up the pine-trees go, So, like black priests up, and so Down the other side again To another greater, wilder country, That's one vast red drear burnt-up plain, Branched through and through with many a vein Whence iron's dug, and copper's dealt; Look right, look left,look straight before,--- Beneath they mine, above they smelt, Copper-ore and iron-ore, And forge and furnace mould and melt, And so on, more and ever more, Till at the last,for a bounding belt, Comes the salt sand hoar of the great sea-shore, --And the whole is our Duke's country. III. I was born the day this present Duke was--- ( And O, says the song, ere I was old !) In the castle where the other Duke was-- ( When I was happy and young, not old!) I in the kennel, he in the bower: We are of like age to an hour. My father was huntsman in that day; Who has not heard my father say That, when a boar was brought to bay, 118 DRAMATIC ROMANCES Three times, four times out of five, With his huntspear he'd contrive To get the killing-place transfixed, And pin him true, both eyes betwixt? And that's why the old Duke would rather He lost a salt-pit than my father, And loved to have him ever in call; That's why my father stood in the hall When the old Duke brought his infant out To show the people, and while they passed The wondrous bantling round about, Was first to start at the outside blast As the Kaiser's courier blew his horn Just a month after the babe was born. " And," quoth the Kaiser's courier, " since " The Duke has got an heir, our Prince " Needs the Duke's self at his side:" The Duke looked down and seemed to wince, But he thought of wars o'er the world wide, Castles a-fire, men on their march, The toppling tower, the crashing arch; And up he looked, and awhile he eyed The row of crests and shields and banners Of all achievements after all manners, And " ay," said the Duke with a surly pride, The more was his comfort when he died THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS 119 At next year's end, in a velvet suit, With a gilt glove on his hand, his foot In a silken shoe for a leather boot, Petticoated like a herald, In a chamber next to an ante-room, Where he breathed the breath of page and groom What he called stink, and they, perfume: --They should have set him on red Berold Mad with pride, like fire to manage! They should have got his cheek fresh tannage Such a day as to-day in the merry sunshine ! Had they stuck on his fist a rough-foot merlin! (Hark, the wind's on the heath at its game ! Oh for a noble falcon-lanner To flap each broad wing like a banner, And turn in the wind, and dance like flame!) Had they broached a white-beer cask from Berlin --Or if you incline to prescribe mere wine Put to his lips, when they saw him pine, A cup of our own Moldavia fine, Cotnar for instance, green as May sorrel And ropy with sweet,---we shall not quarrel. IV. So, at home, the sick tall yellow Duchess Was left with the infant in her clutches, 120 DRAMATIC ROMANCES She being the daughter of God knows who: And now was the time to revisit her tribe. Abroad and afar they went, the two, And let our people rail and gibe At the empty hall and extinguished fire, As loud as we liked, but ever in vain, Till after long years we had our desire, And back came the Duke and his mother again. V. And he came back the pertest little ape That ever affronted human shape; Full of his travel, struck at himself. You'd say, he despised our bluff old ways? ---Not he! For in Paris they told the elf Our rough North land was the Land of Lays, The one good thing left in evil days; Since the Mid-Age was the Heroic Time, And only, in wild nooks like ours Could you taste of it yet as in its prime, And see true castles, with proper towers, Young-heated women, old-minded men, And manners now as manners were then. So, all that the old Dukes had been, without knowing it This Duke would fain know he was, without bring it THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS 121 'T was not for the joy's self, but the joy of his showing it, Nor for the pride's self, but the pride of our seeing it, He revived all usages thoroughly worn-out, The souls of them fumed-forth, the hearts of them torn-out: And chief in the chase his neck he perilled On a lathy horse, all legs and length, With blood for bone, all speed, no strength; --They should have set him on red Berold With the red eye slow consuming in fire, And the thin stiff ear like an abbey-spire! VI. Well, such as he was, he must marry, we heard: And out of a convent, at the word, Came the lady, in time of spring. --Oh, old thoughts they cling, they cling! That day, I know, with a dozen oaths I clad myself in thick hunting-clothes Fit for the chase of urochs or buffle In winter-time when you need to muffle. But the Duke had a mind we should cut a figure, And so we saw the lady arrive: My friend, I have seen a white crane bigger! She was the smallest lady alive, 122 DRAMATIC ROMANCES Made in a piece of nature's madness, Too small, almost, for the life and gladness That over-filled her, as some hive Out of the bears' reach on the high trees Is crowded with its safe merry bees: In truth, she was not hard to please! Up she looked, down she looked, round at the mead, Straight at the castle, that's best indeed To look at from outside the walls: As for us, styled the " serfs and thralls," She as much thanked me as if she had said it, (With her eyes, do you understand?) Because I patted her horse while I led it; And Max, who rode on her other hand, Said, no bird flew past but she inquired What its true name was, nor ever seemed tired-- If that was an eagle she saw hover, And the green and grey bird on the field was the plover, When suddenly appeared the Duke: And as down she sprung, the small foot pointed On my hand,--as with a rebuke, And as if his backbone were not jointed, The Duke stepped rather aside than forward, And welcomed her with his grandest smile, And, mind you, his nmother all the while Chilled in the rear, like a wind to Nor'ward; THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS 123 And up, like a weary yawn, with its pullies Went, in a shriek, the rusty portcullis; And, like a glad sky the north-wind sullies, The lady's face stopped its play, As if her first hair had grown grey; For such things must begin some one day. VII. In a day or two she was well again; As who should say, " You labour in vain! "This is all a jest against God, who meant "I should ever be as I am content " And glad in his sight; therefore, glad I will be." So, smiling as at first went she. VIII. She was active, stirring, all fire--- Could not rest, could not tire-- To a stone she might have given life! (I myself loved once, in my day) --For a shepherd's, miner's, huntsman's wife, (I had a wife, I know what I say) Never in all the world such an one! And here was plenty to be done, And she that could do it, great or small, 124 DRAMATIC ROMANCES She was to do nothing at all. There was already this man in his post, This in his station, and that in his office, And the Duke s plan admitted a wife, at most, To meet his eye, with the other trophies, Now outside the hall, now in it, To sit thus, stand thus, see and be seen, At the proper place in the proper minute, And die away the life between. And it was amusing enough, each infraction Of rule---(but for after-sadness that came) To hear the consummate self-satisfaction With which the young Duke and the old dame Would let her advise, and criticise, And, being a fool, instruct the wise, And, child-like, parcel out praise or blame: They bore it all in complacent guise, As though an artificer, after contriving A wheel-work image as if it were living, Should find with delight it could motion to strike him ! So found the Duke, and his mother like him : The lady hardly got a rebuff-- That had not been contemptuous enough, With his cursed smirk, as he nodded applause, And kept off the old mother-cat's claws. THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS 125 IX. So, the little lady grew silent and thin, Paling and ever paling, As the way is with a hid chagrin; And the Duke perceived that she was ailing, And said in his heart, "'Tis done to spite me, " But I shall find in my power to right me !" Don't swear, friend! The old one, many a year, Is in hell, and the Duke's self... you shall hear. X. Well, early in autumn, at first winter-warning, When the stag had to break with his foot, of a morning, A drinking-hole out of the fresh tender ice That covered the pond till the sun, in a trice, Loosening it, let out a ripple of gold, And another and another, and faster and faster, Till, dimpling to blindness, the wide water rolled: Then it so chanced that the Duke our master Asked himself what were the pleasures in season, And found, since the calendar bade him be hearty, He should do the Middle Age no treason In resolving on a hunting-party. 126 DRAMATIC ROMANCES Always provided, old books showed the way of it! What meant old poets by their strictures? And when old poets had said their say of it, How taught old painters in their pictures? We must revert to the proper channels, Workings in tapestry, paintings on panels, And gather up woodcrart's authentic traditions: Here was food for our various ambitions, As on each case, exactly stated-- To encourage your dog, now, the properest chirrup, Or best prayer to Saint Hubert on mounting your stirrup--- We of the household took thought and debated. Blessed was he whose back ached with the jerkin His sire was wont to do forest-work in; Blesseder he who nobly sunk " ohs" And "ahs" while he tugged on his grandsire's trunk- mose; What signified hats if they had no rims on, Each slouching before and behind like the scallop, And able to serve at sea for a shallop, Loaded with lacquer and looped with crimson? So that the deer now, to make a short rhyme on't, What with our Venerers, Prickers and Verderers, Might hope for real hunters at length and not murderers, And oh the Duke's tailor, he had a hot time on't! THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS 127 XI Now you must know that when the first dizziness Of flap-hats and buff-coats and jack-boots subsided, The Duke put this question," The Duke's part provided, " Had not the Duchess some share in the business?" For out of the mouth of two or three witnesses Did he establish all fit-or-unfitnesses: And, after much laying of heads together, Somebody's cap got a notable feather By the announcement with proper unction That he had discovered the lady's function Since ancient authors gave this tenet, " When horns wind a mort and the deer is at siege, " Let the dame of the castle prick forth on her jennet, " And, with water to wash the hands of her liege " In a clean ewer with a fair toweling, " Let her preside at the disemboweling." Now, my friend, if you had so little religion As to catch a hawk, some falcon-lanner, And thrust her broad wings like a banner Into a coop for a vulgar pigeon; And if day by day and week by week You cut her claws, and sealed her eyes, And clipped her wings, and tied her beak, Would it cause you any great surprise 128 DRAMATIC ROMANCES If, when you decided to give her an airing You found she needed a little preparing? --I say, should you be such a curmudgeon, If she clung to the perch, as to take it in dudgeon? Yet when the Duke to his lady signified, Just a day before, is he judged most dignified, In what a pleasure she was to participate,-- And, instead of leaping wide in flashes, Her eyes just lifted their long lashes, As if pressed by fatigue even he could not dissipate, And duly acknowledged the Duke's forthought, But spoke of her health if her health were worth aught, Of the weight by day and the watch by night And much wrong now that used to be right, So, thanking him, declined the hunting,-- Was conduct ever more affronting? With all the ceremony settled-- With the towel ready, and the sewer Polishing up his oldest ewer, And the jennet pitched upon, a piebald, Black-barred, cream-coated and pink eye-balled,-- No wonder if the Duke was nettled ! And when she persisted nevertheless,-- Well, I suppose here's the time to confess That there ran half round our lady's chamber A balcony none of the hardest to clamber; THE FLICHT OF THE DUCHESS 129 And that Jacynth the tire-woman, ready in waiting Stayed in call outside, what need of relating? And since Jacynth was like a June rose, why, a fervent Adorer of Jacynth of course was your servant; And if she had the habit to peep through the casement, How could I keep at any vast distance? And so, as I say, on the lady's persistence, The Duke, dumb-stricken with amazement, Stood for a while in a sultry smother, And then, with a smile that partook of the awful, Turned her over to his yellow mother To learn what was held decorous and lawful; And the mother smelt blood with a cat-like instinct, As her cheek quick whitened thro' all its quince-tinct. Oh, but the lady heard the whole truth at once ! What meant she?--Who was she?---Her duty and station, The wisdom of age and the folly of youth at once Its decent regard and its fiting relation-- In brief, my iriend, set all the devils in hell free And turn them out to carouse in a belfry And treat the priests to a fifty-part canon, And then you may guess how that tongue of hers ran on! Well, somehow or other it ended at last And, Iicking her whiskers, out she passed; And after her,--making (he hoped) a face v. 130 DRAMATIC ROMANCES Like Emperor Nero or Sultan Saladin, Stalked the Duke's self with the austere grace Of ancient hero or modern paladin, From door to staircase---oh such a solemn Unbending of the vertebral column! XII. However, at sunrise our company mustered; And here was the huntsman bidding unkennel, And there'neath his bonnet the pricker blustered, With feather dank as a bough of wet fennel; For the court-yard walls were filled with fog You might have cut as an axe chops a log-- Like so much wool for colour and bulkiness; And out rode the Duke in a perfect sulkiness, Since, before breakfast, a man feels but queasily, And a sinking at the lower abdomen Begins the day with indifferent omen. And lo, as he looked around uneasily, The sun ploughed the fog up and drove it asunder This way and that from the valley under; And, looking through the court-yard arch, Down in the valley, what should meet him But a troop of Gipsies on their march? No doubt with the annual gifts to greet him. THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS 131 XIII. Now, in your land, Gipsies reach you, only After reaching all lands beside; North they go, South they go, trooping or lonely, And still, as they travel far and wide, Catch they and keep now a trace here, a trace there, That puts you in mind of a place here, a place there. But with us, I believe they rise out of the ground, And nowhere else, I take it, are found With the earth-tint yet so freshly embrowned: Born, no doubt, like insects which breed on The very fruit they are meant to feed on. For the earth--not a use to which they don't turn it, The ore that grows in the mountain's womb Or the sand in the pits like a honeycomb, They sift and soften it, bake it and burn it-- Whether they weld you, for instance, a snaffle With side-bars never a brute can baffle; Or a lock that's a puzzle of wards within wards; Or, if your colt's fore-foot inclines to curve inwards, Horseshoes they hammer which turn on a swivel And won't allow the hoof to shrivel. Then they cast bells like the shell of the winkle That keep a stout heart in the ram with their tinkle; K2 132 DRAMATIC ROMANCES But the sand--they pinch and pound it like otters; Commend me to Gipsy glass-makers and potters ! Glasses they'll blow you, crystal-clear, Where just a faint cloud of rose shall appear, As if in pure water you dropped and let die A bruised black-blooded mulberry; And that other sod, their crowning pride, With long white threads distinct inside, Like the lake-flower's fibrous roots which dangle Loose such a length and never tangle, Where the bold sword-lily cuts the clear waters, And the cup-lily couches with all the white daughters Such are the works they put their hand to, The uses they turn and twist iron and sand to. And these made the troop, which our Duke saw sally Toward his castle from out of the valley, Men and women, like new-hatched spiders, Come out with the morning to greet our riders. And up they wound till they reached the ditch, Whereat all stopped save one, a witch That I knew, as she hobbled from the group, By her gait dircctly and her stoop, I, whom Jacynth was used to importune To let that same witch tell us our fortune. The oldest Gipsy then above ground; And, sure as the autumn season came round, THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS 133 She paid us a visit for profit or pastime, And every time, as she swore, for the last time. And presently she was seen to sidle Up to the Duke till she touched his bridle, So that the horse of a sudden reared up As under its nose the old witch peered up With her worn-out eyes, or rather eye-holes Of no use now but to gather brine, And began a kind of level whine Such as they used to sing to their viols When their ditties they go grinding Up and down with nobody minding; And then, as of old, at the end of the humming Her usual presents were forthcoming ---A dog-whistle blowing the fiercest cf trebles, (Just a sea-shore stone holding a dozen fine pebbles,) Or a porcelain mouth-piece to screw on a pipe- end,--- And so she awaited her annual stipend. But this time, the Duke would scarcely vouchsafe A word in reply; and in vain she felt With twitching fingers at her belt For the purse of sleek pine-martin pelt, Ready to put what he gave in her pouch safe Till, either to quicken his apprehension, Or possibly with an after-intention, 134 DRAMATIC ROMANCES She was come, she said, to pay her duty To the new Duchess the youthful beauty. No sooner had she named his lady, Than a shine lit up the face so shady, And its smirk returned with a novel meaning-- For it struck him, the babe just wanted weaning; If one gave her a taste of what life was and sorrow, She, foolish to-day, would be wiser to-morrow; And who so fit a teacher of trouble As this sordid crone bent well-nigh double? So, glancing at her wolf-skin vesture, (If such it was, for they grow so hirsute That their own fleece serves for natural fur-suit) He was contrasting,'t was plain from his gesture, The life of the lady so flower-like and delicate With the loathsome squalor of this helicat. I, in brief, was the man the Duke beckoned From out of the throng, and while I drew near He told the crone--as I since have reckoned By the way he bent and spoke into her ear With circumspection and mystery-- The main of the lady's history, Her frowardness and ingratitude: And for all the crone's submissive attitude I could see round her mouth the loose plaits tightening, And her brow with assenting intelligence brightening, THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS 135 As though she engaged with hearty goodwill Whatever he now might enjoin to fulfil, And promised the lady a thorough frightening. And so, just giving her a glimpse Of a purse, with the air of a man who imps The wing of the hawk that shall fetch the hernshaw, He bade me take the Gipsy mother And set her telling some story or other Of hill or dale, oak-wood or fermshaw, To wile away a weary hour For the lady left alone in her bower, Whose mind and body craved exertion And yet shrank from all better diversion. XIV. Then clapping heel to his horse, the mere curveter, Out rode the Duke, and after his hollo Horses and hounds swept, huntsman and servitor, And back I turned and bade the crone follow. And what makes me confident what's to be told you Had all along been of this crone's devising, Is, that, on looking round sharply, behold you, There was a novelty quick as surprising: For first, she had shot up a full head in stature, And her step kept pace with mine nor faltered, As if age had foregone its usurpature, 136 DRAMATIC ROMANCES And the ignoble mien was wholly altered, And the face looked quite of another nature, And the change reached too, whatever the change meant, Her shaggy wolf-skin cloak's arrangement: For where its tatters hung loose like sedges, Gold coins were glittering on the edges, Like the band-roll strung with tomans Which proves the veil a Persian woman's: And under her brow, like a snail's horns newly Come out as after the rain he paces, Two unmistakeable eye-points duly Live and aware looked out of their places. So, we went and found Jacynth at the entry Of the lady's chamber standing sentry; And Jacynth rejoiced to admit any one, For since last night, by the same token, Not a single word had the lady spoken: They went in both to the presence together, While I in the balcony watched the weather. XV. And now, what took place at the very first of all, I cannot tell, as I never could learn it: Jacynth constantly wished a curse to fall On that little head of hers and burn it THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS 137 If she knew how she came to drop so soundly Asleep of a sudden and there continue The whole time sleeping as profoundly As one of the boars my father would pin you 'Twixt the eyes where life holds garrison, --Jacynth forgive me the comparison! But where I begin my own narration Is a little after I took my station To breathe the frcsh air from the balcony, And, having in those days a falcon eye, To follow the hunt thro' the open country, From where the bushes thinlier crested The hillocks, to a plain where's not one tree. When, in a moment, my ear was arrested By--was it singing, or was it saying, Or a strange musical instrument playing In the chamber?--and to be certain I pushed the lattice, pulled the curtain, And there lay Jacynth asleep, Yet as if a watch she tried to keep, In a rosy sleep along the floor With her head against the door; While in the midst, on the seat of state, Was a queen--the Gipsy woman late, With head and face downbent On the lady's head and face intent: 138 DRAMATIC ROMANCES For, coiled at her feet like a child at ease, The lady sat between her knees And o'er them the lady's clasped hands met, And on those hands her chin was set, And her upturned face met the face of the crone Wherein the eyes had grown and grown As if she could double and quadruple At pleasure the play of either pupil --Very like, by her hands' slow fanning, As up and down like a gor-crowls flappers They moved to measure, or bell-clappers. I said " Is it blessing, is it banning, " Do they applaud you or burlesque you-- " Those hands and fingers with no flesh on.?" But, just as I thought to spring in to the rescue, At once I was stopped by the lady's expression: For it was life her eyes were drinking From the crone's wide pair above unwinking, ---Life's pure fire received without shrinking, Into the heart and breast whose heaving Told you no single drop they were leaving, --Life, that filling her, passed redundant Into her very hair, back swerving Over each shoulder, loose and abundant, As her head thrown back showed the white throat curving; THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS 139 And the very tresses shared in the pleasure, Moving to the mystic measure, Bounding as the bosom bounded. I stopped short, more and more confounded, As still her cheeks burned and eyes glistened, As she listened and she listened: When all at once a hand detained me, The selfsame contagion gained me, And I kept time to the wondrous chime, Making out words and prose and rhyme, Till it seemed that the music furled Its wings like a task fulfilled, and dropped From under the words it first had propped, And left them nmidway in the world: Word took word as hand takes hand, I could hear at last, and understand, And when I held the unbroken thread, The Gipsy said:--- " And so at last we find my tribe. " And so I set thee in the midst, "And to one and all of them describe " What thou saidst and what thou didst, " Our long and terrible journey through, " And all thou art ready to say and do " In the trials that remain: 140 DRAMATIC ROMANCES " I trace them the vein and the other vein " That meet on thy brow and part again, " Making our rapid mystic mark; " And I bid my people prove and probe " Each eye's profound and glorious globe " Till they detect the kindred spark " In those depths so dear and dark, " Like the spots that snap and burst and flee, " Circling over the midnight sea. " And on that round young cheek of thine " I make them recognize the tinge, " As when of the costly scarlet wine " They drip so much as will impinge " And spread in a thinnest scale afloat " One thick gold drop from the olive's coat " Over a silver plate whose sheen " Still thro' the mixture shall be seen. " For so I prove thee, to one and all, " Fit, when my people ope their breast, " To see the sign, and hear the call, " And take the vow, and stand the test " Which adds one more child to the rest-- " When the breast is bare and the arms are wide, " And the world is left outside. " For there is probation to decree, " And many and long must the trials be THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS 141 " Thou shalt victoriously endure, " If that brow is true and those eyes are sure; " Like a jewel-finder's fierce assay " Of the prize he dug from its mountain-tomb--- " Let once the vindicating ray " Leap out amid the anxious gloom, " And steel and fire have done their part " And the prize falls on its finder's heart; " So, trial after trial past, " Wilt thou fall at the very last " Breathless, half in trance " With the thrill of the great deliverance, " Into our arms for evermore; " And thou shalt know, those arms once curled " About thee, what we knew before, " How love is the only good in the world. " Henceforth be loved as heart can love, " Or brain devise, or hand approve! " Stand up, look below, " It is our life at thy feet we throw " To step with into light and joy; " Not a power of life but we employ " To satisfy thy nature's want; " Art thou the tree that props the plant, " Or the climbing plant that seeks the tree--- " Canst thou help us, must we help thee? 142 DRAMATIC ROMANCES " If any two creatures grew into one, " They would do more than the world has done " Though each apart were never so weak, " Ye vainly through the world should seek " For the knowledge and the might " Which in such union grew their right: " So to approach at least that end, " And blend,--as much as may be, blend " Thee with us or us with thee,-- " As climbing plant or propping tree, " Shall some one deck thee, over and down " Up and about, with blossoms and leaves? " Fix his heart's fruit for thy garland-crown, " Cling with his soul as the gourd-vine cleaves, " Die on thy boughs and disappear " While not a leaf of thine is sere? " Or is the other fate in store, " And art thou fitted to adore, " To give thy wondrous self away, " And take a stronger self away, " I foresee and could foretell " Thy future portion, sure and well: " But those passionate eyes speak true, speak true, " Let them say what thou shalt do! " Only be sure thy daily life, " In its peace or in its strife, THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS 143 " Never shall be unobserved; " We pursue thy whole career, " And hope for it, or doubt, or fear,--- " Lo, hast thou kept thy path or swerved, " We are beside thee in all thy ways, " With our blame, with our praise, " Our shanme to feel, our pride to show, " Glad, angry--but indifferent, no! " Whether it be thy lot to go, " For the good of us all, where the haters meet " In the crowded city's horrible street; " Or thou step alone through the morass " Where never sound yet was " Save the dry quick clap of the stork's bill, " For the air is still, and the water still, " When the blue breast oi the dipping coot " Dives under, and all is mute. " So at the last shall come old age, " Decrepit as befits that stage; " How else wouldst thou retire apart " With the hoarded memories of thy heart, " And gather all to the very least " Of the fragments of life's earlier feast, " Let fall through eagerness to find " The crowning dainties yet behind? 144 DRAMATIC ROMANCES " Ponder on the entire past " Laid together thus at last " When the twilight helps to fuse " The first fresh with the faded hues, " And the outline of the whole, " As round eve's shades their framework roll, " Grandly fronts for once thy soul. " And then as,'mid the dark, a gleam " Of yet another morning breaks, " And like the hand which ends a dream, " Death with the might of his sunbeam, " Touches the flesh and the soul awakes, " Then-----" Ay, then indeed something would happen! But what? For here her voice changed like a bird's; There grew more of the music and less of the words; Had Jacynth only been by me to clap pen To paper and put you down every syllable With those clever clerkly fingers, All I've forgotten as well as what lingers In this old brain of mine that's but ill able To give you even this poor version Of the speech I spoil, as it were, with stammering --More fault of those who had the hammering Of prosody into me and syntax, And did it, not with hobnails but tintacks! THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS 145 But to return from this excursion,--- Just, do you mark, when the song was sweetest, The peace most deep and the charm completest, There came, shall I say, a snap-- And the charm vanished! And my sense returned, so strangely banished, And, starting as from a nap, I knew the crone was bewitching my lady, With Jacynth asleep; and but one spring made I Down from the casement, round to the portal, Another minute and I had entered,--- When the door opened, and more than mortal Stood, with a face where to my mind centred All beauties I ever saw or shall see, The Duchess: I stopped as if struck by palsy. She was so different, happy and beautiful, I felt at once that all was best, And that I had nothing to do, for the rest, But wait her commands, obey and be dutiful. Not that, in fact, there was any commanding; I saw the glory of her eye, And the brow's height and the breast's expanding, And I was hers to live or to die. As for finding what she wanted, You know God Almighty granted Such little signs should serve wild creatures v. I. 146 DRAMATIC ROMANCES To tell one another all their desires, So that each knows what his friend requires, And does its bidding without teachers. I preceded her; the crone Followed silent and alone; I spoke to her, but she merely jabbered In the old style ; both her eyes had slunk Back to their pits; her stature shrunk; In short, the soul in its body sunk Like a blade sent home to its scabbard. We descended, I preceding; Crossed the court with nobody heeding; All the world was at the chase, The courtyard like a desertplace, The stable emptied of its small fry; I saddled myself the very palfrey I remember patting while it carried her, The day she arrived and the Duke married her. And, do you know, though it's easy deceiving Oneself in such matters, I can't help believing The lady had not forgotten it either, And knew the poor devil so much beneath her Would have been only too glad for her service To dance on hot ploughshares like a Turk dervise, But, unable to pay proper duty where owing it, Was reduced to that pitiful method of showing it: THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS 147 For though the moment I began setting His saddle on my own nag of Berold's begetting, (Not that I meant to be obtrusive) She stopped me, while his rug was shifting, By a single rapid finger's lifting, And, with a gesture kind but conclusive, And a little shake of the head, refused me,-- I say, although she never used me, Yet when she was mounted, the Gipsy behind her, And I ventured to remind her, I suppose with a voice of less steadiness Than usual, for my feeling exceeded me, --Something to the effect that I was in readiness Whenever God should plesse she needed me,--- Then, do you know, her face looked down on me With a look that placed a crown on me, And she felt in her bosom,---mark, her bosom--- And, as a flower-tree drops its blossom, Dropped me... ah, had it been a purse Of silver, my friend, or gold that's worse, Why, you see, as soon as I found myself So understood,--that a true heart so may gain Such a reward,---I should have gone home again, Kissed Jacynth, and soberly drowned myself! It was a little plait of hair Such as friends in a convent make L2 148 DRAMATIC ROMANCES To wear, each for the other's sake,-- This, see, which at my breast I wear, Ever did (rather to Jacynth's grudgment), And ever shall, till the Day of Judgment. And then,--and then,--to cut short,--this is idle, These are feelings it is not good to foster,-- I pushed the gate wide, she shook the bridle, And the palfrey bounded,--and so we lost her. XVI. When the liquor's out why clink the cannikin? I did think to describe you the panic in The redoubtable breast of our master the mannikin, And what was the pitch of his mother's yellowness, How she turned as a shark to snap the spare-rib Clean off, sailors say, from a pearl-diving Carib, When she heard, what she called the flight of the feloness --But it seems such child's play, What they said and did with the lady away! And to dance on, when we've lost the music, Always made me---and no doubt makes you---sick. Nay, to my mind, the world's face looked so stern As that sweet form disappeared through the postern, She that kept it in constant good humour, It ought to have stopped; there seemed nothing to do more. THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS 149 But the world thought otherwise and went on, And my head's one that its spite was spent on: Thirty years are fled since that morning, And with them all my head's adorning. Nor did the old Duchess die outright, As you expect, of suppressed spite, The natural end of every adder Not suffered to empty its poison-bladder: But she and her son agreed, I take it, That no one should touch on the story to wake it, For the wound in the Duke's pride rankled fiery, So, they made no search and small inquiry-- - And when fresh Gipsies have paid us a visit, I've Noticed the couple were never inquisitive, But told them they're folks the Duke don't want here, And bade them make haste and cross the frontier. Brief, the Duchess was gone and the Duke was glad of it, And the old one was in the young one's stead, And took, in her place, the household's head, And a blessed time the household had of it! And were I not, as a man may say, cautious How I trench, more than needs, on the nauseous, I could favour you with sundry touches Of the paint-smutches with which the Duchess Heightened the mellowness of her cheek's yellowness 150 DRAMATIC ROMANCES (To get on faster) until at last her Cheek grew to be one master-plaster Of mucus and fucus from mere use of ceruse: In short, she grew from scalp to udder Just the object to make you shudder. XVII. You're my friend-- What a thing friendship is, world without end! How it gives the heart and soul a stir-up As if somebody broached you a glorious runlet, And poured out, all lovelily, sparklingly, sunlit, Our green Moldavia, the streaky syrup, Cotnar as old as the time of the Druids-- Friendship may match with that monarch of fluids; Each supples a dry brain, fills you its ins-and-outs, Gives your life's hour-glass a shake when the thin sand doubts Whether to run on or stop short, and guarantees Age is not all made of stark sloth and arrant ease. I have seen my little lady once more, Jacynth, the Gipsy, Berold, and the rest of it, For to me spoke the Duke, as I told you before; I always wanted to make a clean breast of it: And now it is made---why, my heart's blood, that went trickle, THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS 151 Trickle, but anon, in such muddy driblets, Is pumped up brisk now, through the main ventricle, And genially floats me about the giblets. I'll tell you what I intend to do: I must see this fellow his sad life through-- He is our Duke, after all, And I, as he says, but a serf and thrall. My father was born here, and I inherit His fame, a chain he bound his son with; Could I pay in a lump I should prefer it, But there's no mine to blow up and get done with: So, I must stay till the end of the chapter. For, as to our middle-age-manners-adapter Be it a thing to be glad on or sorry on, Some day or other, his head in a morion And breast in a hauberk, his heels he'll kick up, Slain by an onslaught fierce of hiccup. And then, when red doth the sword of our Duke rust, And its leathern sheath lie o'ergrown with a blue crust, Then I shall scrape together my earnings. For, you see, in the churchyard Jacynth reposes, And our children all went the way of the roses: It's a long line that knows no turnings. One needs but little tackle to travel in; So, just one stout cloak shall I indue: And for a staff, what beats the javelin 152 DRAMATIC ROMANCES With which his boars my father pinned you? And then, for a purpose you shall hear presently, Taking sonme Cotnar, a tight plump skinful, I shall go journeying, who but I, pleasantly! Sorrow is vain and despondency sinful: What's a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all; Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold: When we mind labour, then only, we're too old--- What age had Methusalem when he begat Saul? And at last, as its haven some buffeted ship sees, (Come all the way from the north-parts with sperm oil) I hope to get safely out of the turmoil And arrive one day at the land of the Gipsies, And find my lady, or hear the last news of her From some old thief and son of Lucifer, His forehead chapleted green with wreathy hop, Sunburned all over like an |AEthiop. And when my Cotnar begins to operate And the tongue of the rogue to run at a proper rate, And our wine-skin tight once, shows each flaccid dent, I shall drop in with--is if by accident-- " You never knew, then, how it all ended, " What fortune good or bad attended " The little lady your Queen befriended?" --And when that's told me, what's remaining? This world's too hard for my explaining. THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS 153 The same wise judge of matters equine Who still preferred some slim four-year-old To the big-boned stock of mighty Berold, And, for strong Cotnar, drank French weak wine, He also must be such a lady's scorner! Smooth jacob still robs homely Esau: Now up, now down, the world's one see-saw. --So, I shall find out some snug corner Under a hedge, like Orson the wood-knight, Turn myself round and bid the world good night; And sleep a sound sleep till the trumpet's blowing Wakes me (unless priests cheat us laymen) To a world where will be no further throwing Pearls before swine that can't value them. Amen! 154 DRAMATIC ROMANCES A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL, SHORTLY AFTER THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING IN EUROPE LET us begin and carry up this corpse, Singing together. Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes Each in its tether Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain, Cared-for till cock-crow: Look out if yonder be not day again Rimming the rock-row! That's the appropriate country; there, man's thought, Rarer, intenser, Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought, Chafes in the censer. Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop; Seek we sepulture On a tall mountain, citied to the top, Crowded with culture! All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels; Clouds overcome it; A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL 155 No! yonder sparkle is the citadel's Circling its summit. Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights: Wait ye the warning? Our low life was the level's and the night's; He's for the morning. Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head, 'Ware the beholders! This is our master, famous calm and dead, Borne on our shoulders Sleep, crop and herd! sleep, darkling thorpe and croft, Safe from the weather! He, whom we convoy to his grave aloft, Singing together, He was a man born with thy face and throat, Lyric Apollo! Long he lived nameless: how should spring take note Winter would follow? Till lo, the little touch, and youth was gone! Cramped and diminished, Moaned he, " New measures, other feet anon! "My dance is finished? " No, that's the world's way: (keep the mountain-side, Make for the city!) 156 DRAMATIC ROMANCES He knew the signal, and stepped on with pride Over men's pity; Left play for work, and grappled with the world Bent on escaping: " What's in thc scroll," quoth he, " thou keepest furled? " Show me their shaping, " Theirs who most studied man, the bard and sage,-- " Give !"--So, he gowned him, Straight got by heart that book to its last page; Learned, we found him. Yea, but we found him bald too, eyes like lead, Accents uncertain: " Time to taste life," another would have said, " Up with the curtain!" This man said rather, " Actual life comes next? " Patience a moment! " Grant I have mastered learning's crabbed text, "Still there's the comnment. " Let me know all! Prate not of most or least, " Painful or easy ! "Even to the crumbs I'd fain eat up the feast, " Ay nor feel queasy." Oh, such a life as he resolved to live, When he had learned it, When he had gathered ill books had to give! Sooner, he spurned it. A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL 157 Image the whole, then execute the parts--- Fancy the fabric Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz, Ere mortar dab brick! (Here's the town-gate reached: there's the market-place Gaping before us.) Yea, this in him was the peculiar grace (Hearten our chorus !) That before living he'd learn how to live-- No end to learning; Earn the means first--God surely will contrive Use for our earning. Others mistrust and say, " But time escapes: " Live now or never! " He said, " What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes! " Man has Forever." Back to his book then: deeper drooped his head: Calculus racked him: Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead: Tussis attacked him. Now, master, take a little rest!"---not he! (Caution redoubled, Step two abreast, the way winds narrowly!) Not a whit troubled 158 DRAMATIC ROMANCES Back to his studies, fresher than at first, Fierce as a dragon He (soul-hydroptic with a sacred thirst) Sucked at the flagon. Oh, if we draw a circle premature, Heedless of far gain, Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure Bad is our bargain! Was it not great? did not he throw on God, (He loves the burthen)-- God's task to make the heavenly period Perfect the earthen? Did not he magnify the mind, show clear Just what it all meant? He would not discount life, as fools do here, Paid by instalment. He ventured neck or nothing---heaven's succcss Found, or earth's failure; " Wilt thou trust death or not? " He answered " Yes " Hence with life's pale lure !" That low man seeks a little thing to do, Sees it and does it: This high man, with a great thing to pursue, Dies ere he knows it. That low man goes on adding one to one, His hundred's soon hit: A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL 159 This high man, aiming at a million, Misses an unit. That, has the world here---should he need the next, Let the world mind him ! This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed Seeking shall find him. So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, Ground he at grammar; Still, thro' the rattle, parts of speech were rife: While he could stammer He settled Hoti's business--let it be!-- Properly based Oun-- Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De, Dead from the waist down. Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place: Hail to your purlieus, All ye highfliers of the feathered race, Swallows and curlews! Here's the top-peak; the multitude below Live, for they can, there: This man decided not to Live but Know-- Bury this man there? Here--here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form, Lightnings are loosened, 160 DRAMATIC ROMANCES Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm, Peace let the dew send! Lofty designs must close in like effects: Loftily lying, Leave him---still loftier than the world suspects, Living and dying. 161 THE HERETIC'S TRAGEDY. A MIDDLE-AGE INTERLUDE. ROSA MUNDI ; SEU. FULCITE ME FLORIEUS A CONCEIT OF MASTER GYSBRECHT, CANON-REGULAR OF SAINT JODOCUS- BY-THE-BAR, YPRES CITY. CANTUQUE, Virgilius. AND HATH OFTEN BEEN SUNG AT HOCK-TIDE AND FESTIVALS. GAVISUS ERAM, Jessides. (It would seem to be a glimpse from the burning of Jacques du Bourg-Molay, at Paris, A.D. 1314; as distortrd by the refraction from Flemish brain to brain, during the course of a couple of centuries.) --------------------- I. PREADMONISHETH THE ABBOT DEODAET. THE Lord, we look to once for all Is the Lord we should look at, all at once: He knows not to vary, saith Saint Paul, Nor the shadow of turning, for the nonce. See him no other than as he is ! Give both the infinitudes their due-- Infinite mercy, but, I wis, As infinite a justice too. [Organ: plagal-cadence. As infinite a justice too. v: M 162 DRAMATIC ROMANCES II. ONE SINGETH. John, Master of the Temple of God, Falling to sin the Unknown Sin, What he bought of Emperor Aldabrod, He sold it to Sultan Saladin: Till, caught by Pope Clemment, a-buzzing there, Hornet-prince of the mad wasps' hive, And clipt of his wings in Paris square, They bring him now to be burned alive. [And wanteth there grace of lute or clavicithern, ye shall say to confirm him who singeth-- We bring John now to be burned alive. III. In the midst is a goodly gallows built; 'Twixt fork and fork, a stake is stuck; But first they set divers tumbrils a-tilt, Make a trench all round with the city muck; Inside they pile log upon log, good store; Faggots no few, blocks great and small, Reach a man's mid-thigh, no less, no more,-- For they mean he should roast in the sight of all. CHORUS. We mean he should roast in the sight of all. THE HERETIC'S TRAGEDY 163 IV. Good sappy bavins that kindle forthwith; Billets that blaze substantial and slow; Pine-stump split deftly dry as pith; Larch-heart that chars to a chalk-white glow: Then up they hoist me John in a chafe, Sling him fast like a hog to scorch, Spit in his face, then leap back safe, Sing " Laudes" and bid clap-to the torch. CHORUS. Laus Deo--who bids clap-to the torch. V. John of the Temple, whose fame so bragged, Is burning alive in Paris square! How can he curse, if his mouth is gagged? Or wriggle his neck, with a collar there? Or heave his chest, which a band goes round? Or threat with his fist, since his arms are spliced? Or kick with his feet, now his legs are bound? --Thinks John, I will call upon Jesus Christ. [Here one crosseth himself. M2 164 DRAMATIC ROMANCES VI. Jesus Christ---John had bought and sold, Jesus Christ--John had eaten and drunk; To him, the Flesh meant silver and gold. (Salv|a reverenti|a.) Now it was, " Saviour, bountiful lamb, " I have roasted thee Turks, though men roast me! " See thy servant, the plight wherein I am! " Art thou a saviour? Save thou me!" CHORUS. 'T is John the mocker cries, " Save thou me !" VII. Who maketh God's menace an idle word? ---Saith, it no more nmeans what it proclaims, Than a damsel's threat to her wanton bird?-- For she too prattles of ugly names. ---Saith, he knoweth but one thing,---what he knows? That God is good and the rest is breath; Why else is the same styled Sharon's rose? Once a rose, ever a rose, he saith. CHORUS. O, John shall yet find a rose, he saith! THE HERETIC'S TRAGEDY 165 VIII. Alack, there be roses and roses, John! Some, honied of taste like your leman's tongue: Some, bitter; for why? (roast gaily on !) Their tree struck root in devil's-dung. When Paul once reasoned of righteousness And of temperance and of judgment to come, Good Felix trembled, he could no less: John, snickering, crook'd his wicked thumb. CHORUS. What cometh to John of the wicked thumb? IX. Ha ha, john plucketh now at his rose To rid himself of a sorrow at heart! Lo,--petal on petal, fierce rays unclose; Anther on anther, sharp spikes outstart; And with blood for dew, the bosom boils, And a gust of sulphur is all its smell; And lo, he is horribly in the toils Of a coal-black giant flower of hell! CHORUS. What maketh heaven, That maketh hell. 166 DRAMATIC ROMANCES X So, as John called now, through the fire amain, On the Name, he had cursed with, all his life--- To the Person, he bought and sold again-- For the Face, with his daily buffets rite-- Feature by feature It took its place: And his voice, like a mad dog's choking bark, At the steady whole of the Judge's face-- Died. Forth John's soul flared into the dark. SUBJOINETH THE ABBOT DEODAET. God help all poor souls lost in the dark! HOLY-CROSS DAY. ON WHICH THE JEWS WERE FORCED TO ATTEND AN ANNUAL CHRISTIAN SERMON IN ROME. [" Now was come about Holy-cross Day and now must my lord preach his first sermon to the Jews: as it was of old cared for in the merciful bowels of the Church, that, so to speak. a crumb at least from her conspicuous table here in Rome should be, though but once yearly, cast to the famishing dogs, under-trampled and bespitten-upon beneath the feet of the guests, And a moving sight in truth, this, of so many of the besotted blind restif and ready-to-perish Hebrews ! now mater- nally brought--nay (for He saith,` Compel them to come in') haled, as it were, by the head and hair, and against their obstinate hearts, to partake of the heavenly grace, What awakening, what striving with tears, what working of a yeatsy conscience! Nor was my lord wanting to himself on so apt an occasion; witness the abundance of conversions which did incontinently reward him: though not to my lord be altogether the glory."--Diary by the Bishop's Secretary, 1600.] What the Jews really said, on thus being driven to church, was rather to this effect:-- I. FEE, faw, fum! bubble and squeak! Blessedest Thursday's the fat of the week. Rumble and tumble, sleek and rough, Stinking and savoury, smug and gruff, Take the church-road, for the bell's due chime Gives us the summons---'t is sermon-time ! 168 DRAMATIC ROMANCES II Boh, here's Barnabas! Job, that's you? Up stumps Solomon--bustling too? Shame, man! greedy beyond your years To handsel the bishop's shaving-shears? Fair play's a jewel! Leave friends in the lurch? Stand on a line ere you start for the church! III. Higgledy piggledy, packed we lie, Rats in a hamper, swine in a stye, Wasps in a bottle, frogs in a sieve, Worms in a carcase, fleas in a sleeve. Hist! square shoulders, settle your thumbs And buzz for the bishop--here he comes. IV. Bow, wow, wow--a bone for the dog ! I liken his Grace to an acorned hog. What, a boy at his side, with the bloom of a lass, To help and handle my lord's hour-glass ! Didst ever behold so lithe a chine? His cheek hath laps like a fresh-singed swine. HOLY-CROSS DAY 169 V. Aaron's asleep---shove hip to haunch, Or somebody deal him a dig in the paunch! Look at the purse with the tassel and knob, And the gown with the angel and thingumbob! What's he at, quotha? reading his text! Now you've his curtsey---and what comes next VI. See to our converts--you doomed black dozen--- No stealing away--nor cog nor cozen! You five, that were thieves, deserve it fairly; You seven, that were bcggars, will live less sparely , You took your turn and dipped in the hat, Got fortune---and fortune gets you; mind that! VII. Give your first groan--compunction's at work; And soft! from a Jew you mount to a Turk. Lo, Micah,---the selfsame beard on chin He was four times already converted in! Here's a knife, clip quick--it's a sign of grace--- Or he ruins us all with his hanging-face. 170 DRAMATIC ROMANCES VIII. Whom now is the bishop a-leering at? I know a point where his text falls pat. I'll tell him to-morrow, a word just now Went to my heart and made me vow I meddle no more with the worst of trades--- Let somebody else pay his serenades. IX. Groan all together now, whee--hee--hee! It's a-work, it's a-work, ah, woe is me! It began, when a herd of us, picked and placed, Were spurred through the Corso, stripped to the waist; Jew brutes, with sweat and blood well spent To usher in worthily Christian Lent. X. It grew, when the hangman entered our bounds, Yelled, pricked us out to his church like hounds: It got to a pitch, when the hand indeed Which gutted my purse would throttle my creed: And it overflows when, to even the odd, Men I helped to their sins help me to their God. HOLY-CROSS DAY 171 XI. But now, while the scapegoats leave our flock, And the rest sit silent and count the clock, Since forced to muse the appointed time On these precious facts and truths sublime,--- Let us fitly employ it, under our breath, In saying Ben Ezra's Song of Death. XII. For Rabbi Ben Ezra, the night he died, Called sons and sons' sons to his side, And spoke, " This world has been harsh and strange; " Something is wrong: there needeth a change. " But what, or where? at the last or first? " In one point only we sinned, at worst. XIII. " The Lord will have mercy on Jacob yet, " And again in his border see Israel set. " When Judah beholds Jerusalem, " The stranger-seed shall be joined to them: " To Jacob's House shall the Gentiles cleave. " So the Prophet saith and his sons believe 172 DRAMATIC ROMANCES XIV. " Ay, the children of the chosen race " Shall carry and bring them to their place: " In the land of the Lord shall lead the same, " Bondsmen and handmaids. Who shall blame, " When the slaves enslave, the oppressed ones o'er " The oppressor triumph for evermore? XV. " God spoke, and gave us the word to keep " Bade never fold the hands nor sleep " 'Mid a faithless world,--at watch and ward, " Till Christ at the end relieve our guard. " By His servant Moses the watch was set: " Though near upon cock-crow, we keep it yet. XVI. " Thou! if thou wast He, who at mid-watch came, " By the starlight, naming a dubious name! " And if, too heavy with sleep--too rash " With fear--0 Thou, if that martyr-gash " Fell on Thee coming to tike thine own, " And we gave the Cross, when we owed the Throne-- HOLY-CROSS DAY 173 XVII. " Thou art the Judge. We are bruised thus. " But, the Judgment over, join sides with us! " Thine too is the cause! and not more thine " Than ours, is the work of these dogs and swine, " Whose life laughs through and spits at their creed! " Who maintain Thee in word, and defy Thee in deed ! XVIII. " We withstood Christ then? Be mindful how " At least we withstand Barabbas now! " Was our outrage sore? But the worst we spared, " To have called these---Christians, had we dared! " Let defiance to them pay mistrust of Thee, " And Rome make amends for Calvary ! XIX. " By the torture, prolonged from age to age, " By the infamy, Israel's heritage, " By the Ghetto's plague, by the garb's disgrace, " By the badge of shame, by the felon's place, " By the branding-tool, the bloody whip, " And the summons to Christian fellowship,--- 174 DAAMATIC ROMANCES. XX. " We boast our proof that at least the Jew " Would wrest Christ's name from the Devil's crew. " Thy face took never so deep a shade " But we fought them in it, God our aid! " A trophy to bear, as we march, thy band, " South East, and on to the Pleasant Land!" [Pope Gregory XVI abolished this bad business of the Sermon.--R. B.] PROTUS. AMONG these latter busts we count by scores, Half emperors and quarter-emperors, Each with his bay-leaf fillet, loose-thonged vest, Loric and low-browed Gorgon on the breast,-- One loves a baby face, with violets there, Violets instead of laurel in the hair, As those were all the little locks could bear. Now read here. " Protus ends a period " Of empery beginning with a god; " Born in the porphyry chamber at Byzant, " Queens by his cradle, proud and ministrant: " And if he quickened breath there,'t would like fire " Pantingly through the dim vast realm transpire. " A fame that he was missing spread afar: " The world from its four corners, rose in war, " Till he was borne out on a balcony " To pacify the world when it should see. 176 DRAMATIC ROMANCES " The captains ranged before him, one, his hand " Made baby points at, gained the chief command. " And day by day more beautiful he grew " In shape, all said, in feature and in hue, " While young Greek sculptors gazing on the child " Became with old Greek sculpture reconciled. " Already sages laboured to condense " In easy tomes a life's experience: " And artists took grave counsel to impart " In one breath and one hand-sweep, all their art-- " To make his graces prompt as blossoming " Of plentifully-watered palms in spring: " Since well beseems it, whoso mounts the throne, " For beauty, knowledge, strength, should stand alone, " And mortals love the letters of his name." ---Stop! Have you turned two pages? Still thc same. New reign, same date. The scribe goes on to say How that same year, on such a month and day, " John the Pannonian, groundedly believed " A blacksmith's bastard, whose hard hand reprieved " The Empire from its fate the year before,-- " Came, had a mind to take the crown, and wore " The same for six years (during which the Huns " Kept off their fingers from us), till his sons PROTUS 177 " Put something in his liquor"--and so forth. Then a new reign. Stay--" Take at its just worth" (Subjoins an annotator) " what I give " As hearsay. Some think, John let Protus live " And slip away. 'T is said, he reached man's age " At some blind northern court; made, first a page, " Then tutor to the children; last, of use " About the hunting-stables. I deduce " He wrote the little tract `On worming dogs,' " Whereof the name in sundry catalogues " Is extant yet. A Protus of the race " Is rumoured to have died a monk in Thrace,--- " And if the same, he reached senility." Here's John the Smith's rough-hammered head. Great eye, Gross jaw and griped lips do what granite can To give you the crown-grasper. What a man! V. N 178 DRAMATIC ROMANCES THE STATUE AND THE BUST THERE 's a palace in Florence, the world knows well, And a statue watches it from the square And this story of both do our townsmen tell. Ages ago, a lady there, At the farthest window facing the East Asked, " Who rides by with the royal air?" The bridesnmaids' prattle around her ceased; She leaned forth, one on either hand; They saw how the blush of the bride increased--- They felt by its beats her head expand--- As one at each ear and both in a breath Whispered, " The Great-Duke Ferdinand." That self-same instant, underneath, The Duke rode past in his idle way, Empty and fine like a swordless sheath, THE STATUE AND THE BUST 179 Gay he rode, with a friend as gay, Till he threw his head back---" Who is she?" ---" A bride the Riccardi brings home to-day." Hair in heaps lay heavily Over a pale brow spirit-pure--- Carved like the heart of the coal-black tree, Crisped like a war-steed's encolure--- And vainly sought to dissemble her eyes Of the blackest black our eyes endure. And lo, a blade for a knight's emprise Filled the fine empty sheath of a man,--- The Duke grew straightway brave and wise. He looked at her, as a lover can; She looked at him, as onc who awakes: The past was a sleep, and her life began. Now, love so ordered for both their sakes, A feast was held that selfsame night In the pile which the mighty shadow makes. (For Via Larga is three-parts light, But the palace overshadows one, Because of a crime which may God requite ! N2 180 DRAMATIC ROMANCES To Florence and God the wrong was done, Through the first republic's murder there By Cosimo and his cursed son.) The Duke (with the statue's face in the square) Turned in thc midst of his multitude At the bright approach of the bridal pair. Face to face the lovers stood A single minute and no more, While the bridegroom bent as a man subdued--- Bowed till his bonnet brushed the floor--- For the Duke on the lady a kiss conferred, As the courtly custom was of yore. In a minute can lovers exchange a word? If a word did pass, which I do not think, Only one out of the thousand heard. That was the bridegroom. At day's brink He and his bride were alone at last In a bedchamber by a taper's blink. Calmly he said that her lot was cast, That the door she had passed was shut on her Till the final catafalk repassed. THE STATUE AND THE BUST 181 The world meanwhile, its noise and stir, Through a certain window facing the East She could watch like a convent's chronicler. Since passing the door might lead to a feast, And a feast might lead to so much beside, He, of many evils, chose the least. " Freely I choose too," said the bride--- " Your window and its world suffice," Replied the tongue, while the heart replied--- " If I spend the night with that devil twice, " May his window serve as my loop of hell " Whence a damned soul looks on paradise! " I fly to the Duke who loves me well, " Sit by his side and laugh at sorrow " Ere I count another ave-bell. " 'T is only the coat of a page to borrow, " And tie my hair in a horse-boy's trim, " And I save my soul--but not to-morrow"--- (She checked herself and her eye grew dim) " My father tarries to bless my state: " I must keep it one day more for him, 182 DRAMATIC ROMANCES " Is one day more so long to wait? " Moreover the Duke rides past, I know; " We shall see each other, sure as fate." She turned on her side and slept. Just so! So we resolve on a thing and sleep: So did the lady, ages ago. That night the Duke said, " Dear or cheap " As the cost of this cup of bliss may prove " To body or soul, I will drain it deep." And on the morrow, bold with love, He beckoned the bridegroom (close on call, As his duty bade, by the Duke's alcove) And smiled "'T was a very funeral, " Your lady will think, this feast of ours,--- " A shame to efface, whate'er befall! " What if we break from the Arno bowers, " And try if Petraja, cool and green, " Cure last night's fault with this morning's flowers?" The bridegroom, not a thought to be seen On his steady brow and quiet mouth, Said " Too much favour for me so mean! THE STATUE AND THE BUST 183 ` But, alas! my lady leaves the South; " Each wind that comes from the Apennine " Is a menace to her tender youth: " Nor a way exists, the wise opine, " If she quits her palace twice this year, " To avert the flower of life's decline." Quoth the Duke, " A sage and a kindly fear. " Moreover Petraja is cold this spring: " Be our feast to-night as usual here !" And then to himself--"I Which night shall bring " Thy bride to her lover's embraces, fool-- " Or I am the fool, and thou art the king ! " Yet my passion must wait a night, nor cool--- " For to-night the Envoy arrives from France " Whose heart I unlock with thyself, my tool. " I need thee still and might miss perchance. " To-day is not wholly lost, beside, " With its hope of my lady's countenance: " For I ride--what should I do but ride? " And passing her palace, if I list, " May glance at its window--well betide!" 184 DRAMATIC ROMANCES So said, so done: nor the lady missed One ray that broke from the ardent brow, Nor a curl of the lips where the spirit kissed. Be sure that each renewed the vow, No morrow's sun should arise and set And leave them then as it left them now. But next day passed, and next day yet, With still fresh cause to wait one day more Ere each leaped over the parapet. And still, as love's brief morning wore, With a gentle start, half smile, half sigh, They found love not as it seemed before. They thought it would work infallibly, But not in despite of heaven and earth: The rose would blow when the storm passed by. Meantime they could profit in winter's dearth By store of fruits that supplant the rose: The world and its ways have a certain worth: And to press a point while these oppose Were simple policy; better wait: We lose no friends and we gain no foes. THE STATUE AND THE BUST 185 Meantime, worse fates than a lover's fate, Who daily may ride and pass and look Where his lady watches behind the grate! And she--she watched the square like a book Holding one picture and only one, Which daily to find she undertook: When the picture was reached the book was done, And she turned from the picture at night to scheme Of tearihg it out for herself next sun. So weeks grew months, years; gleam by gleam The glory dropped from their youth and love, And both perceived they had dreamed a dream; Which hovered as dreams do, still above: But who can take a dream for a truth? Oh, hide our eyes from the next remove! One day as the lady saw her youth Depart, and the silver thread that streaked Her hair, and, worn by the serpent's tooth, The brow so puckered, the chin so peaked,--- And wondered who the woman was, Hollow-eyed and haggard-cheeked, 186 DRAMATIC ROMAMCES Fronting her silent in the glass--- " Summon here," she suddenly said, " Before the rest of my old self pass, " Him, the Carver, a hand to aid, " Who fashions the clay no love will change, " And fixes a beauty never to fade. " Let Robbia's craft so apt and strange " Arrest the remains of young and fair, " And rivet them while the seasons range. " Make me a face on the window there, " Waiting as ever, mute the while, " My love to pass below in the square! " And let me think that it may beguile " Dreary days which the dead must spend " Down in their darkness under the aisle, " To say, ` What matters it at the end? " ` I did no more while my heart was warm " ` Than does that image, my pale-faced friend.' " Where is the use of the lip's red charm, " The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow, " And the blood that blues the inside arm--- THE STATUE AND THE BUST 187 Unless we turn, as the soul knows how, The earthly gift to an end divine? " A lady of clay is as good, I trow." But long ere Robbia's cornice, fine, With flowers and fruits which leaves enlace, Was set where now is the empty shrine-- (And, leaning out of a bright blue space, As a ghost might lean from a chink of sky, The passionate pale lady's face-- Eyeing ever, with esrnest eye And quick-tumed neck at its brenthless stretch, Some one who ever is passing by---) The Duke had sighed like the simplest wretch In Florence, " Youth---my dream escapes! " Will its record stay?" And he bade them fetch Some subtle moulder of brazen shapes-- " Can the soul, the will, die out of a man " Ere his body find the grave that gapes? " John of Douay shall effect my plan, " Set me on horseback here aloft, " Alive, as the crafty sculptor can, 188 DRAMATIC ROMANCES " In the very square I have crossed so oft; " That men may admire, when future suns " Shall touch the eyes to a purpose soft, " While the mouth and the brow stay brave in bronze-- " Admire and say, ` When he was alive " `I How he would take his pleasure once!' " And it shall go hard but I contrive " To listen the while, and laugh in my tomb " At idleness which aspires to strive." So! While these wait the trump of doom, How do their spirits pass, I wonder, Nights and days in the narrow room? Still, I suppose, they sit and ponder What a gift life was, ages ago, Six steps out of the chapel yonder. Only they see not God, I know, Nor all that chivalry of his, The soldier-saints who, row on row, THE STATUE AND THE BUST 189 Burn upward each to his point of bliss--- Since, the end of life being manifest, He had burned his way thro' the world to this. I hear you reproach, " But delay was best, " For their end was a crime."--Oh, a crime will do As well, I reply, to serve for a test, As a virtue golden through and through Sufficient to vindicate itself And prove its worth at a monment's view ! Must a game be played for the sake of pelf? Where a button goes,'t were an epigram To offer the stamp of the very Guelph. The true has no value beyond the sham: As well the counter as coin, I submit, When your table's a hat, and your prize a dram. Stake your counter as boldly every whit, Venture as warily, use the same skill, Do your best, whether winning or losing it, If you choose to play!--is my principle. Let a man contend to the uttermost For his lify's set prize, lie it what it will! 190 DRAMATIC ROMANCES The counter our lovers staked was lost As surely as if it were lawful coin: And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost Is--the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin, Though the end in sight was a vice, I say. You of the virtue (we issue join) How strive you? De te, fabula PORPHYRIA'S LOVER THE rain set early in to-night, The sullen wind was soon awake, It tore the elm-tops down for spite, And did its worst to vex the lake: I listened with heart fit to break. When glided in Porphyria; straight She shut the cold out and the storm, And kneeled and made the cheerless grate Blaze up, and all the cottage warm; Which done, she rose, and from her form Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl, And laid her soiled gloves by, untied Her hat and let the damp hair fall, And, last, she sat down by my side And called me. When no voice replied, She put my arm about her waist, And made her smooth white shoulder bare And all her yellow hair displaced, And, stooping, made my cheek lie there, 192 DRAMATIC ROMANCES And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair, Murmuring how she loved me--she Too weak, for all her heart's endeavour, To set its struggling passion free From pride, and vainer ties dissever, And give herself to me for ever. But passion sometimes would prevail, Nor could to-night's gay feast restrain A sudden thought of one so pale For love of her, and all in vain: So, she was come through wind and rain. But sure I looked up at her eyes Happy and proud; at last I knew Porphyria worshipped me; surprise Made my heart swell, and still it grew While I debated what to do. That moment she was mine, mine, fair, Perfectly pure and good: I found A thing to do, and all her hair In one long yellow string I wound Three times her little throat around, And strangled her. No pain felt she; I am quite sure she felt no pain. As a shut bud that holds a bee, I warily oped her lids - again Laughed the blue eyes without a stain. PORPHYRIA'S LOVER 193 And I untightened next the tress About her neck; her cheek once more Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss. I propped her head up as before, Only, this time my shoulder bore Her head, which droops upon it still: The smiling rosy little head, So glad it has its utmost will, That ill it scorned at once is fled, And I, Its love, am gained instead! Porphyria's love : she guessed not how Her darling one wish would be heard. And thus we sit together now, And all night long we have not stirred And yet God has not said a word ! V. O 194 DRAMATIC ROMANCES " CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME." (See Edgar's song in" LEAR" ) I. My first thought was, he lied in every word, That hoary cripple, with malicious eye Askance to watch the working of his lie On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby. II. What else should he be set for, with his staff? What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare All travellers who might find him posted there, And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh Would break, what crutch'gin write my epitaph For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare, "CHILDE ROLAND to the DARK TOWER CAME" 195 III. If at his counsel I should turn aside Into that ominous tract which, all agree, Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly I did turn as he pointed: neither pride Nor hope rekindling at the end descried, So much as gladness that some end might be IV. For, what with my whole world-wide wandering, What with my search drawn out thro' years, my hope Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope With that obstreperous joy success would bring-- I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring My heart made, finding failure in its scope. V. As when a sick man very near to death Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end The tears and takes the farewell of each friend, And hears one bid the other go, draw breath Freelier outside, (" since all is o'er," he saith, " And the blow fallen no grieving can amend ;") O2 196 DRAMATIC ROMANCES VI. While some discuss if near the other graves Be room enough for this, and when a day Suits best for carrying the corpse away, With care about the banners, scarves and staves: And still the man hears all, and only craves He may not shame such tender love and stay. VII. Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest, Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ So many times among " The Band"--to wit, Th knights who to the Dark Tower's search addressed Their steps--that just to fail as they, seemed best, And all the doubt was now--should I be fit ? VIII. So, quiet as despair, I turned from him, That hateful cripple, out of his highway Into the path he pointed. All the day Had been a dreary one at best, and dim Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim Red leer to see the plain catch its estray. " CHILDE ROLAND to the DARK TOWER CAME" 197 IX. For mark! no sooner was I fairly found Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two, Than, pausing to throw backward a last view O'er the safe road,'t was gone; grey plain all round: Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound. I might go on; nought else remained to do. X. So, on I went. I think I never saw Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve: For flowers--as well expect a cedar grove! But cockle, spurge, according to their law Might propagate their kind, with none to awe, You'd think; a burr had been a treasure-trove. XI. No! penury, inertness and grimace, In some strange sort, were the land's portion. " See " Or shut your eyes," said Nature peevishly, " It nothing skills: I cannot help my case: "'T is the Last judgment's fire must cure this place, " Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free." 198 DRAMATIC ROMANCES XII. If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk All hope of greenness?'t is a brute must walk Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents. XIII. As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood. One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare, Stood stupefied, however he came there: Thrust out past service from the devil's stud! XIV. Alive? he might be dead for aught I know, With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain, And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane; Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe; I never saw a brute I hated so; He must be wicked to deserve such pain. " CHILDE ROLAND to the DARK TOWER CAME" 199 XV. I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart. As a man calls for wine before he fights, I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights, Ere fitly I could hope to play my part. Think first, fight afterwards--the soldier's art: One taste of the old time sets all to rights. XVI. Not it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face Beneath its garniture of curly gold, Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold An arm in mine to fix me to the place, That way he used. Alas, one night's disgrace! Out went my heart's new fix and left it cold. XVII. Giles then, the soul of honour--there he stands Frank as ten years ago when knighted first. What honest man should dare (he said) he durst. Good--but the scene shifts---faugh! what hangman hands Pin to his breast a parchment? His own bands Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst! 200 DRAMATIC ROMANCES XVIII. Better this present than a past like that; Back therefore to my darkening path again! No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain. Will the night send a howlet or a bat? I asked: when something on the dismal flat Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train. XIX. A sudden little river crossed my path As unexpected as a serpent comes. No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms; This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath For the fiend's glowing hoof--to see the wrath Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes. XX. So petty yet so spiteful! All along, Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it; Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit Of mute despair, a suicidal throng: The river which had done them all the wrong, Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit. "CHILDE ROLAND to the DARK TOWER CAME" 201 XXI. Which, while I forded,---good saints, how I feared To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek, Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard! ---It may have been a water-rat I speared, But, ugh! it sounded like a babys shriek. XXII. Glad was I when I reached the other bank. Now for a better country. Vain presage! Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage, Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank, Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage-- XXIII. The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque. What penned them there, with all the plain to choose? No foot-print leading to that horrid mews, None out of it. Mad brewage set to work Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews. 202 DRAMATIC ROMANCES XXIV. And more than that---a furlong on--why, there! What bad use was that engine for, that wheel, Or brake, not wheel--that harrow fit to reel Men's bodies out like silk? with all the air Of Tophet's tool, on earth left unaware, Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel. XXV. Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood, Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth, Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood Changes and off he goes!) within a rood-- Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth. XXVI. Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim, Now patches where some leanness of the soil's Broke into moss or substances like boils; Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils. " CHILDE ROLAND to the DARK TOWER CAME" 203 XXVII. And just as far as ever from the end! Nought in the distance but the evening, nought To point my footstep further! At the thought, A great black bird, Apollyon's bosom-friend, Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned That brushed my cap--perchance the guide I sought. XXVIII. For, looking up, aware I somehow grew, 'Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place All round to mountains---with such name to grace Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view. How thus they had surprised mue,---solve it, you! How to get from them was no clearer case XXIX. Yet half I seemed to recognize some trick Of mischief happened to me, God knows when--- In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then, Progress this way. When, in the very nick Of giving up, one time more, came a click As when a trap shuts---you're inside the den! 204 DRAMATIC ROMANCES XXX Burningly it came on me all at once, This was the place! those two hills on the right, Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight; While to the left, a tall scalped mountain... Dunce, Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce, After a liie spent training for the sight! XXXI. What in the midst lay but the Tower itself? The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart, Built of brown stone, without a counterpart In the whole world. The tempest's mocking elf Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf He strikes on, only when the timbers start. XXXII. Not see? beeause of night perhaps?--why, day Came back again for that ! before it left, The dying sunset kindled through a cleft: The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay, Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,-- " Now stab and end the creature---to the heft! " CHILDE ROLAND to the DARK TOWER CAME" 205 XXXIII. Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears Of all the lost adventurers my peers,--- How such a one was strong,and such was bold, And such was fortunate, yet each of old Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years. XXXIV. There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met To view the last of me, a living frame For one more picture! in a sheet of flame I saw them and I knew them all. And yet Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set, And blew. "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came." CHRISTMAS-EVE & EASTER-DAY. 1850. CHRISTMAS EVE. I. OUT of the little chapel I burst Into the fresh night-air again. Five minutes full I waited first In the doorway, to escape the rain That drove in gusts down the common's centre At the edge of which the chapel stands, Before I plucked up heart to enter. Heaven knows how many sorts of hands Reached past me, groping for the latch Of the inner door that hung on catch More obstinate the more they fumbled, Till, giving way at last with a scold Of the crazy hinge, in squeezed or tumbled One sheep more to the rest in fold v. P 210 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY And left me irresolute, standing sentry In the sheepfold's lath-and-plaster entry, Four feet long by two feet wide, Partitioned off from the vast inside-- I blocked up half of it at least. No remedy; the rain kept driving. They eyed me much as some wild beast, That congregation, still arriving, Some of them by the main road, white A long way past me into the night, Skirting the common, then diverging; Not a few suddenly emerging From the common's self thro' the paling-gaps, --They house in the gravel-pits perhaps, Where the road stops short with its safeguard border Of lamps, as tired of such disorder;-- But the most turned in yet more abruptly From a certain squalid knot of alleys, Where the town's bad blood once slept corruptly, Which now the little chapel rallies And leads into day again,--its priestliness Lending itself to hide their beastliness So cleverly (thanks in part to the mason), And putting so cheery a whitewashed face on Those neophytes too much in lack of it, That, where you cross the common as I did, CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 211 And meet the party thus presided, " Mount Zion" with Love-lane at the back of it, They front you as little disconcerted As, bound for the hills, her fate averted, And her wicked people made to mind him, Lot might have marched with Gomorrah behind him. II. Well, from the road, the lanes or the common, In came the flock; the fat weary woman, Panting and bewildered, down-clapping Her umbrella with a mighty report, Grounded it by me, wry and flapping, A wreck of whalebones; then, with a snort, Like a startled horse, at the interloper (Who humbly knew himself improper, But could not shrink up small enough) ---Round to the door, and in,--the gruff Hinge's invariable scold Making my very blood run cold. Prompt in the wake of her, up-pattered On broken clogs, the many-tattered Little old-faced peaking sister-turned-mother Of the sickly babe she tried to smother Somehow up, with its spotted face, From the cold, on her breast, the one warm place; P 2 212 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY She too must stop, wring the poor ends dry Of a draggled shawl, and add thereby Her tribute to the door-mat, sopping Already from my own clothes' dropping, Which yet she seemed to grudge I should stand on: Then, stooping down to take off her pattens, She bore them defiantly, in each hand one, Planted together before her breast And its babe, as good as a lance in rest. Close on her heels, the dingy satins Of a female something, past me flitted, With lips as much too white, as a streak Lay far too red on each hollow cheek; And it seemed the very door-hinge pitied All that was left of a woman once, Holding at least its tongue for the nonce. Then a tall yellow man, like the Penitent Thief, With his jaw bound up in a handkerchief, And eyelids screwed together tight, Led himself in by some inner light. And, except from him, from each that entered, I got the same interrogation-- " What, you the alien, you have ventured " To take with us, the elect, your station? " A carer for none of it, a Gallio! "-- Thus, plain as print, I read the glance CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 213 At a common prey in each countenance As of huntsman giving his hounds the tallyho. And, when the door's cry drowned their wonder, The draught, it always sent in shutting, Made the flame of the single tallow candle In the cracked square lantern I stood under, Shoot its blue lip at me, rebutting As it were, the luckless cause of scandal: I verily fancied the zealous light (In thc chapel's secret, too !) for spite Would shudder itself clean off thc wick, With the airs of a Saint John's Candlestick. There was no standing it much longer. " Good folks," thought I, as resolve grew stronger, " This way you perform the Grand-Inquisitor " When the weather sends you a chance visitor? " You are the men, and wisdom shall die with you, " And none of the old Seven Churches vie with you! " But still, despite the pretty perfection " To which you carry your trick of exclusiveness, " And, taking God's word under wise protection, " Correct its tendency to diffusiveness, "And bid one reach it over hot ploughshares,-- " Still, as I say, though you've found salvation, " If I should choose to cry, as now, ` Shares !'-- " See if the best of you bars me my ration! 214 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY " I prefer, if you please, for my expounder " Of the laws of the feast, the feast's own Founder; " Mine's the same right with your poorest and sickliest " Supposing I don the marriage vestiment: " So, shut your mouth and open your Testament, " And carve me my portion at your quickliest!" Accordingly, as a shoemaker's lad With wizened face in want of soap, And wet apron wound round his waist like a rope, (After stopping outside, for his cough was bad, To get the fit over, poor gentle creature, And so avoid disturbing the preacher) --Passed in, I sent my elbow spikewise At the shutting door, and entered likewise, Received the hinge's accustomed greeting, And crossed the threshold's magic pentacle, And found myself in full conventicle, ---To wit, in Zion Chapel Meeting, On the Christmas-Eve of 'Forty-nine, Which, calling its flock to their special clover, Found all assembled and one sheep over, Whose lot, as the weather pleased, was mine. III. I very soon had enough of it. The hot smell and the human noises, CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 215 And my neighbour's coat, the greasy cuff of it, Were a pebble-stone that a child's hand poises, Compared with the pig-of-lead-like pressure Of the preaching man's immense stupidity, As he poured his doctrine forth, full measure, To meet his audience's avidity. You needed not the wit of the Sibyl To guess the cause of it all, in a twinkling: No sooner our friend had got an inkling Of treasure hid in the Holy Bible, (Whene'er 't was the thought first struck him, How death, at unawares, might duck him Deeper than the grave, and quench The gin-shop's light in hell's grim drench) Than he handled it so, in fine irreverence, As to hug the book of books to pieces: And, a patchwork of chapters and texts in severance, Not improved by the private dog's-ears and creases, Having clothed his own soul with, he'd fain see equipt yours,-- So tossed you again your Holy Scriptures. And you picked them up, in a sense, no doubt: Nay, had but a single face of my neighbours Appeared to suspect that the preacher's labours Were help which the world could be saved without, 'T is odds but I might have borne in quiet 216 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY A qualm or two at my spiritual diet, Or (who can tell?) perchance even mustered Somewhat to urge in behalf of the sermon: But the flock sat on, divinely flustered, Sniffing, methought, its dew of Hermon With such content in every snuffle, As the devil inside us loves to ruffle. My old fat woman purred with pleasure, And thumb round thumb went twirling faster, While she, to his periods keeping measure, Maternally devoured the pastor. The man with the handkerchief untied it, Showed us a horrible wen inside it, Gave his eyelids yet another screwing, And rocked himself as the woman was doing. The shoemaker's lad, discreetly choking, Kept down his cough. 'T was too provoking! My gorge rose at the nonsense and stuff of it; So, saying like Eve when she plucked the apple, " I wanted a taste, and now there's enough of it," I flung out of the little chapel. IV. There was a lull in the rain, a lull In the wind too; the moon was risen, And would have shone out pure and full, CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 217 But for the ramparted cloud-prison, Block on block built up in the West, For what purpose the wind knows best, Who changes his mind continually. And the empty other half of the sky Seemed in its silence as if it knew What, any moment, might look through A chance gap in that fortress massy:--- Through its fissures you got hints Of the flying moon, by the shifting tints, Now, a dull lion-colour, now, brassy Burning to yellow, and whitest yellow, Like furnace-smoke just ere flames bellow, All a-simmer with intense strain To let her through,--then blank again, At the hope of her appearance failing, Just by the chapel, a break in the railing Shows a narrow path directly across; 'T is ever dry walking there, on the moss--- Besides, you go gently all the way uphill. I stooped under and soon felt better; My head grew lighter, my limbs more supple, As I walked on, glad to have slipt the fetter, My mind was full of the scene I had left, That placid flock, that pastor vociferant, ---How this outside was pure and different! 218 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY The sermon, now---what a mingled weft Of good and ill! Were either less, Its fellow had coloured the whole distinctly; But alas for the excellent earnestness, And the truths, quite true if stated succinctly But as surely false, in their quaint presentment, However to pastor and flock's contentment! Say rather, such truths looked false to your eyes. With his provings and parallels twisted and txined, Till how could you know them, grown double their size In the natural fog of the good man's mind, Like yonder spots of our roadside lamps, Haloed about with the common's damps? Truth remains true, the fault's in the prover; The zeal was good, and the aspiration; And yet, and yet, yet, fifty times over, Pharaoh received no demonstration, By his Baker's dream of Baskets Three, Of the doctrine of the Trinity,-- Although, as our preacher thus embellished it, Apparently his hearers relished it With so unfeigned a gust--who knows if They did not prefer our friend to Joseph? But so it is everywhere, one way with all of them! These people have really felt, no doubt, A something, the motion they style the Call of them; CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 219 And this is their method of bringing about, By a mechanism of words and tones, (So many texts in so many groans) A sort of reviving and reproducing, More or less perfectly, (who can tell ?) The mood itself, which strengthens by using; And how that happens, I understand well. A tune was born in my head last week, Out of the thump-thump and shriek-shriek Of the train, as I came by it, up from Manchester; And when, next week, I take it back again, My head will sing to the engine's clack again, While it only makes my neighbour's haunches stir, ---Finding no dormant musical sprout In him, as in me, to be jolted out 'T is the taught already that profits by teaching; He gets no more from the railway's preaching Than, from this preacherwho does the rail's office, I: Whom therefore the flock cast a jealous eye on. Still, why paint over their door " Mount Zion," To which all flesh shall come, saith the prophecy? V. But wherefore be harsh on a single case? After how many modes, this Christmas-Eve, Does the self-same weary thing take place? 220 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY The same endeavour to make you believe, And with much the same effect, no more: Each method abundantly convincing, As I say, to those convinced before, But scarce to be swallowed without wincing By the not-as-yet-convinced. For me, I have my own church equally: And in this church my faith sprang first! (I said, as I reached the rising ground, And the wind began again, with a burst Of rain in my face, and a glad rebound From the heart beneath, as if, God speeding me, I entered his church-door, nature leading me) --In youth I looked to these very skies, And probing their immensities, I found God there, his visible power; Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense Of the power, an equal evidence That his love, there too, was the nobler dower: For the loving worm within its clod, Were diviner than a loveless god Amid his worlds, I will dare to say. You know what I mean: God's all, man's nought But also, God, whose pleasure brought Man into being, stands away As it were a handbreadth off, to give CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 221 Room for the newly-made to live, And look at him from a place apart, And use his gifts of brain and heart, Given, indeed, but to keep for ever. Who speaks of man, then, must not sever Man's very elements from man, Saying, " But all is God's "---whose plan Was to create man and then leave him Able, his own word saith, to grieve him, But able to glorify him too, As a mere machine could never do, That prayed or praised, all unaware Of its fitness for aught but praise and prayer, Made perfect as a thing of course. Man, therefore, stands on his own stock Of love and power as a pin-point rock: And, looking to God who ordained divorce Of the rock from his boundless continent, Sees, in his power made evident, Only excess by a million-fold O'er the power God gave man in the mould. For, note: man's hand, first formed to carry A few pounds' weight, when taught to marry Its strength with an engine's, lifts a mountain, ---Advancing in power by one degree; And why count steps through eternity? 222 CHRISTMAS EVE AND EASTER-DAY But love is the ever-springing fountain: Man may enlarge or narrow his bed For the water's play, but the water-head-- How can he multiply or reduce it? As easy create it, as cause it to cease; He may profit by it, or abuse it, But't is not a thing to bear increase As power does: be love less or more In the heart of man, he keeps it shut Or opes it wide, as he pleases, but Love's sum remains what it was before. So, gazing up, in my youth, at love As seen through power, ever above All modes which make it manifest, My soul brought all to a single test--- That he, the Eternal First and Last, Who, in his power, had so surpassed All man conceives of what is might,-- Whose wisdom, too, showed infinite, --Would prove as infinitely good; Would never, (my soul understood,) With power to work all love desires, Bestow e'en less than man requires; That he who endlessly was teaching, Above my spirit's utmost reaching, What love can do in the leaf or stone, CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 223 (So that to master this alone, This done in the stone or leaf for me, I must go on learning endlessly) Would never need that I, in turn, Should point him out defect unheeded, And show that God had yet to learn What the meanest human creature needed, --Not life, to wit, for a few short years, Tracking his way through doubts and fears, While the stupid earth on which I stay Suffers no change, but passive adds Its myriad years to myiads, Though I, he gave it to, decay, Seeing death come and choose about me, And my dearest ones depart without me. No: love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it, Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it, The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it, Shall arise, made perfect, from death's repose of it. And I shall behold thee, face to face, O God, and in thy light retrace How in all I loved here, still wast thou! Whom pressing to, then, as I fain would now, I shall find as able to satiate The love, thy gift, as my spirit's wonder Thou art able to quicken and sublimate, 224 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY With this sky of thine, that I now walk under, And glory in thee for, as I gaze Thus, thus ! Oh, let men keep their ways Of seeking thee in a narrow shrine-- Be this my way! And this is mine! VI. For lo, what think you? suddenly The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky Received at once the full fruition Of the moon's consummate apparition. The black cloud-barricade was riven, Ruined beneath her feet, and driven Deep in the West; while, bare and breathless, North and South and East lay ready For a glorious thing that, dauntless, deathless, Sprang across them and stood steady. 'T was a moon-rainbow, vast and perfect, From heaven to heaven extending, perfect As the mother-moon's self, full in face. It rose, distinctly at the base With its seven proper colours chorded, Which still, in the rising, were compressed, Until at last they coalesced, And supreme the spectral creature lorded In a triumph of whitest white,-- CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 225 Above which intervened the night. But above night too, like only the next, The second of a wondrous sequence, Reaching in rare and rarer frequence, Till the heaven of heavens were circumflexed, Another rainbow rose, a mightier, Fainter, flushier and flightier, Rapture dying along its verge. Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge, Whose, from the straining topmost dark, On to the keystone of that arc? VII. This sight was shown me, there and then,--- Me, one out of a world of men, Singled forth, as the chance might hap To another if, in a thunderclap Where I heard noise and you saw flame, Some one man knew God called his name. For me, I think I said "Appear! " Good were it to be ever here. "If thou wilt, let me build to thee " Service-tabernacles three, " Where, forever in thy presence, " In ecstatic acquiescence, v. Q 226 CHRISTMAS EVE AND EASTER-DAY " Far alike from thriftless learning " And ignorance's undiscerning, " I may worship and remain!" Thus at the show above me, gazing With upturned eyes, I felt my brain Glutted with the glory, blazing Throughout its whole mass, over and under Until at length it burst asunder And out of it bodily there streamed, The too-much glory, as it seemed, Passing from out me to the ground, Then palely serpentining round Into the dark with mazy error. VIII. All at once I looked up with terror. He was there. He himself with his human air. On the narrow pathway, just before. I saw the back of hinm, no more-- He had left the chapel, then, as I. I forgot all about the sky. No face : only the sight Of a sweepy garment, vast and white, With a hem that I could recognize. I felt, no surprise; CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 227 My mind fined with the cataract, At one bound of the mighty fact. " I remember, he did say " Doubtless that, to this world's end, " Where two or three should meet and pray " He would be in the midst, their friend; " Certainly he was there with them!" And my pulses leaped for joy Of the golden thought without alloy, That I saw his very vesture's hem. Then rushed the blood back, cold and clear, With a fresh enhancing shiver of fear; And I hastened, cried out while I pressed To the salvation of the vest, " But not so, Lord! It cannot be " That thou, indeed, art leaving me-- " Me, that have despised thy friends! " Did my heart make no amends? " Thou art the love of God--above " His power, didst hear me place his love, " And that was leaving the world for thee. " Therefore thou must not turn from me " As I had chosen the other part ! " Folly and pride o'ercame my heart. " Our best is bad, nor bears thy test, " Still it should be our very best. Q2 228 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY " I thought it best that thou, the spirit, " Be worshipped in spirit and in truth, " And in beauty, as even we require it--- " Not in the forms burlesque, uncouth, " I left but now, as scarcely fitted " For thee: I knew not what I pitied, " But, all I felt there, right or wrong, " What is it to thee, who curest sinning? " Am I not weak as thou art strong? " I have looked to thee from the beginning, " Straight up to thee through all the world " Which, like an idle scroll, lay furled " To nothingness on either side; " And since the time thou wast descried, " Spite of the weak heart, so have I " Lived ever, and so fain would die, " Living and dying, thee before! " But if thou leavest me----" IX. Less or more, I suppose that I spoke thus: When,--have mercy, Lord, on us! The whole face turned upon me full. And I spread myself beneath it, As when the bleacher spreads, to seethe it CHRISTMAS EVE AND EASTER-DAY 229 In the cleansing sun, his wool,--- Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness Some defiled, discoloured web--- So lay I, saturate with brightness. And when the flood appeared to ebb, Lo, I was walking, light and swift With my senses settling fast and steadying, But my body caught up in the whirl and drift Of the vesture's amplitude, still eddying On, just before me, still to be followed, As it carried me after with its motion: What shall I say?--as a path were hollowed And a man went weltering through the ocean, Sucked alone in the flying wake Of tbe luminous water-snake. Darkness and cold were cloven, as through I passed, upborne yet walking too. And I turned to myself at intervals, " So he said, so it befalls. " God who registers the cup " Of mere cold water, for his sake " To a disciple rendered up, " Disdains not his own thirst to slake " At the poorest love was ever offer " And because my heart I proffered, " With true love trembling at the brim, 230 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY " He suffers me to follow him " For ever, my own way,--dispensed " From seeking to be influenced " By all the less immediate ways " That earth, in worships manifold, " Adopts to reach, by pruyer and praise, " The garment's hem, which, lo, I hold!" X. And so we crossed the world and stopped. For where am I, in city or plain, Since I am 'ware of the world again? And what is this that rises propped With pillars of prodigious girth? Is it really on the earth, This miraculous Dome of God? Has the angel's measuring-rod Which numbered cubits, gem from gem, Twixt the gates of the New Jerusalem, Meted it out,--and what he meted, Have the sons of men completed? --Binding, ever as he bade, Columns in the colonnade With arms wide open to embrace The entry of the human race CHRISTMAS,EVE AND EASTER-DAY 231 To the breast of... what is it, yon building, Ablaze in front, all paint and gilding, With marble for brick, and stones of price For garniture of the edifice? Now I see; it is no dream; It stands there and it does not seem For ever, in pictures, thus it looks, And thus I have read of it in books Often in England, leagues away, And wondered how these fountains play, Growing up eternally Each to a musical water-tree, Whose blossoms drop, a glittering boom, Before my eyes, in the light of the moon, To the granite lavers underneath. Liar and dreamer in your teeth! I, the sinner that speak to you, Was in Rome this night, and stood, and knew Both this and more. For see, for see, The dark is rent, mine eye is free To pierce the crust of the outer wall. And I view inside, and all there, all, As the swarning hollow of a hive, The whole Basilica alive! Men in the chancel, body and nave, Men on the pillars' architrave, 232 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY Men on the statues, men on the tombs With popes and kings in their porphyry wombs, All famishing in expectation Of the main-altar's consummation. For see, for see, the rapturous moment Approaches, and earth's best endowment Blends with heaven's; the taper-fires Pant up, the winding brazen spires Heave loftier yet the baldachin; The incense-gaspings, long kept in, Suspire in clouds; the organ blatant Holds his breath and grovels latent, As if God's hushing finger grazed him, (Like Behemoth when he praised him) At the silver bell's shrill tinkling, Quick cold drops of terror sprinkling On the sudden pavement strewed With faces of the multitude. Earth breaks up, time drops away, In flows heaven, with its new day Of endless life, when He who trod, Very man and very God, This earth in weakness, shame and pain, Dying the death whose signs remain Up yonder on the accursed tree,-- Shall come again, no more to be CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 233 Of captivity the thrall, But the one God, All in all, King of kings, Lord of lords, As His servant john received the words, " I died, and live for evermore!" XI. Yet I was left outside the door. " Why sit I here on the threshold-stone " Left till He return, alone " Save for the garnment's extreme fold " Abandoned still to bless my hold?" My reason, to my doubt, replied. As if a book were opened wide, And at a certain page I traced Every record undefaced, Added by successive years,--- The harvestings of truth's stray ears Singly gleaned, and in one sheaf Bound together for belief. Yes, I said--that he will go And sit with these in turn, I know. Their faith's heart beats, though her head swims Too giddily to guide her limbs, Disabled by their palsy-stroke From propping mine. Though Rome's gross yoke 234 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY Drops off no more to be endured, Her teaching is not so obscured By errors and perversities, That no truth shines athwart the lies: And he, whose eye detects a spark Even where, to man's, the whole seems dark, May well see flame where each bebolder Acknowledges the embers smolder. But I, a mere man, fear to quit The clue God gave me as most fit To guide my footsteps through life's maze, Because himself discerns all ways Open to reach him: I, a man Able to mark where faith began To swerve aside, till from its summit Judgment drops her damning plummet, Pronouncing such a fatal space Departed from the founder's base: He will not bid me enter too, But rather sit, as now I do, Awaiting his return outside. --'T was thus my reason straight replied And joyously I turned, and pressed The garment's skirt upon my breast, Until, afresh its light suffusing me, My heart cried--what has been abusing me CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 235 That I should wait here lonely and coldly, Instead of rising, entering boldly, Baring truth's face, and letting drift Her veils of lies as they choose to shift? Do these men praise him? I will raise My voice up to their point of praise! I see the error; but above The scope of error, see the love.--- Oh, love of those first Christian days! --Fanned so soon into a blaze, From the spark preserved by the trampled sect, That the antique sovereign Intellect Which then sat ruling in the world, Like a change in dreams, was hurled From the throne he reigned upon: You looked up and he was gone. Gone, his glory of the pen! ---Love, with Greece and Rome in ken, Bade her scribes abhor the trick Of poetry and rhetoric, And exult with hearts set free, In blessed imbecility Scrawled, perchance, on some torn sheet Leaving Sallust incomplete. Gone, his pride of sculptor, painter! --Love, while able to acquaint her 236 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY While the thousand statues yet Fresh from chisel, pictures wet From brush, she saw on every side, Chose rather with an infant's pride To frame those portents which impart Such unction to true Christian Art. Gone, music too! The air was stirred By happy wings: Terpander's bird (That, when the cold came, fled away) Would tarry not the wintry day,-- As more-enduring sculpture must, Till filthy saints rebuked the gust With which they chanced to get a sight Of some dear naked Aphrodite They glanced a thought above the toes of, By breaking zealously her nose off. Love, surely, from that music's lingering, Might have filched her organ-fingering, Nor chosen rather to set prayings To hog-grunts, praises to horse-neighings. Love was the startling thing, the new: Love was the all-sufficient too; And seeing that, you see the rest: As a babe can find its mother's breast As well in darkness as in light, Love shut our eyes, and all seemed right. CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 237 True, the world's eyes are open now: --Less need for me to disallow Some few that keep Love's zone unbuckled, Peevish as ever to be suckled, Lulled by the sanme old baby-prattle With intermixture of the rattle, When she would have them creep, stand steady Upon their feet, or walk already, Not to speak of trying to climb. I will be wise another time, And not desire a wall between us, When next I see a church-roof cover So many species of one genus, All with foreheads bearing lover Written above the earnest eyes of them; All with breasts that beat for beauty, Whether sublimed, to the surprise of them, In noble daring, steadfast duty, The heroic in passion, or in action,-- Or, lowered for sense's satisfaction, To the mere outside of human creatures, Mere perfect form and faultless features. What? with all Rome here, whence to levy Such contributions to their appetite, With women and men in a gorgeous bevy, They take, as it were, a padlock, clap it tight 238 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. On their southern eyes, restrained from feeding On the glories of their ancient reading, On the beauties of their modern singing, On the wonders of the builder's bringing, On the majesties of Art around them,-- And, all these loves, late struggling incessant, When faith has at last united and bound them, They offer up to God for a present ? Why, I will, on the whole, be rather proud of it,-- And, only taking the act in reference To the other recipients who might have allowed it I will rejoice that God had the preference. XII. So I summed up my new resolves: Too much love there can never be. And where the intellect devolves Its function on love exclusively, I, a man who possesses both, Will accept the provision, nothing loth, --Will feast my love, then depart elsewhere, That my intellect may find its share. And ponder, O soul, the while thou departest, And see thou applaud the great heart of the artist, Who, examining the capabilities Of the block of marble he has to fashion CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 239 Into a type of thought or passion, Not always, Using obvious facilities, Shapes it, as any artist can, Into a perfect symmetrical man, Complete from head to foot of the life-size, Such as old Adam stood in his wife's eyes,--- But, now and then, bravely aspires to consummate A Colossus by no means so casy to come at, And uses the whole of his block for the bust, Leaving the mind of the public to finish it, Since cut it ruefully short he must: On the face alone he expends his devotion, He rather would mar than resolve to diminish it, --Saying, " Applaud me for this grand notion " Of what a face may be ! As for completing it " In breast and body and limbs, do that, you!" All hail! I fancy how, happily meeting, A trunk and legs would perfect the statue, Could man carve so as to answer volition. And how much nobler than petty cavils, Were a hope to find, in my spirit-travels, Some artist of another ambition, Who having a block to carve, no bigger, Has spent his power on the opposite quest, And believed to begin at the feet was best-- For so may I see, ere I die, the whole figure! 240 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY XIII. No sooner said than out in the night! My heart beat lighter and more light: And still, as before, I was walking swift, With my senses settling fast and steadying, But my body caught up in the whirl and drift Of the vesture's amplitude, still eddying On just before me, still to be followed, As it carried me after with its motion, --What shall I say?--as a path were hollowed, And a man went weltering through the ocean, Sucked along in the flying wake Of the luminous water-snake. XIV. Alone ! I am left alone once more--- (Save for the garment's extreme fold Abandoned still to bless my hold) Alone, beside the entrance-door Of a sort of temple,---perhaps a college, ---Like nothing I ever saw before At home in England, to my knowledge. The tall old quaint irregular town! It may be . . though which, I can't affirm . . any Of the famous middle-age towns of Germany; CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 241 And this flight of stairs where I sit down, Is it Halle, Weimar, Casset, Frankfort Or G|ottingen, I have to thank for 't? It may be G|ottingen,---most likely. Through the open door I catch obliquely Glimpses of a lecture-hall; And not a bad assembly neither, Ranged decent and symmetrical On benches, waiting what's to see there; Which, holding still by the vesture's hem, I also resolve to see with them, Cautious this time how I suffer to slip The chance of joining in fellowship With any that call themselves his friends; As these folk do, I have a notion. But hist---a buzzing and emotion! All settle themselves, the while ascends By the creaking rail to the lecture-desk, Step by step, deliberate Because of his cranium's over-freight, Three parts sublime to one grotesque, If I have proved an accurate guesser, The hawk-nosed high-cheek-boned Professor. I felt at once as if there ran A shoot of love from my heart to the man- That sallow virgin-minded studious V. R 242 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY Martyr to mild enthusiasm, As he uttered a kind of cough-preludious That woke my sympathetic spasm, (Beside some spitting that made me sorry) And stood, surveying his auditory With a wan pure look, well nigh celestial,-- Those blue eyes had survived so much! While, under the foot they could not smutch, Lay all the fleshly and the bestial. Over he bowed, and arranged his notes, Till the auditory's clearing of throats Was done with, died into a silence, And, when each glance was upward sent, Each bearded mouth composed intent, And a pin might be heard drop half a mile hence,--- He pushed back higher his spectacles, Let the eyes stream out like lamps from cells, And giving his head of hair--a hake Of undressed tow, for colour and quantity One rapid and impatient shake, (As our own young England adjusts a jaunty tie When about to impad, on mature digestion, Some thrilling view of the surplice-question) ---The Professor's grave voice, sweet though hoarse, Broke into his Christmas-Eve discourse. CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 243 XV. And he began it by observing How reason dictated that men Should rectify the natural swerving, By a reversion, now and then, To the well-heads of knowledge, few, And far away, whence rolling grew The life,stream wide whereat we drink, Commingled, as we needs must think, With waters alien to the source To do which, aimed this eye's discourse; Since, where could be a fitter time For tracing backward to its prime This Christianity, this lake, This reservoir, wheret we slake From one or other bank, our thirst? So, be proposed inquiring first Into the various sources whence This Myth of Christ is derivable; Demanding from the evidence, (Since plainly no such life was liveable) How these phenomena should class Whether't were best opine Christ was, Or never was at all, or whether He was and was not, both together-- 244 CHRISTMAS-DAY AND EASTER-DAY It matters little for the name, So the idea be left the same. Only, for practical purpose' sake, 'T was obviously as well to take The popular story,---understanding How the ineptitude of the time, And the penman's prejudice, expanding Fact into fable fit for the clime, Had, by slow and sure degrees, translated it Into this myth, this Individuum,-- Which, when reason hid strained and abated it Of foreign matter, left, for residuum, A Man!--a right true man, however, Whose work was worthy a man's endeavour: Work, that gave warrant almost sufficient To his disciples, for rather believing He was just omnipotent and omniscient, As it gives to us, for as frankly receiving His word, their tradition,--which, though it meant Something entirely different From all that those who only heard it, In their simplicity thought and averred it, Had yet a meaning quite as respectable: For, among other doctrines delectable, Was he not surely the first to insist on The natural sovereignty of our race?--- CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 245 Here the lecturer came to a pausing-place. And while his cough,like a drouthy piston, Tried to dislodge the husk that grew to him, I seized the occasion of bidding adieu to him, The vesture still within my hand. XVI. I could interpret its command. This time he would not bid me enter The exhausted air-bell of the Critic. Truth's atmosphere may grow mephitic When Papist struggles with Dissenter, Impregating its pristine clarity, ---One, by his daily fare's vulgarity Its gust of broken meat and garlic; --One, by his soul's too-much presuming To turn the frankincense's fuming And vapours of the candle starlike Into the cloud her wings she buoys on. Each, that thus sets the pure air seething, May poison it for healthy breathing--- But the Critic leaves no air to poison; Pumps out with ruthless ingenuity Atom by atom, and leaves you---vacuity. Thus much of Christ does he reject? And what retain? His intellect? 246 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY What is it I must reverence duly? Poor intellect for worship, truly, Which tells me simply what was told (If mere morality, bereft Of the God in Christ, be all that's left) Elsewhere by voices manifold; With this advantage, that the stater Made nowise the important stumble Of adding, he, the sage and humble, Was also one with the Creator. You urge Christ's followers' simplicity: But how does shifting blame, evade it? Have wisdom's words no more felicity? The stumbling-block, his speech---who laid it? How comes it that for one found able To sift the truth of it from fable, Millions believe it to the letter? Christ's goodness, then--does that fare better? Strange goodness, which upon the score Of being goodness, the mere due Of man to fellow-man, much more To God,---should take another view Of its possessor's privilege, And bid him rule his race ! You pledge Your fealty to such rule? What, all-- From heavenly john and Attic Paul, CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 247 And that brave weather-battered Peter, Whose stout faith only stood completer For buffets, sinning to be pardoned, As, more his hands hauled nets, they hardened -- All, down to you, the man of men, Professing here at G|ottingen, Compose Christ's flock ! They, you and I, Are sheep of a good man ! And why? The goodness,---how did he acquire it? Was it self gained, did God inspire it? Choose which; then tell me, on what ground Should its possessor dare propound His claim to rise o'er us an inch? Were goodness all some man's invention, Who arbitrarily made mention What we should follow, and whence flinch --- What qualities might take the style Of right and wrong,--and had such guessing Met with as general acquiescing As graced the alphabet erewhile, When A got leave an Ox to be, No Camel (quoth the Jews) like G,-- For thus inventing thing and title Worship were that man's fit requital. But if the common conscience must Be ultimately judge, adjust 248 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTEA-DAY Its apt name to each quality Already known,--I would decree Worship for such mere demonstration And simple work of nomenclature, Only the day I praised, not nature, But Harvey, for the circulation. I would praise such a Christ, with pride And joy, that he, as none beside, Had taught us how to keep the mind God gave him, as God gave his kind, Freer than they from fleshly taint: I would call such a Christ our Saint, As I declare our Poet, him Whose insight makes all others dim: A thousand poets pried at life, And only one amid the strife Rose to be Shakespeare: each shall take His crown, I'd say, for the world's sake-- Though some objected--" Had we seen " The heart and head of each, what screen " Was broken there to give them light, " While in ourselves it shuts the sight, " We should no more admire, perchance, " That these found truth out at a glance, " Than marvel how the bat discerns " Some pitch-dark cavern's fifty turns, CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 249 " Led by a finer tact, a gift " He boasts, which other birds must shift " Without, and grope as best they can." No, freely I would praise the man,--- Nor one whit more, if he contended That gift of his, from God descended. Ah friend, what gift of man's does not? No nearer something, by a jot, Rise an infinity of nothings Than one: take Euclid for your teacher: Distinguish kinds: do crownings, clothings, Make that creator which was creature? Multiply gifts upon man's head, And what, when all's done, shall be said But--the more gifted he, I ween! That one's made Christ, this other, Pilate, And this might be all that has been,--- So what is there to frown or smile at? What is left for us, save, in growth Of soul, to rise up, far past both, From the gift looking to the giver, And from the cistern to the river, And from the finite to infinity, And from man's dust to God's divinity? 250 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY XVII. Take all in a word: the truth in God's breast Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed: Though he is so bright and we so dim, We are made in his image to witness him: And were no eye in us to tell, Instructed by no inner sense, The light of heaven from the dark of hell, That light would want its evidence,-- Though justice, good and truth were still Divine, if, by some demon's will, Hatred and wrong had been proclaimed Law through the worlds, and right misnamed. No mere exposition of morality Made or in part or in totality, Should win you to give it worship, therefore; And, if no better proof you will care for, --Whom do you count the worst man upon earth? Be sure, he knows, in his conscience, more Of what right is, than arrives at birth In the best man's acts that we bow before: This last knows better--true, but my fact is, 'Tis one thing to know, and another to practise. And thence I conclude that the real God-function Is to furnish a motive and injunction CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 251 For practising what we know already. And such an injunction and such a motive As the God in Christ, do you waive, and " heady, " High-minded," hang your tablet-votive Outside the fane on a finger-post? Morality to the uttermost, Supreme in Christ as we all confess Why need we prove would avail no jot To make him God, if God he were not? What is the point where himself lays stress? Does the precept run "Believe in good, " In justice, truth, now understood " For the first time?"--or, " Believe in me, " Who lived and dicd, yet essentially " Am Lord of Life? " Whoever can take The same to his heart and for mere love's sake Conceive of the love,--that man obtains A new truth; no conviction gains Of an old one only, made intense By a fresh appeal to his faded sense. XVIII. Can it be that he stays inside? Is the vesture left me to commune with? Could my soul find aught to sing in tune with Even at this lecture, If she tried? 252 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY Oh, let me at lowest sympathize With the lurking drop of blood that lies In the desiccated brain's white roots Without throb for Christ's attributes, As the lecturer makes his special boast! If love's dead there, it has left a ghost. Admire we, how from heart to brain (Though to say so strike the doctors dumb) One instinct rises and falls again, Restoring the equilibrium. And how when the Critic had done his best, And the pearl of price, at reason's test, Lay dust and ashes levigable On the Professor's lecture-table,-- When we looked for the inference and monition That our faith, reduced to such condition, Be swept forthwith to its natural dust-hole,-- He bids us, when we least expect it, Take back our faith,---if it be not just whole, Yet a pearl indeed, as his tests affect it, Which fact pays damage done rewardingly, So, prize we our dust and ashes accordingly! " Go home and venerate the myth " I thus have experimented with-- " This man, continue to adore him " Rather than all who went before him, CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 253 " And all who ever followed after!' -- Surely for this I may praise you, my brother! Will you take the praise in tears or laughter? That's one point gained: can I compass another? Unlearned love was safe from spurning Can't we respect your loveless learning? Let us at least give learning honour! What laurels had we showered upon her, Girding her loins up to perturb Our theory of the Middle Verb; Or Turk-like brandishing a scimitar O'er anap|aests in comic-trimeter; Or curing the halt and maimed ` Iketides,' While we lounged on at our indebted ease: Instead of which, a tricksy demon Sets her at Titus or Philemon! When ignorance wags his ears of leather And hates God's word,'t is altogether; Nor leaves he his congenial thistles To go and browse on Paul's Epistles. --And you, the audience, who might ravage The world wide, enviably savage, Nor heed the cry of the retriever, More than Herr Heine (before his fever),-- I do not tell a lie so arrant As say my passion's wings are furled up, 254 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY And, without plainest heavenly warrant, I were ready and glad to give the world up-- But still, when you rub brow meticulous, And ponder the profit of turning holy If not for God's, for your own sake solely, --God forbid I should find you ridiculous! Deduce from this lecture all that eases you, Nay, call yourselves, if the calling pleases you, " Christians,"---abhor the deist's pravity,-- Go on, you shall no more move my gravity Than, when I see boys ride a-cockhorse, I find it in my heart to embarrass them By hinting that their stick's a mock horse, And they really carry what they say carries them. XIX. So sat I talking with my mind. I did not long to leave the door And find a new church, as before, But rather was quiet and inclined To prolong and enjoy the gentle resting From further tracking and trying and testing. " This tolerance is a genial mood !" (Said I, and a little pause ensued). " One trims the bark'twixt shoal and shelf, " And sees, each side, the good effects of it, CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 255 " A value for religion's self, " A carelessness about the sects of it. " Let me enjoy my own conviction, " Not watch my neighbour's faith with fretfulness, " Still spying there some dereliction " Of truth, perversity, forgetfulness! " Better a mild indifferentism, " Teaching that both our faiths (though duller " His shine through a dull spirit's prism) " Originally had one colour ! " Better pursue a pilgrimage " Through ancient and through modern times " To many peoples, various climes, " Where I may see saint, savage, sage " Fuse their respective creeds in one " Before the general Father's throne!" XX. --'T was the horrible storm began aflesh! The black night caught me in his mesh, Whirled me up, and flung me prone. I was left on the college-step alone. I looked, and far there, ever fleeting Far, far away, the receding gesture, And looming of the lessening vesture!-- Swept forward from my stupid hand, 256 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY While I watched my foolish heart expand In the lazy glow of benevolence, O'er the various modes of man's belief. I sprang up with fear's vehemence. Needs must there be one way, our chief Best way of worship let me strive To find it, and when found, contrive My fellows also take their share! This constitutes my earthly care: God's is above it and distinct. For I, a man, with men am linked And not a brute with brutes; no gain That I experience, must remain Unshared: but should my best endeavour To share it, fail--subsisteth ever God's care above, and I exult That God, by God's own ways occult, May--doth, I will believe--bring back All wanderers to a single track. Meantime, I can but testify God's care for me---no more, can I --- It is but for myself I know; The world rolls witnessing around me Only to leave me as it found me; Men cry there, but my ear is slow: Their races flourish or decay CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 257 --What boots it, while yon lucid way Loaded with stars divides the vault? But soon my soul repairs it fault When, sharpening sense's hebetude, She turns on my own life! So viewed, No mere mote's-breadth but teems immense With witnessings of providence: And woe to me if when I look Upon that record, the sole book Unsealed to me, I take no heed Of any warning that I read! Have I been sure, this Christmas-Eve, God's own hand did the rainbow weave Whereby the truth from heaven slid Into my soul?--I cannot bid The world admit he stooped to heal My soul, as if in a thunder-peal Where one heard noise, and one saw flame, I only knew he named my name: But what is the world to me, for sorrow Or joy in its censure, when to-morrow It drops the remark, with just-turned head Then, on again, ` That man is dead'? Yes, but for me---my name called,--drawn As a conscript's lot from the lap's black yawn, He has dipt into on a battle-dawn: v. s 258 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY Bid out of life by a nod, a glance,-- Stumbling, mute-mazed, at nature's chance,-- With a rapid finger circled round, Fixed to the first poor inch of ground To fight from, where his foot was found; Whose ear but a minute since lay free To the wide camp's buzz and gossipry--- Summoned, a solitary man To end his life where his life began, From the safe glad rear, to the dreadful van! Soul of mine, hadst thou caught and held By the hem of the vesture!--- XXI. And I caught At the flying robe, and unrepelled Was lapped again in its folds full-fraught With warmth and wonder and delight, God's mercy being infinite. For scarce had the words escaped my tongue, When, at a passionate bound, I sprung, Out of the wandering world of rain, Into the little chapel again. XXII. How else was I found there, bolt upright On my bench, as if I had never left it? CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 259 ---Never flung out on the common at night, Nor met the storm and wedge-like cleft it, Seen the raree-show of Peter's successor, Or the laboratory of the Professor! For the Vision, that was true, I wist, True as that heaven and earth exist. There sat my friend, the yellow and tall, With his neck and its wen in the selfsame place; Yet my nearest neighbour's cheek showed gall. She had slid away a contemptuous space: And the old fat woman, late so placable, Eyed me with symptoms, hardly mistakable, Of her milk of kindness turning rancid. In short, a spectator might have fancied That I had nodded, betrayed by slumber, Yet kept my seat, a warning ghastly, Through the heads of the sermon, nine in number, And woke up now at the tenth and lastly. But again, could such disgrace have happened? Each friend at my elbow had surely nudged it; And, as for the sermon, where did my nap end? Unless I heard it, could I have judged it? Could I report as I do at the close, First, the preacher speaks through his nose: Second, his gesture is too emphatic: Thirdly, to waive what's pedagogic, 260 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY The subject-matter itself lacks logic: Fourthly, the English is ungrammatic. Great news! the preacher is found no Pascal, Whom, if I pleased, I might to the task call Of making square to a finite eye The circle of infinity, And find so all-but-just-succeeding ! Great news! the sermon proves no reading Where bee-like in the flowers I bury me, Like Taylor's the immortal Jeremy! And now that I know the very worst of him, What was it I thought to obtain at first of him? Ha! Is God mocked, as he asks? Shall I take on me to change his tasks, And dare, despatched to a river-head For a simple draught of the element, Neglect the thing for which he sent, And return with another thing instead?-- Saying, " Because the water found " Welling up from underground, " Is mingled with the taints of earth, " While thou, I know, dost laugh at dearth, " And couldst, at wink or word, convulse " The world with the leap of a river-pulse,-- " Therefore I turned from the oozings muddy, " And bring thee a chalice I found, instead: CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 261 " See the brave veins in the breccia ruddy ! " One would suppose that the marble bled. " What matters the water? A hope I have nursed: " The waterless cup will quench my thirst." --Better have knelt at thc poorest stream That trickles in pain from the straitest rift! For the less or the more is all God's gift, Who blocks up or breaks wide the granite-seam. And here, is there water or not, to drink? I then, in ignorance and weakeness, Taking God's help, have attained to think My heart does best to receive in meekness That mode of worship, as most to his mind, Where earthly aids being cast behind, His All in All appears serene With the thinnest human veil between, Letting the mystic lamps, the seven; The many motions of his spirit, Pass, as they list, to earth from heaven. For the preacher's merit or demerit, It were to be wished the flaws were fewer In the earthen vessel, holding treasure Which lies as safe in a golden ewer; But the main thing is, does it hold good measure? Heaven soon sets right all other matters!-- Ask, else, these ruins of humanity, 262 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY This flesh worn out to rags and tatters, This soul at struggle with insanity, Who thence take comfort---can I doubt?--- Which an empire gained, were a loss without. May it be mine! And let us hope That no worse blessing befall the Pope, Turned sick at last of to-day's buffoonery, Of posturings and petticoatings, Beside his. Bourbon bully's gloatings In the bloody orgies of drunk poltroonery! Nor may the Professor forego its peace At G|ottingen presently, when, in the dusk Of his life, if his cough, as I fear, should increase, Prophesied of by that horrible husk--- When thicker and thicker the darkness fills The world through his misty spectacles, And he gropes for something more substantial Than a fable, myth or personification,--- May Christ do for him what no mere man shall, And stand confessed as the God of salvation! Meantime, in the still recurring fear Lest myself, at unawares, be found, While attacking the choice of my neighbours round, With none of my own made---I choose here! The giving out of the hymn reclaims me; I have done: and if any blames me, CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 263 Thinking that merely to touch in brevity The topics I dwell on, were unlawful,--- Or worse, that I trench, with undue levity, On the bounds of the holy and the awful,-- I praise the heart, and pity the him, And refer mysclf to THEE, instead of him, Who head and heart alike discernest, Looking below light speech we utter, When frothy spume and frequent sputter Prove that the soul's depths boil in earnest! May truth shine out, stand ever before us! I put up pencil and join chorus To Hepzibah Tune, without further apology The last five verses of the third section Of the seventeenth hymn of Whitfield's Collection, To conclude with the doxology. 264 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY EASTER-DAY. How very hard it is to be A Christian! Hard for you and me, --Not the mere task of making real That duty up to its ideal, Effecting thus, complete and whole, A purpose of the human soul-- For that is always hard to do; But hard, I mean, for me and you To realize it, more or less, With even the moderate success Which commonly repays our strife To carry out the aims of life. " This aim is greater," you will say, " And so more arduous every way." --But the importance of their fruits Still proves to man, in all pursuits, CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 265 Proportional encouragement. " Then, what if it be God's intent " That labour to this one result " Should seem unduly difficult?" Ah, that's a question in the dark--- And the sole thing that I remark Upon the difficulty, this; We do not see it where it is, At the beginning of the race; As we proceed, it shifts its place, And where we looked for crowns to fall, We find the tug's to come,--that's all. II. At first you say, " The whole, or chief " Of difficulties, is belief. " Could I believe once thoroughly, " The rest were simple. What? Am I " An idiot, do you think,---a beast ? " Prove to me, only that the least " Command of God is God's indeed, " And what injunction shall I need " To pay obedience? Death so nigh, " When time must end, eternity " Begin ---and cannot I compute, " Weigh loss and gain together, suit 266 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY " My actions to the balance drawn, " And give my body to be sawn " Asunder, hacked in pieces, tied " To horses, stoned, burned, crucified, " Like any martyr of the list? " How gladly!--if I make acquist, " Through the brief minute's fierce annoy, " Of God's eternity of joy." III. ---And certainly you name the point Whereon all turns: for could you joint This flexile finite life once tight Into the fixed and infinite, You, safe inside, would spurn what's out, With carelessness enough, no doubt-- Would spurn mere life: but when time brings To their next stage your reasonings, Your eyes, late wide, begin to wink Nor see the path so well, I think. IV. You say, " Faith may be, one agrees, " A touchstone for God's purposes, CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 267 " Even as ourselves conceive of them. " Could he acquit us or condemn " For holding what no hand can loose, " Rejecting when we can't but choose? " As well award the victor's wreath " To whosoever should take breath " Duly each minute while he lived--- " Grant heaven, because a man contrived " To see its sunlight every day " He walked forth on the public way. " You must mix some uncertainty " With faith, if you would have faith be. " Why, what but faith, do we abhor " And idolize each other for--- " Faith in our evil or our good, " Which is or is not understood " Aright by those we love or those " We hate thence called our friends or foes? " Your mistress saw your spirit's grace, " When turning from the ugly face, " I found belief in it too hard; " And she and I have our reward. " --Yet here a doubt peeps: well for us " Weak beings, to go using thus " A touchstone for our little ends, " Trying with faith the foes and friends; 268 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY " ---But God, bethink you! I would fain " Conceive of the Creator's reign " As based upon exacter laws " Than creatures build by with applause. " In all God's acts--(as Plato cries " He doth)---he should geometrize. " Whence, I desiderate . . ." V. I see! You would grow as a natural tree, Stand as a rock, soar up like fire. The world's so perfect and entire, Quite above faith, so right and fit! Go there, walk up and down in it! No. The creation travails, groans-- Contrive your music from its moans, Without or let or hindrance, friend! That's an old story, and its end As old--you come back (be sincere) With every question you put here (Here where there once was, and is still, We think, a living oracle, Whose answers you stand carping at) his time flung back unanswered flat,--- Beside perhaps, as many more CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 269 As those that drove you out before, Now added, where was little need. Questions impossible, indeed, To us who sat still, all and each Persuaded that our earth had speech, Of God's, writ down, no matter if In cursive type of hieroglyph,--- Which one fact freed us from the yoke Of guessing why He never spoke. You come back in no better plight Than when you left us, ---am I right? VI So, the old process, I conclude, Goes on, the reasoning's pursued Further. You own, "'T is well averred, " A scientific faith's absurd, " --Frustrates the very end't was meant " To serve. So, I would rest content " With a mere probability, " But, probable; the chance must lie " Clear on one side,--lie all in rough, " So long as there be just enough " To pin my faith to, though it hap " Only at points: from gap to gap 270 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY " One hangs up a huge curtain so, " Grandly, nor seeks to have it go " Foldless and flat along the wall. " What care I if some interval " Of life less plainly may depend " On God? I'd hang there to the end; " And thus I should not find it hard " To be a Christian and debarred " From trailing on the earth, till furled " Away by death.--Renounce the world! " Were that a mighty hardship? Plan " A pleasant life, and straight some man " Beside you, with, if he thought fit, " Abundant means to compass it, " Shall turn deliberate aside " To try and live as, it you tried " You clearly might, yet most despise. " One friend of mine wears out his eyes, Slighting the stupid joys of sense, " In patient hope that, ten years hence, " ` Somewhat completer,' he may say, " ` My list of coleoptera!' " While just the other who most laughs " At him, above all epitaphs " Aspires to have his tomb describe " Himself as sole among the tribe CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 271 " Of suuffbox-fanciers, who possessed " A Grignon with the Regent's crest. " So that, subduing, as you want, " Whatever stands predominant " Among my earthly appetites " For tastes and smells and sounds and sights, " I shall be doing that alone, " To gain a palm-branch and a throne. " Which fifty people undertake " To do, and gladly, for the sake " Of giving a Semitic guess, " Or playing pawns at blindfold chess." VII. Good: and the next thing is,---look round For evidence enough! 'T is found, No doubt: as is your sort of mind, So is your sort of search: you'l find What you desire, and that's to be A Christian. What says history? How comforting a point it were To find some mummy-scrap declare There lived a Moses! Better still, Prove Jonah's whale translatable Into some quicksand of the seas, Isle, cavern, rock, or what you please, 272 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY That faith might flap her wings and crow From such an eminence! Or, no-- The human heart's best; you prefer Making that prove the minister To truth; you probe its wants and needs, And hopes and fears, then try what creeds Meet these most aptly,--resolute That faith plucks such substantial fruit Wherever these two correspond, She little needs to look beyond, And puzzle out who Orpheus was, Or Dionysius Zagrias. You'll find sufficient, as I say, To satisfy you either way; You wanted to believe; your pains Are crowned--you do: and what remains? " Renounce the world!"--Ah, were it done By merely cutting one by one Your limbs off, with your wise head last, How easy were it!--how soon past, If once in the believing mood! " Such is man s usual gratitude, " Such thanks to God do we return, " For not exacting that we spurn " A single gift of life, forego " One real gain,--only taste them so CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 273 " With gravity and temperance, " That those mild virtues may enhance " Such pleasures, rather than abstract--- " Last spice of which, will be the fact " Of love discerned in every gift; " While when the scene of life shall shift, " And the gay heart be taught to ache, " As sorrows and privations take " The place of joy,-- the thing that seems " Mere misery, under human schemes, " Becomes, regarded by the light " Of love, as very near, or quite " As good a gift as joy before. " So plain is it that, all the more " A dispensation's merciful, " More pettishly we try and cull " Briers, thistles, from our private plot, " To mar God's ground where thorns are not !" VIII. Do you say this, or I?--Oh, you! Then, what, my friend?--(thus I pursue Our parley)--you indeed opine That the Eternal and Divine Did, eighteen centuries ago, In very truth.. Enough! you know 274 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY The all-stupendous tale,---that Birth, That Life, that Death! And all, the earth Shuddered at,--all, the heavens grew black Rather than see; all, nature's rack And throe at dissolution's brink Attested,---all took place, you think, Only to give our joys a zest, And prove our sorrows for the best? We differ, then! Were I, still pale And heartstruck at the dreadful tale, Waiting to hear God's voice declare What horror followed for my share, As implicated in the deed, Apart from other sins,--concede That if He blacked out in a blot My brief life's pleasantness,'t were not So very disproportionate! Or there might be another fate,-- I certainly could understand (If fancies were the thing in hand) How God might save, at that day's price, The impure in their impurities, Give licence formal and complete To choose the fair and pick the sweet. But there be certain words, broad, plain, Uttered again and yet again, CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 275 Hard to mistake or overgloss--- Announcing this world's gain for loss, And bidding us reject the same: The whole world lieth (they proclaim) In wickedness,--come out of it ! 'Turn a deaf ear, it you think fit But I who thrill through every nerve At thought of what deaf ears deserve--- How do you counsel in the case? IX " I'd take, by all means, in your place, " The safe side, since it so appears; " Deny myself, a few brief years, " The natural pleasure, leave the fruit " Or cut the plant up by the root. " Remember what a martyr said " On the rude tablet overhead! " ` I was born sickly, poor and mean, " ` A slave: no misery could screen " ` The holders of the pearl of price " ` From C|aesar's envy; therefore twice " ` I fought with beasts, and three times saw " ` My children suffer by his law; " ` At last my own release was earned: T2 276 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY " ` I was some time in being burned, " ` But at the close a Hand came through " ` The fire above my head, and drew " ` My soul to Christ, whom now I see, " ` Sergius a brother, writes for me " ` This testimony on the wall-- " ` For me, I have forgot it all.' " You say right; this were not so hard! " And since one nowise is debarred " From this, why not escape some sins " By such a method?" X. Then begins To the old point revulsion new-- (For 't is just this I bring you to) If after all we should mistake, And so renounce life for the sake Of death and nothing else? You hear Each friend we jeered at, send the jeer Back to ourselves with good effect-- " There were my beetles to collect! " My box--a trifle, I confess, " But here I hold it, ne'ertheless!" Poor idiots, (let us pluck up heart And answer) we, the better part CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 277 Have chosen, though't were only hope,-- Nor envy moles like you that grope Amid your veritable muck, More than the grasshoppers would truck, For yours, their passionate life away, That spends itself in leaps all day To reach the sun, you want the eyes To see, as they the wings to rise And match the noblc hearts of them! Thus the contemer we contemn,-- And, when doubt strikes us, thus we ward Its stroke off, caught upon our guard, --Not struck enough to overturn Our faith, but shake it---make us learn What I began with, and, I wis, End, having proved,--how hard it is To be a Christian! XI. " Proved, or not, " Howe'er you wis, small thanks, I wot, " You get of mine, for taking pains " To make it hard to me. Who gains " By that, I wonder? Here I live " In trusting ease. and here you drive " At causing me to lose what most " Yourself would mourn for had you lost!" 278 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY XII. But, do you see, my friend, and thus You leave Saint Paul for |AEschylus? --Who made his Titan's arch-device The giving men blind hopes to spice The meal of life with, else devoured In bitter haste, while lo, death loured Before them at the platter's edge! If faith should be, as I allege, Quite other than a condiment To heighten flavours with, or meant (Like that brave curry of his Grace) To take at need the victuals' place? If, having dined, you would digest Besides, and turning to your rest Should find instead... XIII. Now, you shall see And judge if a mere foppery Pricks on my speaking! I resolve To utter--yes, it shall devolve On you to hear is solemn, strange And dread a thing as in the range CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 279 Of facts ---or fancies, if God will--- E'er happened to our kind! I still Stand in the cloud and, while it wraps My face, ought not to speak perhaps; Seeing that if I carry through My purpose, if my words in you Find a live actual listener, My story, reason must aver False after all--the happy chance! While, if each human countenance I meet in London day by day, Be what I fear,--my warnings fray No one, and no one they convert, And no one helps me to assert How hard it is to really be A Christian, and in vacancy I pour this story ! XIV. I commence By trying to inform you, whence It comes that every Easter-night As now, I sit up, watch, till light, Upon those chimney-stacks and roofs, Give,through my window-pane, grey proofs 280 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY That Easter-day is breaking slow. On such a night three years ago, It chanced that I had cause to cross The common, where the chapel was, Our friend spoke of, the other day-- You've not forgotten, I dare say. I fell to musing of the time So close, the blessed matin-prime All hearts leap up at, in some guise-- One could not well do otherwise. Insensibly my thoughts were bent Toward the main point; I overwent Much the same ground of reasoning As you and I just now. One thing Remained, however--one that tasked My soul to answer; and I asked, Fairly and frankly, what might be That History, that Faith, to me --Me there--not me in some domain Built up and peopled by my brain, Weighing its merits as one weighs Mere theories for blame or praise, --The kingcraft of the Lucumons, Or Fourier's scheme, its pros and cons,-- But my faith there, or none at all. " How were my case, now, did I fall CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 281 " Dead here, this minute--should I lie " Faithful or faithless? " Note that I Inclined thus ever!--little prone For instance, when I lay alone In childhood, to go calm to sleep And leave a closet where might keep His watch perdue some murderer Waiting till twelve o'clock to stir, As good authentic legends tell: " He might: but how improbable! " How little likely to deserve " The pains and trial to the nerve " Of thrusting head into the dark!"-- Urged my old nurse, and balde me mark Beside, that, should the dreadful scout Really lie hid there, and leap out At first turn of the rusty key, Mine were small gain that she could see, Killed not in bed but on the floor, And losing one night's sleep the more. I tell you, I would always burst The door ope, know my fate at first. This time, indeed, the closet penned No such assassiim: but a friend Rather, peeped out to guard me, fit For counsel, Common Sense, to wit, 282 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY Who said a good deal that might pass,-- Heartening, impartial too, it was, Judge else: " For, soberly now,---who " Should be a Christian if not you?" (Hear how he smoothed me down.) " One takes " A whole life, sees what course it makes " Mainly, and not by fits and starts-- " In spite of stoppage which imparts " Fresh value to the general speed. " A life, with none, would fly indeed: " Your progressing is slower---right! " We deal with progress and not flight. " Through baffling senses passionate, " Fancies as restless,--with a freight " Of knowledge cumbersome enough " To sink your ship when waves grow rough, " Though meant for ballast in the hold,-- " I find,'mid dangers manifold, " The good bark answers to the helm " Where faith sits, easier to o'erwhelm " Than some stout peasant's heavenly guide, " Whose hard head could not, if it tried, " Conceive a doubt, nor understand " How senses hornier than his hand " Should 'tice the Christian off his guard. " More happy ! But shall we award CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 283 " Less honour to the hull which dogged " By storms, a mere wreck, waterlogged, " Masts by the board, her bulwarks gone " And stanchions going, yet bears on,--- " Than to mere life-boats, built to save, " And triumph o'er the breaking wave? " Make perfect your good ship as these, " And what were her performances!" I added--" Would the ship reach home! " I wish indeed ` God's kingdom come--' " The day when I shall see appear " His bidding, as my duty, clear " From doubt! And it shall dawn, that day, " Some future season; Easter may " Prove, not impossibly, the time--- " Yes, that were striking--fates would chime " So aptly! Easter-morn, to bring " The judgment!---deeper in the spring " Than now, however, when there's snow " Capping the hills; for earth must show " All signs of meaning to pursue " Her tasks as she was wont to do " --The skylark, taken by surprise " As we ourselves, shall recognize " Sudden the end. For suddenly " It comes; the dreadfulness must be 284 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY " In that; all warrants the belief-- " ` At night it conmeth like a thief.' " I fancy why the trumpet blows; " --Plainly, to wake one. From repose " We shall start up, at last awake " From life, that insane dream we take " For waking now, because it seems. " And as, when now we wake from dreams, " We laugh, while we recall the1n, ` Fool, " ` To let the chance slip, linger cool " ` When such adventure offered! Just " A bridge to cross, a dwarf to thrust " ` Aside, a wicked mage to stab--- " `And, lo ye, I had kissed Queen Mab!' " So shall we marvel why we grudged " Our labour here, and idly judged " Of heaven, we might have gained, but lose! " Lose? Talk of loss, and I refuse " To plead at all ! You speak no worse " Nor better than my ancient nurse " When she would tell me in my youth " I well deserved that shapes uncouth " Frighted and teased me in my sleep: " Why could I not in memory keep " Her precept for the evil's cure? " Pinch your own arm, boy, and be sure " ` You'll wake forthwith!'" CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 285 XV. And as I said This nonsense, throwing back my head With light complacent laugh, I found Suddenly all the midnight round One fire. The dome of heaven had stood As made up of a multitude Of handbreadth cloudlets, one vast rack Of ripples infinite and black, From sky to sky. Sudden there went, Like horror and astonishment, A fierce vindictive scribble of red Quick flame across, as if one said (The angry scribe of Judgment) " There--- " Burn it!" And straight I was aware That the whole ribwork round, minute Cloud touching cloud beyond compute, Was tinted, each with its own spot Of burning at the core, till clot Jammed against clot, and spilt its fire Over all heaven, which'gan suspire As fanned to measure equable,--- Just so great conflagratious kill Night overhead, and rise and sink, Reflected. Now the fire would shrink 286 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY And wither off the blasted face Of heaven, and I distinct might trace The sharp black ridgy outlines left Unburned like network---then, each cleft The fire had been sucked back into, Regorged, and out it surging flew Furiously, and night writhed inflamed, Till, tolerating to be tamed No longer, certain rays world-wide Shot downwardly. On every side Caught past escape, the earth was lit; As if a dragon's nostril split And all his famished ire o'erflowed; Then as he winced at his lord's goad, Back he inhaled; whereat I found The clouds into vast pillars bound, Based on the corners of the earth, Propping the skies at top: a dearth Of fire i' the violet intervals, Leaving exposed the utmost walls Of time, about to tumble in And end the world. XVI. I felt begin The judgment-Day: to retrocede CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 287 Was too late now. "In very deed " (I uttered to myself) " that Day!" The intuition burned away All darkness from my spirit too: There, stood I, round and fixed I knew Choosing the world. The choice was made And naked and disguiseless stayed, And unevadable, the fact. My brain held all the same compact Its senses, nor my heart declined Its office; rather, both combined To help me in this juncture, I Lost not a second,--agony Gave boldness: since my life had end And my choice with it--best defend, Applaud both! I resolved to say, " So was I framed by thee, such way " I put to use thy senses here! " It was so beautiful, so near, " Thy world,--what could I then but choose " My part there? Nor did I refuse " To look above the transient boon " Of time; but it was hard so soon " As in a short life, to give up " Such beauty: I could put the cup " Undrained of half its fulness, by; 285 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY " But, to renounce it utterly, "--That was too hard! Nor did the cry " Which bade renounce it, touch my brain " Authentically deep and plain " Enough to make my lips let go. " But Thou, who knowest all, dost know " Whether I was not, life's brief while, " Endeavouring to reconcile " Those lips (too tardily, alas!) " To letting the dear remnant pass, " One day,--some drops of earthly good " Untasted! Is it for this mood, " That Thou, whose earth delights so well, " Hast made its complement a hell?" XVII. A final belch of fire like blood, Overbroke all heaven in one flood Of doom. Then fire was sky, and sky Fire, and both, one brief ecstasy, Then ashes. But I heard no noise (Whatever was) because a voice Beside me spoke thus, "Life is done, " Time ends,Eternity's begun, " And thou art judged for evermore." CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 289 XVIII. I looked up; all seemed as before; Of that cloud-Tophet overhead No trace was left: I saw instead The common round me, and the sky Above, stretched drear and emptily Of life. 'T was the last watch of night, Except what brings the morning quite; When the armed angel, conscience-clear, His task nigh done, leans o'er his spear And gazes on the earth he guards Safe one night more through all its wards, Till God relieve him at his post. " A dream---a waking dream at most!" (I spoke out quick, that I might shake The horrid nightmare off, and wake.) " The world gone, yet the world is here? " Are not all things as they appear? " Is Judgment past for me alone? " --And where had place the great white throne? " The rising of the quick and dead? " Where stood they, small and great? Who read " The sentence from the opened book?" So, by degrees, the blood forsook v. U 290 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY My heart, and let it beat afresh, I knew I should break through the mesh Of horror, and breathe presently: When, lo, again, the voice by me! XIX I saw... Oh brother,'mid far sands The palm-tree-cinctured city stands, Bright-white beneath, as heaven, bright-blue, Leans o'er it, while the years pursue Their course, unable to abate Its paradisal laugh at fate! One morn,---the Arab staggers blind O'er a new tract of death, calcined To ashes, silence, nothingness,--- And strives, with dizzy wits, to guess Whence fell the blow. What if,'twixt skies And prostrate earth, be should surprise The imaged vapour, head to foot, Surveying, motionless and mute, Its work, ere, in a whirlwind rapt It vanish up again?--So hapt My chance, HE stood there. Like the smoke Pillared o'er Sodom, when day broke,-- I saw Him. One magnific pall Mantled in massive fold and fall CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 291 His dread, and coiled in snaky swathes About His feet: night's black, that bathes All else, broke, grizzled with despair, Against the soul of blackness there. A gesture told the mood within-- That wrapped right hand which based the chin, That intense meditation fixed On His procedure,--pity mixed With the fulfilment of decree. Motionless, thus, He spoke to me, Who fell before His feet, a mass, No man now. XX. " All is come to pass. " Such shows are over for each soul " They had respect to. In the roll " Of Judgment which convinced mankind " Of sin, stood many, bold and blind, " Terror must burn the truth into: " Their fate for them!--thou hadst to do " With absolute omipotence, " Able its judgements to dispense " To the whole race, as every one " Were its sole object. Judgment done, " God is, thou art,--the rest is hurled 292 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY " To nothingness for thee. This world, " This finate life, thou hast preferred, " In disbelief of God's plain word, " To heaven and to infinity. " Here the probation was for thee, " To show thy soul the earthly mixed " With heavenly, it must choose betwixt. " The earthly joys lay palpible,-- " A taint, in each, distinct as well; " The heavenly flitted, faint and rare, " Above them, but as truly were " Taintless, so, in their nature, best. " Thy choice was earth: thou didst attest " 'T was fitter spirit should subserve " The flesh, than flesh refine to nerve " Beneath the spirit's play. Advance " No claim to their inheritance " Who chose the spirit's fugitive " Brief gleams, and yearned, `This were to live " ` Indeed, if rays, completely pure " ` From flesh that dulls them, could endure,-- " ` Not shoot in meteor-light athwart " ` Our earth to show how cold and swart " ` It lies beneath their fire, but stand " ` As stars do, destined to expand, " ` Prove veritable worlds, our home!' CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 293 " Thou saidst,--I Let spirit star the dome " ` Of sky, that flesh may miss no peak, " ` No nook of earth,---I shall not seek " ` Its service further !' Thou art shut " Out of the heaven of spirit; glut " Thy sense upon the world:'t is thine " For ever--take it!" XXI. " How? Is mine, " The world?" (I cried, while my soul broke Out in a transport.) " Hast Thou spoke " Plainly in that? Earth's exquisite " Treasures of wonder and delight, " For me?" XXII. The austere voice returned,-- " So soon made happy? Hadst thou learned " What God accounteth happiness " Thou wouldst not find it hard to guess " What hell may be his punishment " For those who doubt if God invent " Better than they. Let such men rest " Content with what they judged the best. " Let the unjust usurp at will: " The filthy shall be filthy still: 294 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY " Miser, there waits the gold for thee! " Hater, indulge thine enmity! " And thou, whose heaven self-ordained " Was to enjoy earth unrestrained, " Do it! Take all the ancient show! " The woods shall wave, the rivers flow, " And men apparently pursue " Their works, as they were wont to do, " While living in probation yet. " I promise not thou shalt forget " The past, now gone to its account; " But leave thee with the old amount " Of faculties, nor less nor more, " Unvisited, as heretofore, " By God's free spirit, that makes an end. " So once more, take thy world! Expend " Eternity upon its shows, " Flung thee as freely as one rose " Out of a summer's opulence, " Over the Eden-barrier whence " Thou art excluded. Knock in vain!" XXIII. I sat up. All was still again. I breathed free: to my heart, back fled The warmth. " But, all the world!"---I said. CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 295 I stooped and picked a leaf of fern, And recollected I might learn From books, how many myriad sorts Of fern exist, to trust reports, Each as distinct and beautiful As this, the very first I cull. Think, from the first leaf to the last! Conceive, then, earth's resources! Vast Exhaustless beauty, endless change Of wonder! And this foot shall range Alps, Andes,--and this eye devour The bee-bird and the aloe-flower? XXIV. Then the voice, "Welcome so to rate " The arras-folds that variegate " The earth, God's antechamber, well! " The wise, who waited there, could tell " By these, what royalties in store " Lay one step past the entrance-door. " For whom, was reckoned, not too much, " This life's munificence? For such " As thou,--a race, whereof scarce one " Was able, in a million, " To feel that any marvel lay " In objects round his feet all day; 296 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY " Scarce one, in many millions more, " Willing, if able, to explore " The secreter, minuter charm! "--Brave souls, a fern-leaf could disarm " Of power to cope with God's intent,-- " Or scared if the south firmament " With north-fire did its wings refledge! " All partial beauty was a pledge " Of beauty in its plenitude: " But since the pledge sufficed thy mood, " Retain it! plenitude be theirs " Who looked above! " XXV. Though sharp despairs Shot through me, I held up, bore on. " What matter though my trust were gone " From natural things? Henceforth my part " Be less with nature than with art! " For art supplants, gives mainly worth " To nature;'t is man stamps the earth-- " And I will seek his impress, seek " The statuary of the Greek, " Italy's painting---there my choice " Shall fix!" CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 297 XXVI. " Obtain it!" said the voice, " --The one form with its single act, " Which sculptors laboured to abstract, " The one face, painters tried to draw, " With its one look, from throngs they saw. " And that perfection in their soul, " These only hinted at? The whole, " They were but parts of? What each laid " His claim to glory on?--afraid " His fellow-men should give him rank " By mere tentatives which he shrank " Smitten at heart from, all the more, " That gazers pressed in to adore! " ` Shall I be judged by only these?' " If such his soul's capacities, " Even while he trod the earth,---think, now, " What pomp in Buonarroti's brow, " With its new palace-brain where dwells " Superb the soul, unvexed by cells " That crumbled with the transient clay ! " What visions will his right hand's sway " Still turn to forms, as still they burst " Upon him? How will he quench thirst, 298 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY " Titanically infantine, " Laid at the breast of the Divine? " Does it confound thee,--this first page " Emblazoning man's heritage?-- " Can this alone absorb thy sight, " As pages were not infinite,-- " Like the omnipotence which tasks " Itself to furnish all that asks " The soul it means to satiate ? " What was the world, the starry state " Of the broad skies,--what, all displays " Of power and beauty intermixed, " Which now thy soul is chained betwixt,-- " What else than needful furniture " For life's first stage? God's work, be sure, " No more spreads wasted, than falls scant! " He filled, did not exceed, man's want " Of beauty in this life. But through " Life pierce,--and what has earth to do, " Its utmost beauty's appanage, " With the requiremcnt of next stage? " Did God pronounce earth ` very good'? " Needs must it be, while understood " For man's preparatory state; " Nought here to heighten nor abate; " Transfer the same completeness here, CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 299 " To serve a new state's use,--and drear " Deficiency gapes every side ! " The good, tried once, were bad, retried. " See the enwrapping rocky niche, " Sufficient for the sleep in which " The lizard breathes for ages safe: " Split the mould--and as light would chafe " The creature's new world-widened sense, " Dazzled to death at evidence " Of all the sounds and sights that broke " Innumerous at the chisel's stroke,--- " So, in God's eye, the earth's first stuff " Was, neither more nor less, enough " To house man's soul, man's need fulfil. " Man reckoned it immeasurable? " So thinks the lizard of his vault! " Could God be taken in default, " Short of contrivances,by you,-- " Or reached, ere ready to pursue " His progress through eternity? " That chambered rock, the lizard's world, " Your easy mallet's blow has hurled " To nothingness for ever; so, " Has God abolished at a blow " This world, wherein his saints were pent, -- " Who, though found grateful and content, 300 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY " With the provision there, as thou, " Yet knew he would not disallow " Their spirit's hunger, felt as well,--- " Unsated,--not unsatable, " As paradise gives proof. Deride " Their choice now, thou who sit'st outside !" XXVII. I cried in anguish, " Mind, the mind, " So miserably cast behind, " To gain what had been wisely lost! " Oh, let me strive to make the most " Of the poor stinted soul, I nipped " Of budding wings, else now equipped " For voyage from summer isle to isle! " And though she needs must reconcile " Ambition to the life on ground, " Still, I can profit by late found " But precious knowledge. Mind is best-- " I will seize mind, forego the rest, " And try how far my tethered strength " May crawl in this poor breadth and length. " Let me, since I can fly no more, " At least spin dervish-like about " (Till giddy rapture almost doubt CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 301 " I fly) through circling sciences, " Philosophies and histories! " Should the whirl slacken there, then verse, " Fining to music, shall asperse " Fresh and fresh fire-dew, till I strain " Intoxicate, half-break my chain! " Not joyless, though more favoured feet " Stand calm, where I want wings to beat " The floor. At least earth's bond is broke! XXVIII. Then, (sickening even while I spoke) " Let me alone! No answer, pray, " To this! I know what Thou wilt say! " All still is earth's,--to know, as much " As feel its truths, which if we touch " With sense, or apprehend in soul, " What matter? I have reached the goal--- " ` Whereto does knowledge serve!' will burn " My eyes, too sure, at every turn ! " I cannot look back now, nor stake " Bliss on the race, for running's sake. " The goal's a ruin like the rest!-- " And so much worse thy latter quest," (Added the voice) " that even on earth--- " Whenever, in man's soul, had birth 302 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY " Those intuitions, grasps of guess, " Which pull the more into the less, " Making the finite comprehend " Infinity,--the bard would spend " Such praise alone, upon his craft, " As, when wind-lyres obey the waft, " Goes to the craftsman who arranged " The seven strings, changed them and recharged-- " Knowing it was the South that harped. " He felt his song, in singing, warped; " Distinguished his and God's part: whence " A world of spirit as of sense " Was plain to him, yet not too plain, " Which he could traverse, not remain " A guest in:--else were permanent " Heaven on the earth its gleams were meant " To sting with hunger for full light,--- " Made visible in verse, despite " The veiling weakness,---truth by means " Of fable, showing while it screens,-- " Since highest truth, man e'er supplied, " Was ever fable on outside. " Such gleams made bright the earth an age; " Now the whole sun's his heritage! " Take up thy world, it is allowed, " Thou who hast entered in the cloud!" CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 303 XXIX. Then I--" Behold, my spirit bleeds, " Catches no more at broken reeds,-- " But lilies flower those reeds above: " I let the world go, and take love! " Love survives in me, albeit those " I love be henceforth masks and shows, " Not living men and women: still " I mind how love repaired all ill, " Cured wrong, soothed grief, made earth amends " With parents, brothers, children, friends! " Some semblance of a woman yet " With eyes to help me to forget, " Shall look on me; and I will match " Departed love with love, attach " Old memories to new dreams, nor scorn " The poorest of the grains of corn " I save from shipwreck on this isle, " Trusting its barrenness may smile " With happy foodful green one day, " More precious for the pains. I pray,--- " Leave to love, only !" XXX. At the word, The form, I looked to have been stirred 304 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY With pity and approval, rose O'er me, is when the headsman throws Axe over shoulder to make end--- I fell prone, letting Him expend His wrath, while thus the inflicting voice Smote me. " Is this thy final choice? " Love is the best? 'T is somewhat late ! " And all thou dost enumerate " Of power and beauty in the world, " The mightiness of love was curled " Inextricably round about. " Love lay within it and without, " To clasp thee,--but in vain! Thy soul " Still shrunk from Him who made the whole, " Still set deliberate aside " His love!--Now take love! Well betide " Thy tardy conscience! Haste to take " The show of love for the name's sake, " Remembering every moment Who, " Beside creating thee unto " These ends, and these for thee, was said " To undergo death in thy steed " In flesh like thine: so ran the tale. " What doubt in thee could countervail " Belief in it? Upon the ground " `That in the story had been found CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER,DAY 305 " ` Too much love! How could God love so?' " He who in all his works below " Adapted to the needs of man, " Made love the basis of the plan,--- " Did love, as was demonstrated: " While man, who was so fit instead " To hate, as every day gave proof,--- " Man thought man, for his kind's behoof, " Both could and did invent that scheme " Of perfect love:'t would well bcseem " Cain's nature thou wast wont to praise, " Not tally with God's usual ways!" XXXI. And I cowered deprecatingly-- " Thou Love of God ! Or let me die, " Or grant what shall seem heaven almost! " Let me not know that all is lost, " Though lost it be--leave me not tied " To this despair, this corpse-like bride! " Let that old life seem mine--no more--- " With limitation as before, " With darkness, hunger, toil, distress; " Be all the earth a wilderness ! " Only let me go on, go on, V. X 306 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY " Still hoping ever and anon " To reach one eve the Better Land!' XXXII. Then did the form expand, expand--- I knew Him through the dread disguise As the whole God within His eyes Embraced me. XXXIII. When I lived again, The day was breaking,---the grey plain I rose from, silvered thick with dew, Was this a vision? False or true? Since then, three varied years are spent, And commonly my mind is bent To think it was a dream---be sure A mere dream and distemperature--- The last day's watching: then the night,--- The shock of that strange Northern Light Set my head swimming, bred in me A dream. And so I live, you see, Go through the world, try, prove, reject, Prefer, still struggling to effect My warfare ; happy that I can Be crossed and thwarted as a man, CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 307 Not left in God's contempt apart, With ghastly smooth life, dead at heart, Tame in earth's paddock is her prize. Thank God, she still each method tries To catch me, who may yet escape, She knows,--the fiend in angel's shape! Thank God, no paradise stands barred To entry, and I find it hard To be a Christian, as I said! Still every now and then my head Raised glad, sinks mournful--all grows drear Spite of the sunshine, while I fear And think, " How dreadful to be grudged " No ease henceforth, as one that's judged, " Condemned to earth for ever, shut " From heaven!" But Easter-Day breaks! But Christ rises! Mercy every way Is infinite,--and who can say?