>THER
VI ASK FIELD
purcbasefc tor tbe Xtbrars ot
be Tflmveraits of Toronto
out of tbe proceed of tbe funfc
bequeatbet* b^
Stewart, B.H
OB. A.D. 1892.
ENSLAVED
AND OTHER POEMS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
REYNARD THE FOX
A POEM AND TWO PLAYS
ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON
LOLLINGDON DOWNS AND OTHER
POEMS
THE FAITHFUL: A PLAY
PHILIP THE KING AND OTHER
POEMS
THE DAFFODIL FIELDS
DAUBER: A POEM
ALSO
GALLIPOLI
One volume, cr. 8vo. , illustrated, 2s. 6d. net
THE OLD FRONT LINE
Cr. 8vo., illustrated, 2s. 6d. net
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
ENSLAVED
AND OTHER POEMS
JOHN MASEFIELIX
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
First published . . . May, 1920
Second impression . . June, 1920
TO
LEWIS
CONTENTS
PACK
ENSLAVED - - - - - 5
THE HOUNDS OF HELL - - - - 66
CAP ON HEAD - - - 91
SONNETS - .... 101
THE PASSING STRANGE - - - 105
ANIMULA - - 109
THE LEMMINGS - 121
FORGET - - - 122
ON GROWING OLD - - - - 123
LYRIC - - - - 125
ENSLAVED
ALL early in the April, when daylight comes at five,
I went into the garden most glad to be alive ;
The thrushes and the blackbirds were singing in the
thorn,
The April flowers were singing for joy of being born.
I smelt the dewy morning come blowing through the
woods
Where all the wilding cherries do toss their snowy
snoods ;
1 thought ot the running water where sweet white
violets grow.
I said: "I'll pick them for her, because she loves
them so."
So in the dewy morning I turned to climb the hill
Beside the running water whose tongue is never still.
Oh, delicate green and dewy were all the budding trees ;
The blue dog-violets grew there, and many primroses
5
ENSLAVED
Out of the wood I wandered, but paused upon the heath
To watch, beyond the tree-tops, the wrinkled sea
beneath ;
Its blueness and its stillness were trembling as it lay
In the old un-autumned beauty that never goes away,
And the beauty of the water brought my love into
my mind,
Because all sweet love is beauty, and the loved thing
turns to kind ;
And I thought, " It is a beauty spread for setting of
your grace,
O white violet of a woman with the April in your face."
So I gathered the white violets where young men pick
them still,
And I turned to cross the woodland to her house beneath
the hill,
And I thought of her delight in the flowers that I
brought her,
Bright like sunlight, sweet like singing, cool like running
of the water.
Now I noticed, as I crossed the wood towards my lady's
house,
That wisps of smoke were blowing blue in the young
green of the boughs :
6
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But I thought, "They're burning weeds," and I felt
the green and blue
To be lovely, so, together, while the green was in
its dew.
Then I smelt the smell of burning ; but I thought :
" The bonfire takes,
And the tongues of flame are licking up below the
lifting flakes."
Though, I thought, " The fire must be big, to raise a
smoke so thick."
And I wondered for a moment if the fire were a rick.
But the love that sang within me made me put the
thought away,
What do young men care for trouble if they see their
love to-day ?
And my thought kept running forward till it knelt
before my sweet,
Laying thought and joy and service in a love-gift at
her feet.
And I thought ot life beside her, and of all our days
together,
Stormy days, perhaps, of courage, with our faces to the
weather
7
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Never any days but happy, so I thought, if passed
with her.
Then the smoke came blowing thickly till it made the
wood a blur.
Still, I did not think of evil, for one could not, living
there.
But I said, " The rooks are startled," for their crying
filled the air
And I wondered, in the meadow, why the cows were
not at grass
Only smoke, down-blowing, bitter, that the birds were
loath to pass.
So I quickened through the meadow to the close that
hid the home,
And the smoke drove down in volleys, lifted up, and
wreathed, and clomb,
And I could not see because of it, and what one
cannot see
Holds the fear that lives in darkness, so that fear began
in me.
And the place was like a death-house save for cawings
overhead,
All the cocks and hens were silent and the dogs were
like the dead :
8
ENSLAVED
Nothing but the smoke seemed living, thick, and hiding
whence it came,
Bitter with the change of burning, hot upon the cheek
from flame.
Then my fear became a terror, and I knew that ill had
fallen
From the fate that comes unthought-of when the un-
heard word is call en,
So I flung the little gate astray and burst the bushes
through ;
Little red- white blossoms flecked me, and my face was
dashed with dew.
Then I saw what ill had fallen, for the house had burned
to death,
Though it gleamed with running fire when a falling
gave a breath ;
All the roof was sky, the lead dripped, all the empty
windows wide
Spouted smoke, and all was silent, save the volleying
rooks that cried.
This I saw. I rocked with anguish at the flicking heap
that glowed.
She was dead among the ashes that the lead drops did
corrode ;
9
ENSLAVED
She was dead, that gave a meaning to the beauty of the
spring,
Yet the daffodils still nodded and the blackbirds still
did sing.
When the stunning passed, I stumbled to the house's
westward side,
Thinking there to find some neighbour that could tell
me how she died ;
Fearing, too, lest Death the devil who had dealt such
murder there
Should be hiding there behind me for to clutch me
unaware.
There was no one there alive, but my leaping heart was
staled
By the sight of bodies lying in the grass where they
were killed ;
Drooped into the grass they lay there, pressing close
into the ground
As the dead do, in the grasses ; all my world went
spinning round.
Then I saw that, with the bodies, all the ground was
heaped and strown
With the litter of a house that had been gutted to
the bone ;
10
ENSLAVED
Split and hingeless coffers yawning, linen drooped like
people dead,
Trinkets broken for their jewels, barrels staved, and
crusts of bread.
Then a mess ot feathers blowing, then the cattle's
heads ; and then,
Stunned at all this wreck, I hurried to the bodies ot
the men.
Five were workers of the household, lying dead in her
defence :
Roused from sleep, perhaps, in darkness so that death
might dash them thence.
But the other three were strangers, swarthy, bearded,
hook-nosed, lean,
Wearing white (for night surprisal) over seamen's coats
of green ;
Moorish- coloured men, still greedy for the prize they
died to snatch ;
Clutching broken knives, or grass-blades, or some tatters
of their catch.
Then I moaned aloud, for then I knew the truth, that
these
Were the Moorish pirate raiders who had come there
from the seas,
11
ENSLAVED
Come upon my love defenceless, by surprise, and I not
there :
Come to burn or kill her beauty, or to drag her to
their lair.
" Dragged away to be a slave," I thought ; I saw what
she had seen,
All the good friends lying slaughtered in the young
grass dewy-green ;
All the cattle killed for provant and the gutted home-
stead burning,
And the skinny Moors to drag her to the death of no
returning.
Minutes passed, yet still I stood there, when I heard
one call my name.
Amys, once my darling's woman, from her hiding-corner
came.
" Oh," she cried, " they came upon us when the light
was growing grey,
And they sacked and burned and slaughtered, and
they've carried her away.
" I was sleeping in the cottage when I heard the noise
of men,
And the shots; and I could see them, for the house
was blazing then.
12
ENSLAVED
They were like to devils, killing ; so I hid, and then 1
heard
Rollo moaning in the bushes with a face as white as
curd.
"He was dying from a bullet, but he said 'Saffee!
Saffee
Pirates, Amys ! They were burning, and they shot
and murdered me.
Amys, look where I was murdered! look, they blew
away my side ;
And they burnt the cows in stable.' Then he moaned
until he died.
' It was terrible to hear them kill the beasts and pack
their prey.
Then they shouldered up their plunder, and they sang
and marched away ;
And they took my lady with them as a slave-girl to be
sold.
I saw them kill Paloma they said that she was old.
" Then they went on board their cruiser, and she sailed
away at once.
Look there, beyond the beaches, you see her where she
runs "
* * *
13
ENSLAVED
I saw a peaked sail pointing, and feathering oars that
flasht
In the blueness of the water that was whitened where
they gasht.
* # #
There they carried my beloved in a pirate-ship at sea
To be sold like meat for killing in the markets of Saffee.
Some fire-shrivelled oak-leaves blew lightly past my
face,
A beam fell in the ruins, the fire roared apace.
I walked down to the water ; my heart was torn in two
For the anguish of her future and the nothing I could do.
The ship had leaned a little as she snouted to the
spray ;
The feathering oars flashed steadily at taking her away.
I took a fisher's boat there was and dragged her down
the sand,
I set her sail and took an oar and thrust her from the
land,
I headed for the pirate, and the brown weed waved
beneath,
And the boat trod down the bubbles of the bone
between her teeth.
14
ENSLAVED
I brought them down the land-wind, so from the first I
gained.
I set a tiny topsail that bowed her till she strained.
My mind was with my darling aboard that ship of fear,
In cabin close with curtains, where Moormen watched
my dear.
Now when they saw me coming they wondered what
it meant,
This young man in a fish-boat who followed where they
went,
They judged that I was coming to buy the woman free ;
So suddenly the oars stopped, they waited on the sea.
I dropped my sail close to them and ranged to easy
hail;
Her plunges shivered wrinklings along her spilling sail,
The water running by her had made her shine like gold,
The oar-blades poised in order kissed water when she
rolled.
A hundred naked rowers stared down their oars at me
With all the bitter hatred the slave has for the free.
The boatswain walked above them ; he mocked me, so
did they.
The sun had burnt their bodies, and yet their look was
grey.
15
ENSLAVED
So there we rocked together, while she, at every roll,
Moaned from her guns with creakings that shook her
to the soul.
I did not see my darling ; she lay in ward below,
Down in the green-hung cabin she first joined hands
with woe.
The galley plowtered, troubling ; the mockings of the
slaves
Passed from bench to bench, like bird's cries ; her bow-
beak slapt the waves,
Then her captain came on deck, quick and hard, with
snapping force,
And a kind of cringe of terror stiffened down those banks
of oars.
The captain walked the deck ; he eyed me for a
moment,
He called some Turkish words with a muttered added /
comment ;
Then he called, "Well. What d'ye want?" in the
lingua of the sea.
The boatswain leaned and spoke, then they sneered and
looked at me.
16
ENSLAVED
So I stood upon the thwart, and I called, " I want to
come
To be comrade to the woman whom you've dragged
away from home.
Since I cannot set her free, I want only to be near her."
"Ah," he said, "men buy love dear, but by God! you
buy it dearer.
" Well, you shall ;" he spoke in Moorish, and a seaman
tossed a cord,
So I hove myself alongside, scrambled up and climbed
aboard.
All were silent, but they watched me ; all those eyes
above the oars
Stared, and all their bitter tushes gnashed beneath them
like a boar's.
At an order, all the oars clanked aft, and checked, and
sliced the sea,
ic rowers' lips twitched upward, the sheets tugged to
be free,
The wrinklings in the sail ran up as it rounded to a
breast,
The ship bowed to a billow and snouted through the
crest.
17 B
ENSLAVED
My boat was tossed behind us, she bowed and swung
away.
The captain stood and mocked me : " Well, since you
would, you may.
You shall be near your lady, until we fetch to port."
They chained me to the oar -loom upon the after-thwart.
All day, until the twilight, I swung upon the oar ;
Above the dropping taffrail I sometimes saw the shore.
Behind me swung the rowers : again and yet again
A gasp, a clank of rollocks, and then a cry of pain.
The boatswain walked above us to lash us if we
slackened ;
With blood of many beatings the rowers' backs were
blackened :
Again and yet again came the lash, and then the cry,
Then a mutter for revenge would run round the ship
and die.
But twilight with her planet that brings quiet to the
tired,
Bringing dusk upon the water, brought the gift that I
desired
For they brought my well-beloved to the deck to breathe
the air,
Not a half an oar's length from me, so we spoke together
there.
18
ENSLAVED
"You," she said. "Yes, I, beloved, to be near you
over-sea.
I have come to be beside you and to help to set you free.
Keep your courage, and be certain that the God who
took will give.
God will dawn, and we shall prosper, for the living soul
will live."
Then they bade me stop my talking and to use my
breath to row.
Darkness came upon the water, and they took my love
below.
Fire in the oar-stirred water swirled in streaks that
raced away ;
Toppling up and down, the taffrail touched the red sky
and the grey.
Then the wind began to freshen till the shrouds were
twanging sharp,
Thrilling an unchanging honing like a madman with a
harp,
Thrilling on a rising water that was hissing as it rose
To be foamed asunder by us as we struck it down with
blows.
Soon we could not row, but rested with our oar blades
triced above ;
Then my soul went from my body to give comfort to
my love,
19
ENSLAVED
Though, indeed, the only comfort that my mind could
find to say
Was, that God, who makes to-morrow, makes it better
than to-day.
So I yearned towards my darling while I drooped upon
my bench.
All the galley's length was shaken when the mainsail
gave a wrench ;
Always when I roused, the taffrail toppled up to touch
the stars,
And the roaring seas ran hissing, and the planks whined,
and the spars.
Day by day I rowed the galley, night by night I saw
the Pole
Sinking lower in the northward, to the sorrow of my
soul ;
Yet at night I saw my darling when she came on deck
to walk,
And our thoughts passt to each other though they
would not let us talk.
Till early on a morning, before the dawn had come,
Some foreign birds came crying with strong wings
wagging home.
20
ENSLAVED
Then on the wind a warmness, a sweetness as of cloves,
Blew faintly in the darkness from spice and orange
groves
Then, as they set us rowing, the sun rose over land
That seemed a mist of forest above a gleam of sand.
White houses glittered on it ; the pirates cheered to see.
By noon we reached the haven, we anchored in Saffee,
They cloaked my well-beloved and carried her ashore ;
She slipped a paper to me while brushing past my oar.
I took it, muttering, " Courage !" I read it when I
dared :
'They mean me for the Khalif. I have to be prepared."
They led her up the jetty, she passed out of my sight.
Then they knocked away our irons, and worked us till
the night
Unbending sails, unstepping masts, clean-scraping
banks, unshipping oars,
Rousing casks and loot and cables from the orlop into
stores.
When all the gear was warehoused, they marched us
up the street
All sand it was, where dogs lay that sprang and snapped
our feet.
21
ENSLAVED
Then lancers came at gallop, they knocked us to the
side,
They struck us with their lance-staves to make them
room to ride.
Then, as we cleared the roadway, with clatter, riding
hard,
With foam flung from the bit -cups, there came the
bodyguard ;
Then splendid in his scarlet the Khalif 's self went by,
A grand young bird of rapine with a hawk-look in his eye.
A slave said : " There's the Khalif. He's riding north
to-night,
To Marrakesh, the vineyard, his garden of delight.
That means a night of quiet to us poor dogs who row ;
The guards will take their pleasure, and we shall rest
below."
Then, in the dusk, they marched us to the quarries of
the slaves,
Which were dripping shafts in limestone giving passage
into caves.
There they left us with our rations to the night that
prisoners know,
Longing after what was happy far away and long ago.
# * *
22
ENSLAVED
Now often, as I rowed upon the bench,
In tugging back the oar-loom in the stroke,
A rower opposite, whose face was French,
Had signalled to me, with a cheer or joke,
Grinning askant, and tossing back his hair
To show his white, keen features debonair.
And now that I was sitting on the stone,
He came to where I sat, and sat beside.
" So," he exclaimed, " you eat your heart alone.
I did, at first ; but prison kills the pride.
It kills the heart, and all it has to give
Is hatred, daunted by the will to live.
" I was a courtier in the French King's court
Three years ago ; you would not think it now,
To see me rower in a pirate port
Rusting my chain with sweatings from my brow.
But I was once Duhamel, over-sea,
And should be still, if they would ransom me.
" 1 honour you for coming as you did
To save your lady. It was nobly done.
They took her for the Khalif ; she is hid
There in the woman's palace ; but, my son,
You will not look upon her face again.
Best face the fact, whatever be the pain.
23
ENSLAVED
" No, do not speak, for she is lost forever,
Hidden in that dark palace of the King
Not all the loving in the world would ever
Bring word to her, or help, or anything.
She will be pasture to the King's desires,
Then sold, or given in barter, when he tires.
" A woman in the Khalif s house is dead
To all the world forever ; that is truth.
And you (most gallantly) have put your head
Into the trap. Till you have done with youth
You will be slave, in prison or at sea.
Sickness or death alone will set you free."
" Surely," I said, "since people have escaped
From worser hells than this, I, too, might try.
Fate, that is given to all men partly shaped,
Is man's, to alter daily till he die.
I mean to try to save her. Things which men
Mean with their might, succeed, as this will then.'
I saw him look about him with alarm.
" Oh, not so loud," he said, " for there are spies."
His look of tension passed, he caught my arm.
" I think none heard," he said, "but oh ! be wise.
Slaves have been ganched upon the hooks for less.
This place has devilries men cannot guess.
24
ENSLAVED
" But no man ever has escaped from here.
To talk of it is death ; your friend and you
Are slaves for life, and after many a year
(At best), when you are both too old to do
The work of slaves, you may be flung abroad,
To beg for broken victuals in the road."
I saw that what he said was certainty.
I knew it even then, but answered : (t Well,
I will at at least be near her till I die,
And Life is change, and no man can foretell.
Even if thirty years hence we may meet
It is worth while, and prison shall be sweet."
He looked at me with pleasure ; then he sighed
Liid said : " Well, you deserve her." Then he stared
Across the quarry, trying to decide
If I were fit to see his spirit bared.
Quick glances of suspicion and distrust
Searched at my face, and then he said : " I must !
"I must not doubt you, lad, so listen now.
I have a plan, myself, for leaving this.
I meant to try to-night ; I'll show you how
To save your lady. And to-night there is
Hope, for the Khalif sleeps at Marrakesh.
When knots are loosened fish can burst the mesh."
25
ENSLAVED
So eagerly I plighted faith to try
That very night to help him. " If we fail,"
He said, " it will be Fate, who flings the die
Against which nothing mortal can avail.
But we are desperate men whose throws succeed,
Being one with Fate, or Change from Passionate Need. "
So we agreed that, when the cave was still,
We would attempt, and having broken prison,
Would raid the women's palace on the hill,
And save my lady ere the sun was risen ;
Then put to sea towards some hiding-place
North, in the shoals, where galleys could not chase.
Even as we made an end, another slave
(They called him English Gerard) joined us there.
Often, upon the toppling of a wave,
I'd seen him rowing and had heard him swear.
Forceful he was, with promise in his eye
Of rough capacity and liberty.
" Still talking of escape, I'll bet a crown,"
He said to me. " But you are young, my friend.
We oldsters know we cannot leave the town,
We shall be here until the bitter end.
Give up the hope, lad ; better let it be ;
No slave has ever broken from Saffee,
26
ENSLAVED
" Inland there's desert, westward there's the sea,
Northward the Moorish towns, and in the south
Swamps and the forest to eternity.
The young colt jibs at iron in his mouth
But has to take it, and the fact for us
Is, that we're slaves, and have to linger thus."
"Just what I told him," said Duhamel, "just
My very words. It's bitter but the truth.
We shall be slaves until we turn to dust :
Your lady, too, until she loses youth.
Put hope aside, and make what life you can
Being a slave, for slave you are, young man."
" Perhaps," said Gerard, "you were told what comes
Of trying to escape, for men have tried.
They only added to their martyrdoms.
Two got away at Christmas, but they died.
The one they skinned and stuffed ; the other hangs
Still, near the gate, upon the ganches' fangs.
"How were they caught?" I asked. "They were be-
trayed,"
Said Gerard. " How ? By whom ? I cannot tell.
They trusted someone with the plans they made,
And he betrayed them, like a fiend from hell.
27
ENSLAVED
How do I know it ? Well, they left no trace,
And yet the lancers knew their hiding-place.
" They went straight to it, straight, and caught them there
As soon as daylight came, when they had gone
(As you'll be taken if you don't beware) .
They keep great hooks to hang the bodies on
Of those who run away, or try, for none
Succeeds, nor can, so you be warned, my son."
He nodded to me, gripped my arm, and went
Back to his place, the other side the cave.
" That was a spy," Duhamel whispered, "sent
To test your spirit as a new-come slave.
I know the man, and if report speaks true
He helped in that betrayal of the two.
" Now seem to sleep, and when the cave is quiet
We two will try ; they say God helps the mad.
To be a slave to Moors is bitter diet
That poisons men ; two bitter years I've had,
But before dawn we two will end it, lad.
Now seem to sleep."
I cuddled to the stone ;
Yet Gerard's voice seemed calling to my bone.
28
ENSLAVED
And opening my eyes, I saw him there
Looking intently at me, and he shook
His head at me, as though to say, " Beware !"
And frowned a passionate warning in a look.
A wind-flaw, blowing through the window, took
The flame within the lantern, that it shed
Bright light on him. Again he shook his head.
The wind blowing in from the sea made the flame like
a plume ;
The slaves, huddled close, cursed in whispers, with
chattering teeth ;
The wolves of their spirits came stealthy to snarl in the
gloom
Over bones of their pleasures long-perished; the sea
moaned beneath.
And my heart glowed with joy that that night I might
rescue my love ;
Glowed with joy in Duhamel, whose cunning would
conquer the guards
The wind blew in fresher ; a sentry went shuffling above ;
Some gamblers crouched tense, while a lean hand
flickered the cards.
ENSLAVED
Then one by one the gamblers left their game,
The shadows shaken by the blowing flame
Winked on the wall until the lamp blew out.
Wrapping his ankle-irons in a clout
(To save his skin), each branded slave prepared
To take his sleep, his only comfort spared.
* * *
A kind of clearness blowing from the night
Made sleepers' faces bonelike with its light.
A sleeper, moaning, twisted with his shoulder
Close to the limestone as the wind grew colder.
Trickles of water glistened down and splashed
Pools on the limestone into rings that flashed.
Often a stirring sleeper struck the bell
Of chain-links upon stones. Deep breathing fell
Like sighing, out of all that misery
Of vermined men who dreamed of being free.
Heavily on the beaches fell the sea.
Then, as the tide came in, the water seething
Under the quarries, mingled with the breathing,
Until the prison in the rock y-hewen
Seemed like a ship that trod the water's ruin,
Trampling the toppling sea, while water creeping
Splashed from the seams in darkness on men sleeping.
Far in the city all the dogs were howling
At that white bird the moon in heaven owling.
30
ENSLAVED
Out in the guard-house soldiers made a dither
About the wiry titter of a zither,
Their long-drawn songs were timed with clapping hands.
# * *
The water hissed its life out on the sands.
The wheel of heaven with all her glittering turned,
The city window-lights no longer burned.
Then one by one the soldiers left their clatter ;
The moon arose and walked upon the water,
The sleepers turned to screen her from their eyes.
A fishing-boat sailed past ; the fishers' cries
Rang in the darkness of the bay without.
Her sail napped as she creaked and stood about,
Then eased, then leaned, then strained and stood away.
Deep silence followed, save where breathers lay.
* * *
So, lying there, with all my being tense,
Prepared to strike, to take my lady thence,
A prompting bade me not to trust too far
This man Duhamel as a guiding star.
Some little thing in him had jarred on me ;
A touch (the flesh being raw) hurts cruelly.
And something in his speech or in his bearing
Made me mistrust his steadiness in daring,
Or his endurance, or his faith to us.
Some smile or word made me distrustful thus.
31
ENSLAVED
Who knows the hidden things within our being
That prompt our brain to safety without seeing ?
Hear the unheard, and save us without sense ?
What fingers touch our strings when we are tense ?
* * *
Even at that point Duhamel crept to me,
And whispered, "Come, by morning we'll be free.
Creep down the passage there towards the entry ;
See what the guards do while I time the sentry.
I think that all the guards are sleeping sound,
But there's his foot, one sentry goes his round.
And I must time him till I know his beat."
Loitering upon the rampart came the feet
Of some loose-slippered soldier. I could hear
Him halt, humming a tune, grounding his spear.
* * *
I listened, while Duhamel urged me on.
" Hurry," he said,." the night will soon be gone ;
Watch from the passage what the guards are doing :
I'll time the sentry. There'll be no pursuing
If we can pass the guards with him away.
Beyond the bend he cannot see the bay."
* * *
"No," I replied, "yet even if the guard
Be all asleep, it cannot but be hard
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For us to pick the lock of that steel grille
Without their waking. We cannot be still
Crouched in the puddle, scraping at the lock.
The guards will wake and kill us at a knock."
* * *
" Hush!" said Duhamel. "Let me whisper close.
I did not dare before for fear of those
(The rowers and the spies). I have a key
That will unlock the grating silently,
Making no noise at all in catch or ward.
Now creep along and spy upon the guard."
* * *
"A key?" said I. My first suspicions died.
" Yes," said the man, " I slipped it from his side
While he was checking us this afternoon.
Courage, my son, she'll be in safety soon."
He showed a key, and urged me to be gone
Down the gaunt gashway carven in the stone,
A darkness in the else half- glimmering lime,
Where drops, each minute splashing, told the time.
There, in the darkness somewhere, lay the gate
Where courage and the moment might make Fate.
* * *
I rose, half-doubting, upon hands and knees ;
The blood within my temples sang like bees ;
I heard my heart. I saw Duhamel's face,
Dark eyes in focus in a whitish space
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Watching me close. I doubted, even then.
Then, with the impulse which transfigures men.
Doubt, hesitation, terror passed. I crawled
Into the dripping tunnel limestone-walled.
# # *
A cold drop spattered on my neck ; the wet
Struck chilly where my hands and knees were set,
I crawled into a darkness like a vault,
Glimmering and sweating like a rock of salt.
# * #
I crept most thief-like till the passage turned.
There, in a barred greyness, I discerned
The world without shut from me by the grille.
I stopped most thief-like, listening.
# * *
All was still ;
The quarry I had left was still as stone.
The melancholy water-drip alone
Broke silence near me, and ahead the night
Was silent in the beauty of its light,
Across which fell the black of prison bars.
# # #
I crawled ten paces more, and saw the stars
Above the guard-hut in the quarry pit :
The hut was still, it had no lantern lit.
I crawled again with every nerve intent.
# * #
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The cleanly sea-wind bringing pleasant scent
Blew through the grille with little specks of sand.
Each second I expected the word " Stand !"
That, or a shot ; but still no challenge came.
The twilight of the moon's unearthly flame
Burned steadily ; the palm-leaves on the hut
Rustled in gusts, the crazy door was shut.
The guards were either sleeping or not there.
* * *
I peered out through the grille, and drank the air
For any scent that might betray a guard
Hidden in ambush near me keeping ward ;
But no scent, save the cleanness of the sea,
Blew on the night wind blowing in on me.
There was no trace of man.
* * #
I watched and listened ;
The water dropped, the trickling passage glistened ;
The coldness of the iron pressed my brow.
* # #
Then, as I listened (I can hear it now),
A strangled cry such as a dreamer cries
When the dream binds him that he cannot rise,
Gurgled behind me in the sleepers' cave.
A failing hand that struggled with the grave
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Beat on the floor, then fluttered, then relaxed,
Limp as an altar ox a priest has axed.
No need to say that someone had been killed
That was no dream.
* * *
Yet all the cave was stilled.
Nobody spoke, or called, or ran to aid.
The fingers of the palm-leaves ticked and played
On the hut-roof, but yet no guard appeared.
* * *
I started to crawl back, because I feared.
I knew that someone must have heard that calling
Of the killed blood upon the midnight falling.
I shall be judged the killer," so I thought.
* * #
So crawling swiftly back like one distraught,
I groped that tunnel where the blackness made
Me feel each inch before my hand was laid.
There was no gleam, save wetness on the wall,
No noise but heart-beat or the dropping's fall.
Blackness and silence tense with murder done,
Tense with a soul that had not yet begun
To know the world without the help of clay.
I was in terror in that inky way.
* * *
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Then suddenly, while stretching out my hand,
The terror brought my heart's blood to a stand.
I touched a man.
* * *
His face was turned to me.
He whispered : "To the grille ! I have the key.'
So, without speech, I turned ; he followed after.
I trembled at the droppings from the rafter.
Each noise without seemed footsteps in pursuit.
The palm-leaves fluttered like a running foot.
The moonlight held her lantern to betray us ;
A stricken stone was as a sword to slay us.
Then at the grille we paused, that I could see
That it was not Duhamel there with me,
But English Gerard.
* * *
" Do not speak," he said ;
" Don't think about Duhamel ; he is dead.
This key, that should unlock, is sticking : try."
With shaking hands I took the clicket, I.
A lean cogged bolt of iron jangled bright
By shaking in the key-ring, day and night :
It stuck in the knobbed latch and would not lift.
* * *
All kinds of terror urged me to be swift
Fear of the guards, and of the darkness dying,
And of DuhamePs body mutely crying
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The thin red cry of murdered blood and bone,
Piping in darkness to make murder known.
But there the clicket jammed the iron socket,
Nor could my hand withdraw it or unlock it.
" Let me," said Gerard ; then with guile and skill
He coaxed the knobbed iron from the grille.
" It does not fit," he muttered, "after all."
* * *
Outside, within his roost, a cock did call
His warning to the ghosts, and slept again ;
The stars that glittered in the sky like grain
Seemed paler ; and the ticking time sped on
To the guard's waking and the darkness gone
With nothing done.
* * *
Then Gerard turned to me.
" Though this is wrong, Duhamel had the key,
And has it still about him, as I guess,
Tied to his flesh or hidden in his dress.
Wait here, while I go rummage through his clothes.
# * #
A sleeper, tossing, jabbered broken oaths,
Then slept, while Gerard crawled.
I was alone,
Afraid no more but anxious to the bone.
# * *
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And looking out, I saw a sentry come
Slowly towards the grille. I cowered numb
Back into blackness, pressed against the wall.
I heard the measure of his footsteps fall
Along the quarry to me. I could see
The tenseness of his eyes turned full on me :
I felt that he must see me and give speech.
# * *
His hand, that shook the grille, was in my reach,
He peered within to see if all were well.
Wept as though spat, a drop of water fell.
He peered into the blackness where I stood ;
Then, having tried the lock, he tossed his hood,
Crouched at the grille and struck a light, and lit
Tinder, and blew the glowing end of it
Till all his face was fierce in the strong glow ;
He sucked the rank tobacco lighted so,
And stood a moment blowing bitter smoke.
I hardly dared to breathe lest I should choke.
I longed to move, but dared not. Had I stirred
Even a finger's breadth, he must have heard.
He must have touched me had he thrust his hand
Within the grille to touch the wall he scanned.
* * *
Then, slowly, muttering to himself, he took
Three steps away, then turned for one more look
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Straight at the grille and me. I counted ten.
Something within the passage moved him then,
Because he leaned and peered as though unsure.
Then, stepping to the grille-work's embrasure,
He thrust his face against the iron grid,
And stared into the blackness where I hid,
And softly breathed, " Duhamel."
* # *
As he spoke
A passing cloud put dimness as of smoke
Over the moon's face. No one answered him,
A drip-drop spat its wetness in the dim.
He paused to call again, then turned away.
He wandered slowly up the quarry way,
But at the bend he stopped to rest his bones ;
# * #
He sat upon the bank and juggled stones
For long, long minutes. Gerard joined me there ;
We watched the sentry tossing stones in air
To catch them on his hand's back as they fell.
We wished him in the bottom pit of hell.
At last he rose and sauntered round the bend.
The falling of his footsteps had an end
At last, and Gerard spoke: " I have the key."
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The cogs caught in the locket clickily,
The catch fell back, the heavy iron gave.
We pushed the grille and stept out of the grave
Into the moonlight where the wind was blowing.
"Hurry!" I whispered, for the cocks were crowing
In unseen roosts, the morning being near.
We climbed the bank.
" This way," said Gerard, " here.
Now, down the slope we dodge the sentry so.
Now through the water where the withies grow.
Now we are out of sight ; now we can talk."
We changed our crouching running to a walk.
* * *
He led me up a slope where rats carousing
Squealed or showed teeth among the tumbled housing,
Half-ruined wooden huts, or lime-washed clay.
We turned from this into a trodden way
Pale in the moonlight, where the dogs that prowled
Snarled as we passed, then eyed the moon and howled.
*
Below us, to our right, the harbour gleamed ;
In front, pale with the moon, the city dreamed,
Roof upon roof, with pointing fingers white,
The minaret frost-fretted with the light,
With many a bubbled dome-top like a shell
Covering the hillside to the citadel.
* * *
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" There, to the left," said Gerard, " where the trees are
That whiteness is the palace of the Caesar,
His gardens and his fishpools. That long building
Flanked by the domes that glitter so with gilding
Is where the women are. She will be there.
But courage, comrade ! never yield to care ;
We'll set her free, before the morning breaks.
But oh ! my son, no more of your mistakes.
What made you trust Duhamel as you did ?
Well, he is dead. The world is better rid
Of men like him. He tempted and betrayed
Those two poor souls last year.
Ah, when he bade
You go to watch the guard, I studied him.
He was a bitter viper, supple-slim.
When he had judged that you had reached the entry,
He stole towards the grate and called the sentry,
" Hussein, Hussein ! " but Hussein never heard.
He called him twice, but never called the third :
I stopped his calling, luckily for you."
# * *
" Yes, but " (I said) " what did he mean to do,
Calling the sentry ? What could that have done ?"
" Caught you in trying to escape, my son :
The thing they love to do from time to time.
They reckon that examples stop the crime.
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One caught and skinned makes many fear to try.
They would have flayed your skin off cruelly
In face of all these slaves, to daunt them down.
Then you'd have hung a-dying in the town
Nailed to some post, two days, perhaps, or three,
With thirst and flies.
But let Duhamel be ;
Bad though he was, misfortune tempts a soul
Worse than we think, and few men can control
Their virtue, being slave ; and he had been
A Knight of France, a courtier to the Queen.
He must have suffered to have fallen so,
A slave, a spy on slaves ; we cannot know,
Thank God ! what power of sinking lies in us.
God keep us all."
* # #
So talking to me thus,
He turned me leftward from the citadel
Uphill. He said : " I know this city well ;
There is the Khalif s palace straight ahead,
How many days 1 've staggered, nearly dead
From thirst, and from the sun, and from the load,
Up to the palace -gates along this road,
Bearing the plunder of the cruise to store,
After a month of tugging at the oar !
But now, please God, I shall not come again."
*
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Our talking stopped ; we turned into a lane.
High, white-washed walls rose up on either side,
The narrow gash between was four feet wide,
And there at sprawl within the narrow way,
With head in hood, a sleeping beggar lay.
We stepped across his body heedfully ;
Deep in his dream he muttered drowsily.
# # *
We tip-toed on. The wall-tops, high above,
White in the quiet moonlight, hid my love.
We crept like worms in darkness yard by yard,
Still as the dead, but that our hearts beat hard.
And, spite of self, my teeth clickt from the flood
Of quick excitement running in my blood.
We were so near her, and the peril came
Close, with the moment that would prove the same.
* * *
The lane turned sharply twice. In shadow dark,
With shiverings of singing like a lark,
A fountain sprang, relented, sprinkled, bubbled,
In some cool garden that the moonlight troubled,
Unseen by us, although a smell of roses
Warm on the wind, stole to us from its closes.
Then came a wood-smoke smell, and mixed therewith
Gums from the heart's blood of the sinnam's pith.
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And Gerard touched me. We had reached the place.
The woman's palace-wall was there in face,
The garden- wall merged with it, moonlight- topped ;
Just where the two together merged, we stopped.
* * *
Then, as we stood there, breathing, we could hear,
Beyond the wall, some footsteps loitering near,
Some garden sentry slowly paced his watch
Crooning a love-song ; I could smell his match
That smouldered in the linstock at his hand.
* * #
His footsteps passed away upon the sand
Slowly, with pauses, for he stopped to eat
The green buds of the staric on his beat.
When he had gone, a cock crowed in the lane.
" It will be morning when he crows again,"
Was in our thoughts : we had full little time.
* * #
Some joist-holes gave us foothold, we could climb
Without much trouble to the wall's flat top ;
There we lay still, to let the plaster drop,
And see what dangers lay below us there.
* * *
The garden of the palace breathed sweet air
Under our perch, the fountain's leaping glitter
Shone ; a bird started with a frightened twitter.
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Alleys of blossomed fruit-trees girt a cool
White marble screen about a bathing -pool,
The palace rose beyond among its trees,
Splay-fronded figs and dates and cypresses.
* * *
Close to our left hands was the Woman's House.
We crept along our wall-top perilous
Till we could touch the roof that hid my love.
A teaken joist-end jutted out above.
We swung ourselves upon the roof thetetfy .
* * #
The dewy wet, flat house-top faced the sky.
We crouched together there.
Sweet smoke was wreathing
Out of a trap- door near us ; heavy breathing
Came from a woman sleeping near the trap.
I crept to her, not knowing what might hap.
She was an old Moor woman with primmed lips,
And foul white hair, and hennaed finger-tips
That clutched a dark hair blanket to her chin.
* * #
I crept to the trap-door and peered within.
A ladder led within. A lantern burning
Showed us a passage leading to a turning,
But open to the garden at one end.
* * *
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Even as we peered, a man came round the bend,
Walked slowly down that lamp-lit corridor,
And stood to watch the garden at the door.
We saw his back within that moonlit square.
He had a curving sword which glittered bare.
He stood three minutes still, watching the night
Each beating second made the east more light.
He cracked and relished nuts or melon-seeds.
The hoof- sparks of the morning's running steeds
Made a pale dust now in the distant east,
But still the man stood cracking at his feast,
Nut after nut ; then flinging broken shell
Into the rose-walk, clicking as it fell,
He turned towards us up the passage dim.
There at the trap we crouched right over him,
And as he passed beneath, his fingers tried
A door below us in the passage-side.
Then, slowly loitering on, he reached and passed
The passage turning ; he was gone at last,
His footsteps died away ; they struck on stone
In some far cloister ; we were left alone.
Then, while our leaping hearts beat like to drums,
We took the gambler's way, that takes what comes
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We slid into the trap and down the stair,
Steep, like a loft's ; eleven rungs there were.
We stood within the passage at the door
Tried by the guard that little while before.
* * *
Within, there was a rustling and a chinking
(Like the glass dangles that the wind sets clinking),
And something tense there was within ; the throbbing
Of hearts in a despair too deep for sobbing :
We felt it there before we pressed the latch.
* * *
The teaken bar rose stiffly from its catch.
We slipt within and closed the door again.
We were within the dwelling-place of pain,
Among the women whom the Moors had taken,
The broken-hearts, despairing and forsaken,
The desolate that cried where 110 man heard.
* * *
Nobody challenged, but some women stirred.
It was so dark at first, after the moon.
A smoking censer, swinging, creaked a croon ;
There was a hanging lamp of beaten brass
That gave dim light through scraps of coloured glass.
I saw a long low room with many a heap
Dark, on the floor, where women lay asleep
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On silken cushions. Round the wall there ran
(Dark, too, with cushioned women) a divan,
And women stirred and little chains were shaken.
What horror 'tis, to prisoners, to waken
Out of the dreams of home back to the chain,
Back to the iron and the mill again,
In some far land among one's enemies !
I knew that then ; those women made me wise.
We stared into the twilight till our eyes
Could see more clearly ; no one challenged us,
But standing back against the doorway thus
I saw the warden of the room, asleep,
Close to me, on the cushions, breathing deep,
Her hard face made like iron by the gloom.
An old grim Moor that warden of the room,
A human iron fettered on the poor.
Far down the room a fetter touched the floor.
Even in the gloom I knew that she was there,
My April of a woman with bright hair ;
She sat upright against the wall alone,
By burning meditation turned to stone,
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Staring ahead, and when I touched her shoulder
Her body (stiffened like a corpse and colder)
Seemed not herself, her mind seemed far away.
There was no need to talk, but to essay
The light steel chain that linked her to the wall.
We gripped it, heaving, till its links were gall
Biting across our hands, but still we drave,
She, I, and Gerard, heaving till it gave.
The leaded staple snapped across the shank.
* * *
The loosed chain struck the flooring with a clank.
We all lay still, my arm about my own.
"Who's moving there? Be silent!" snapped the crone.
* * *
Cross with the slave who had awakened her,
She stared towards us. We could hear her stir,
Craning towards us ; but she could not see
More than the cushions tumbled there with me.
She thought, perhaps: "That fair one shook her
chain."
She growled : " I'll beat you if you stir again.
A Moorish whip upon your Christian skin."
* *
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I saw her clutch her blanket to her chin,
Turn to her side,, and settle to her rest.
The dawn, that brings the skylark from her nest,
Was flying with bright feet that ever hasted.
Each moment there meant happy chances wasted,
Yet still we had to stay until she slept.
* * *
When she had fallen to a doze we crept
Stealthily to the door on hands and knees.
All of those women came from over-seas.
We could not waken them to share our chance.
Not Peru's silver nor the fields of France
Could buy a place in our society.
One tender feeling might have made us die
All three, and been no kindness to the fourth :
Compassions perish when the wind is north.
* * *
Close to the door a woman leaned and caught
My darling's hand, and kissed it swift as thought,
And whispered, " Oh, good luck !" and then was still.
She had no luck, but oh ! she had goodwill.
We blest her in our hearts.
The warder stirred,
Growling, but dozing lightly ; then we heard
Outside the door, within three feet of us,
The footsteps of the sentry perilous,
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The clinking of his scabbard lightly touching
Some metal button, then his fingers clutching
The teaken catch to try if it were home.
We stood stone-still, expecting him to come.
He did not come, he pushed the door and passed,
Treading this beat exactly like the last,
To loiter at the door to crack and spit.
* * *
The time dragged by till he had done with it.
Then back he came, and once again he shook
The catch upon its socket ; then he took
His way along the passage out of hearing.
* * *
The room 'gan glimmer from the dawning n earing,
The warder struggled with a dream, and cried ;
The lamp-flame purred from want of oil, and died.
And she, the woman who had kissed her hand,
Whispered, " Oh, go, for God's sake ! do not stand
One moment more, but go ! God help you free."
* * *
We crept out of the prison silently,
Gerard the last, who closed the door behind us
The crowing of a cock came to remind us
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That it was morning now, with daylight breaking,
The leaves all shivering and birds awaking.
We climbed the ladder.
* * #
Its eleven rungs
Called to the Moors of us with all their tongues :
Wake !" Wake !" " They fly !" " The three of them
are flying !"
" Oh, broken house !" " Oh, sleepers, thieves are trying
To take the Khalifs treasure !" "Guards !" "Awake!"
" They rob the women !" " For the prophet's sake,"
" Slaughter these Christians !" Thus the ladder spoke
Three times aloud, yet nobody awoke.
Even the hag upon the roof was still.
* * #
Now the red cock of dawning triumphed shrill,
And little ends of landwind shook the leaves ;
White through the cypress gleamed the palace eaves.
The dim and dewy beauty of the blossom,
Shy with the daybreak, trembled in its bosom,
Some snowy petals loitered to the ground.
The city houses had a wakening sound,
Some smoke was rising, and we heard the stirs
Made at the gates by country marketers ;
Only a moment's twilight yet remained.
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The supple links that held my darling chained
Served as a rope to help her down the wall.
Our hearts stood still to hear the plaster fall,
But down we scrambled safely to the lane.
We heard the hag upon the roof complain :
She called strange names, and listened for reply.
We heard her tread the ladder heavily.
It was her rising-time, perhaps, we thought.
* * *
And now the dangers that the daylight brought
Came thick upon us ; for our foreign dress
Betrayed us at each step beyond a guess.
Even to be seen was certain death to us.
We hid my darling's face, and hasting thus
Kept up the narrow lane as Gerard bade.
He said : " Beyond, the city wall is laid
Heaped in the ditch, and we can cross it there.
It fell from rottenness and disrepair.
They set no guard there or they did not set.
They will not notice us, and we can get
Out to the tombs and hide inside a vault."
* * *
In overbrimming beauty without fault
The sun brought colour to that dingy hive.
It made the black tree green, the sea alive,
The huts like palaces ; but us who fted
Like ghosts at cockcrow hasting to the dead.
* * *
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The lane had ceased. We reached
The greenish slope, the horses' baii
an open space.
greenish slope,
Between the city and the palace wall.
The hill dipped sharply in a steepish fall
Down to the houses, and the grass was worn
With hoofs, and littered with the husks of com.
" Now, slowly," Gerard said, " for Moors go slowly.
There, trembling in its blueness dim and holy,
Lay the great water bursting on the Mole.
Her tremblings came as thoughts come in a soul.
There was our peace, there was the road to home,
That never-trodden trembling bright with foam.
" There lies the road," said Gerard ; " now, come on.'
* * *
The high leaves in the trees above us shone,
For now the sun had climbed the eastern hill ;
The coldness of the dawn was with us still.
We walked along the grass towards an alley
Between high walls beyond a tiny valley.
Fronting this alley's mouth our sloping grass
Dipped down and up, a little gut there was
Down which we slithered and from which we climbed.
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And just as we emerged, exactly timed,
Just as we drew my darling to the top,
There came a noise that made our pulses stop.
* * *
For, down towards us, blocking all the road,
Their horses striking sparks out as they strode,
Came lancers clattering with their hands held high,
Their knees bent up, and many a sharp, quick cry ;
The pennons in their lance-heads flapped like flame.
* * *
Three ranks in twos, and then a swordsman came,
Then one who held a scarlet banner ; then
One in a scarlet cloak, a King of men.
* * *
It was the Khalif s self, returning home.
His rein had smeared his stallion's crest with foam,
I noticed that. He was not twenty yards
From us. He saw us.
* * *
At a sign his guards
Rode round us, bade us stand ; there was no hope.
* * *
"Our luck !" said Gerard. Then they took a rope
And hitched our wrists together. Then they led
The three of us, downhearted like the dead,
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Before the Khalif s self. The swordsman bared
His right arm to the shoulder and prepared.
* * *
The Khalif stared at us, and we at him ;
We were defiant at him, he was grim.
A hawk-like fellow, like a bird of prey,
A hawk to strike, a swift to get away.
His clean brown face (with blood beneath the brown)
Puckered, his thin lips tightened in a frown,
He knew without our telling what we were.
* # *
The swordsman looked for word to kill us there.
* *
I saw the lancers' glances at their chief.
Death on the instant would have seemed relief
To that not knowing what her fate would be
After the sword had made an end of me.
The Khalif s face grew grimmer ; then he said :
" Bring them with us." The swordsman sheathed his
blade.
They took us to a palace, to a chamber
Smelling of bruised spice and burning amber.
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There slaves were sent to fetch the newly risen
Servants and warders of the woman's prison.
The white of death was on them when they came.
* # *
The Khalif lightened on them with quick flame.
Harsh though she was, I sorrowed for the crone,
For she was old, a woman, and alone,
And came, in age, upon disgrace through me ;
I know not what disgrace, I did not see
Those crones again, I doubt not they were whipt
For letting us escape them while they slept.
Perhaps they killed the sentry. Who can tell ?
The devil ever keeps the laws in hell.
*
They dragged them out to justice one by one.
However bitter was the justice done,
I doubt not they were thankful to be quit
(At cost of some few pangs) the fear of it.
Then our turn came.
The Khalif s fury raged
Because our eyes had seen those women caged,
Because our Christian presence had defiled
The Women's House, and somehow had beguiled
A woman-slave, his victim, out of it,
Against all Moorish law and Holy Writ.
If we had killed his son it had been less.
* * *
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He rose up in his place and rent his dress.
" Let them be ganched upon the hooks," he cried,
" Throughout to-day, but not till they have died.
Then gather all the slaves, and flay these three
Alive, before them, that the slaves may see
What comes to dogs who try to get away.
So, ganch the three."
Then Gerard answered : "Stay.
Before you fling us to the hooks, hear this.
There are two laws, and men may go amiss
Either by breaking or by keeping one.
There is man's law by which man's work is done.
Your galleys rowed, your palace kept in state,
Your victims ganched or headed on the gate,
And accident has bent us to its yoke.
* * #
" We break it : death ; but it is better broke.
* * *
" You know, you Khalif, by what death you reign,
What force of fraud, what cruelty ot pain,
What spies and prostitutes support your power,
And help your law to run its little hour :
We, who are but ourselves, defy it all.
59
ENSLAVED
" We were free people till you made us thrall.
I was a sailor whom you took at sea
While sailing home. This woman that you see
You broke upon with murder in the night,
To drag her here to die for your delight.
This young man is her lover.
When he knew
That she was taken by your pirate crew,
He followed her to save her, or at least
Be near her in her grief. Man is a beast,
And women are his pasture by your law.
This young man was in safety, and he saw
His darling taken to the slave -girls' pen
Of weeping in the night and beasts of men.
He gave up everything, risked everything,
Came to your galley, took the iron ring,
Rowed at the bitter oar-loom as a slave,
Only for love of her, for hope to save
Her from one bruise of all the many bruises
That fall upon a woman when she loses
Those whom your gang of bloodhounds made her lose.
* * *
" Knowing another law, we could not choose
But stamp your law beneath our feet as dust,
Its bloodshed and its rapine and its lust,
For one clean hour of struggle to be free ;
She for her passionate pride of chastity,
60
ENSLAVED
He for his love of her, and I because
I'm not too old to glory in the cause
Of generous souls who have harsh measure meted.
* * *
" We did the generous thing and are defeated.
Boast, then, to-night, when you have drunken deep,
Between the singing woman's song and sleep,
That you have tortured to the death three slaves
Who spat upon your law and found their graves
Helping each other in the generous thing.
No mighty triumph for a boast, O King."
* * *
Then he was silent while the Khalif stared.
Never before had any being dared
To speak thus to him. All the courtiers paled.
We, who had died, expected to be haled
To torture there and then before the crowd.
It was so silent that the wind seemed loud
Clicking a loose slat in the open shutter.
I heard the distant breakers at their mutter
Upon the Mole, I saw my darling's face
Steady and proud ; a breathing filled the place,
Men drawing breath until the Khalif spoke.
* * *
His torn dress hung upon him like a cloak.
He spoke at last. " You speak of law/' he said.
" By climates and by soils the laws are made
61
ENSLAVED
Ours is a hawk-law suited to the land,
This rock of hawks or eyrie among sand ;
I am a hawk, the hawk-law pleases me.
* * *
" But I am man, and, being man, can be
Moved, sometimes, Christian, by the law which makes
Men who are suffering from man's mistakes
Brothers sometimes.
I had not heard this tale
Of you, the lover, following to jail
The woman whom you loved. You bowed your neck
Into the iron fettered to the deck,
And followed her to prison, all for love ?
* * *
" Allah, who gives men courage from above,
Has surely blessed you, boy.
* * *
" And you, his queen ;
Without your love his courage had not been.
Your beauty and your truth prevailed on him.
Allah has blessed you, too.
* *
" And you, the grim
Killer of men at midnight, you who speak
To Kings as peers with colour in your cheek,
Allah made you a man who helps his friends.
62
ENSLAVED
" God made you all. I will not thwart his ends.
You shall be free.
Hear all. These folks are free.
You, Emir, fit a xebec for the sea
To let them sail at noon.
Go where you will.
And lest my rovers should molest you still,
Here is my seal that they shall let you pass."
Throughout the room a sudden murmur was,
A gasp of indrawn breath and shifting feet.
So life was given back, the thing so sweet,
The undrunk cup that we were longing for.
My darling spoke : " O Khalif, one gift more.
After this bounty that our hearts shall praise
At all our praying-times by nights and days,
I ask yet more, O raiser from the dead.
There in your woman's prison as we fled
A hopeless woman blessed us. It is said
That blessings from the broken truly bless.
Khalif, we would not leave in hopelessness
One whose great heart could bless us even then,
Even as we left her in the prison pen.
63
ENSLAVED
She wished us fortune from a broken heart :
Let her come with us, Khalif, when we start."
" Go, you/' the Khalif said, "and choose her forth."
At noon the wind was blowing to the north ;
A swift felucca with a scarlet sail
Was ready for us, deep with many a bale
Of gold and spice and silk, the great King's gifts.
The banners of the King were on her lifts.
The King and all his court rode down to see
Us four glad souls put seawards from Saffee.
In the last glowing of the sunset's gold
We looked our last upon that pirate hold;
The palace gilding shone awhile like fire,
We were at sea with all our heart's desire,
Beauty and friendship and the dream fulfilled :
The golden answer to the deeply willed,
The purely longed-for, hardly tried-for thing.
Into the dark our sea-boat dipped her wing ;
Polaris climbed out of the dark and shone,
Then came the moon, and now Saffee was gone.
With all hell's darkness hidden by the sea.
* *
64
ENSLAVED
Oh, beautiful is love, and to be free
Is beautiful, and beautiful are friends.
Love, freedom, comrades, surely make amends
For all these thorns through which we walk to death !
God let us breathe your beauty with our breath.
* * *
All early in the Maytime, when daylight comes at
. four,
We blessed the hawthorn blossom that welcomed us
ashore,
Oh, beautiful in this living that passes like the foam.
It is to go with sorrow, yet come with beauty home !
THE HOUNDS OF HELL
ABOUT the crowing of the cock,
When the shepherds feel the cold,
A horse's hoofs went clip-a-clock
Along the hangman's wold.
The horse-hoofs trotted on the stone,
The hoof-sparks glittered by,
And then a hunting horn was blown
And hounds broke into cry.
There was a strangeness in the horn,
A wildness in the cry,
A power of devilry forlorn
Exulting bloodily.
A power of night that ran a prey
Along the hangman's hill.
The shepherds heard the spent buck bray
And the horn blow for the kill.
66
THE HOUNDS OF HELL
They heard the worrying of the hounds
About the dead beast's bones ;
Then came the horn, and then the sounds
Of horse-hoofs treading stones.
"What hounds are these that hunt the night?"
The shepherds asked in fear.
" Look, there are calkins clinking bright ;
They must be coming here."
The calkins clinkered to a spark,
The hunter called the pack ;
The sheep-dogs' fells all bristled stark
And all their lips went back.
" Lord God !" the shepherds said, " they come ;
And see what hounds he has :
All dripping bluish fire, and dumb,
And nosing to the grass,
" And trotting scatheless through the gorse,
And bristling in the fell.
Lord, it is Death upon the horse,
And they're the hounds of hell !"
They shook to watch them as they sped,
All black against the sky ;
A horseman with a hooded head
And great hounds padding by ;
67
THE HOUNDS OF HELL
When daylight drove away the dark
And larks went up and thrilled,
The shepherds climbed the wold to mark
What beast the hounds had killed.
They came to where the hounds had fed,
And in that trampled place
They found a pedlar lying dead,
With horror in his face
* #
There was a farmer on the wold
Where all the brooks begin,
He had a thousand sheep from fold
Out grazing on the whin.
The next night, as he lay in bed,
He heard a canterer come
Trampling the wold-top with a tread
That sounded like a drum.
He thought it was a post that rode,
So turned him to his sleep ;
But the canterer in his dreams abode
Like horse-hoofs running sheep.
And in his dreams a horn was blown
And feathering hounds replied,
And all his wethers stood like stone
In rank on the hillside.
68
THE HOUNDS OF HELL
Then, while he struggled still with dreams,
He saw his wethers run
Before a pack cheered on with screams,
The thousand sheep as one.
So, leaping from his bed in fear,
He flung the window back,
And he heard a death-horn blowing clear
And the crying of a pack,
And the thundering of a thousand sheep,
All mad and running wild
To the stone-pit seven fathoms deep,
Whence all the town is tiled.
After them came the hounds of hell,
With hell's own fury filled ;
Into the pit the wethers fell,
And all but three were killed.
The hunter blew his horn a note
And laughed against the moon ;
The farmer's breath caught in his throat,
He fell into a swoon.
* # *
The next night when the watch was set
A heavy rain came down,
The leaden gutters dripped with wet
Into the shuttered town.
69
THE HOUNDS OF HELL
So close the shutters were, the chink
Of lamplight scarcely showed ;
The men at fireside heard no clink
Of horse-hoofs on the road.
They heard the creaking hinge complain,
And the mouse that gnawed the floor,
And the limping footsteps of the rain
On the stone outside the door,
And on the wold the rain came down
Till trickles streakt the grass :
A traveller riding to the town
Drew rein to let it pass.
The wind sighed in the fir-tree tops,
The trickles sobb'd in the grass,
The branches ran with showers of drops :
No other noise there was.
Till up the wold the traveller heard
A horn blow faint and thin ;
He thought it was the curlew bird
Lamenting to the whin ;
And when the far horn blew again,
He thought an owl hallooed,
Or a rabbit gave a shriek of pain
As the stoat leapt in the wood.
70
THE HOUNDS OF HELL
But when the horn blew next, it blew
A trump that split the air,
And hounds gave cry to an Halloo !
The hunt of hell was there.
" Black " (said the traveller), " black and swift,
Those running devils came ;
Scoring to cry with hackles stifft,
And grin-jowls dropping flame."
They settled to the sightless scent,
And up the hill a cry
Told where the frightened quarry went,
Well knowing it would die.
Then presently a cry rang out,
And a mort blew for the kill ;
A shepherd with his throat torn out
Lay dead upon the hill.
* * *
When this was known, the shepherds drove
Their flocks into the town ;
No man, for money or for love,
Would watch them on the down.
But night by night the terror ran,
The townsmen heard them still ;
Nightly the hell-hounds hunted man
And the hunter whooped the kill.
71
THE HOUNDS OF HELL
The men who lived upon the moor
Would waken to the scratch
Of hounds' claws digging at the door
Or scraping at the latch.
And presently no man would go
Without doors after dark,
Lest hell's black hunting horn should blow,
And hell's black bloodhounds mark.
They shivered round the fire at home,
While out upon the bent
The hounds with black jowls dropping foam
Went nosing to the scent.
Men let the hay crop run to seed
And the corn crop sprout in ear,
And the root crop choke itself in weed,
That hell-hound hunting year.
Empty to heaven lay the wold,
Village and church grew green ;
The courtyard flagstones spread with mould,
And weeds sprang up between.
And sometimes when the cock had crowed,
And the hillside stood out grey,
Men saw them slinking up the road
All sullen from their prey
72
THE HOUNDS OF HELL
A hooded horseman on a black,
With nine black hounds at heel,
After the hell-hunt going back
All bloody from their meal.
And in men's minds a fear began
That hell had over-hurled
The guardians of the soul of man,
And come to rule the world
With bitterness of heart by day,
And terror in the night,
And the blindness of a barren way
And withering of delight.
# * *
St. Withiel lived upon the moor,
Where the peat-men live in holes ;
He worked among the peat-men poor,
Who only have their souls.
He brought them nothing but his love
And the will to do them good,
But power filled him from above.
His very touch was food.
Men told St. Withiel of the hounds,
And how they killed their prey.
He thought them far beyond his bounds,
So many miles away.
73
THE HOUNDS OF HELL
Then one whose son the hounds had killed
Told him the tale at length ;
St. Withiel pondered why God willed
That hell should have such strength.
Then one, a passing traveller, told
How, since the hounds had come,
The church was empty on the wold
And all the priests were dumb.
St. Withiel rose at this, and said :
" This priest will not be dumb ;
My spirit will not be afraid
Though all hell's devils come."
He took his stick and out he went,
The long way to the wold,
Where the sheep-bells clink upon the bent
And every wind is cold.
He passed the rivers running red
And the mountains standing bare ;
At last the wold-land lay ahead,
Un-yellowed by the share.
All in the brown October time
He clambered to the weald ;
The plum lay purpled into slime.
The harvest lay in field.
74
THE HOUNDS OF HELL
Trampled by many-footed rain
The sunburnt corn lay dead ;
The myriad finches in the grain
Rose bothering at his tread.
The myriad finches took a sheer
And settled back to food :
A man was not a thing to fear
In such a solitude.
The hurrying of their wings died out,
A silence took the hill ;
There was no dog, no bell, no shout,
The windmill's sails were still.
The gate swung creaking on its hasp,
The pear splashed from the tree,
In the rotting apple's heart the wasp
Was drunken drowsily.
The grass upon the cart-wheel ruts
Had made the trackways dim ;
The rabbits ate and hopped their scuts,
They had no fear of him.
The sunset reddened in the west ;
The distant depth of blue
Stretched out and dimmed ; to twiggy nest
The rooks in clamour drew.
75
THE HOUNDS OF HELL
The oakwood in his mail of brass
Bowed his great crest and stood ;
The pine-tree saw St. Withiel pass,
His great bole blushed like blood.
Then tree and wood alike were dim,
Yet still St. Withiel strode ;
The only noise to comfort him
Were his footsteps on the road.
The crimson in the west was smoked,
The west wind heaped the wrack,
Each tree seemed like a murderer cloaked
To stab him in the back.
Darkness and desolation came
To dog his footsteps there ;
The dead leaves rustling called his name,
The death-moth brushed his hair.
The murmurings of the wind fell still ;
He stood and stared around :
He was alone upon the hill,
On devil-haunted ground.
What was the whitish thing which stood
In front, with one arm raised,
Like death a-grinning in a hood ?
The saint stood still and gazed.
76
THE HOUNDS OF HELL
What are you ?" said St. Withiel. " Speak !"
Not any answer came
But the night-wind making darkness bleak,
And the leaves that called his name.
A glow shone on the whitish thing,
It neither stirred nor spoke :
In spite of faith, a shuddering
Made the good saint to choke.
He struck the whiteness with his staff
It was a withered tree ;
An owl flew from it with a laugh,
The darkness shook with glee.
The darkness came all round him close
And cackled in his ear ;
The midnight, full of life none knows,
Was very full of fear.
The darkness cackled in his heart
That things of hell were there,
That the startled rabbit played a part
And the stoat's leap did prepare
Prepare the stage of night for blood,
And the mind of night for death,
For a spirit trembling in the mud
In an agony for breath.
77
THE HOUNDS OF HELL
A terror came upon the saint,
It stripped his spirit bare ;
He was sick body standing faint,
Cold sweat and stiffened hair.
He took his terror by the throat
And stamped it underfoot ;
Then, far away, the death-horn's note
Quailed like a screech-owl's hoot.
Still far away that devil's horn
Its quavering death-note blew,
But the saint could hear the crackling thorn
That the hounds trod as they drew.
" Lord, it is true," St. Withiel moaned,
t( And the hunt is drawing near !
Devils that Paradise disowned,
They know that I am here.
" And there, O God, a hound gives tongue,
And great hounds quarter dim "
The saint's hands to his body clung,
He knew they came for him.
Then close at hand the horn was loud,
Like Peter's cock of old
For joy that Peter's soul was cowed,
And Jesus' body sold.
78
THE HOUNDS OF HELL
Then terribly the hounds in cry
Gave answer to the horn ;
The saint in terror turned to fly
Before his flesh was torn.
After his body came the hounds,
After the hounds the horse ;
Their running crackled with the sounds
Of fire that runs in gorse.
The saint's breath failed, but still they came :
The hunter cheered them on,
Even as a wind that blows a flame
In the vigil of St. John.
And as St. Withiel's terror grew,
The crying of the pack
Bayed nearer, as though terror drew
Those grip teeth to his back.
No hope was in his soul, no stay,
Nothing but screaming will
To save his terror-stricken clay
Before the hounds could kill.
The laid corn tripped, the bramble caught,
He stumbled on the stones
The thorn that scratched him, to his thought,
Was hell's teeth at his bones.
79
THE HOUNDS OF HELL
His legs seemed bound as in a dream,
The wet earth held his feet,
He screamed aloud as rabbits scream
Before the stoat's teeth meet.
A black thing struck him on the brow,
A blackness loomed and waved ;
It was a tree he caught a bough
And scrambled up it, saved.
Saved for the moment, as he thought,
He pressed against the bark :
The hell-hounds missed the thing they sought,
They quartered in the dark.
They panted underneath the tree,
They quartered to the call ;
The hunter cried : " Yoi doit, go see !"
His death-horn blew a fall.
Now up, now down, the hell-hounds went
With soft feet padding wide ;
They tried, but could not hit the scent,
However hard they tried.
Then presently the horn was blown,
The hounds were called away ;
The hoof-beats glittered on the stone
And trotted on the brae.
80
THE HOUNDS OF HELL
The saint gat strength, but with it came
A horror of his fear,
Anguish at having failed, and shame,
And sense of judgment near :
Anguish at having left his charge
And having failed his trust,
At having flung his sword and targe
To save his body's dust.
He clambered down the saving tree.
" I am unclean !" he cried.
" Christ died upon a tree for me,
I used a tree to hide.
" The hell-hounds bayed about the cross,
And tore his clothes apart ;
But Christ was gold, and I am dross,
And mud is in my heart."
He stood in anguish in the field ;
A little wind blew by,
The dead leaves dropped, the great stars wheeled
Their squadrons in the sky.
* * *
" Lord, I will try again," he said,
" Though all hell's devils tear.
This time I will not be afraid,
And what is sent I'll dare."
81 F
THE HOUNDS OF HELL
He set his face against the slope
Until he topped the brae ;
Courage had healed his fear, and hope
Had put his shame away.
And then, far-off, a quest-note ran,
A feathering hound replied :
The hounds still drew the night for man
Along that countryside.
Then one by one the hell-hounds spoke,
And still the horn made cheer ;
Then the full devil-chorus woke
To fill the saint with fear.
He knew that they were after him
To hunt him till he fell ;
He turned and fled into the dim,
And after him came hell.
Over the stony wold he went,
Through thorns and over quags ;
The bloodhounds cried upon the scent,
They ran like rutting stags.
And when the saint looked round, he saw
Red eyes intently strained,
The bright teeth in the grinning jaw,
And running shapes that gained.
82
THE HOUNDS OF HELL
Uphill, downhill, with failing breath,
He ran to save his skin,
Like one who knocked the door of death,
Yet dared not enter in.
Then water gurgled in the night,
Dark water lay in front,
The saint saw bubbles running bright ;
The huntsman cheered his hunt.
The saint leaped far into the stream
And struggled to the shore.
The hunt died like an evil dream,
A strange land lay before.
He waded to a glittering land,
With brighter light than ours ;
The water ran on silver sand
By yellow water-flowers.
The fishes nosed the stream to rings
As petals floated by,
The apples were like orbs of kings
Against a glow of sky.
On cool and steady stalks of green
The outland flowers grew.
The ghost-flower, silver like a queen,
The queen-flower streakt with blue.
83
THE HOUNDS OF HELL
The king-flower, crimson on his stalk,
With frettings in his crown ;
The peace-flower, purple, from the chalk,
The flower that loves the down.
Lilies like thoughts, roses like words,
In the sweet brain of June ;
The bees there, like the stock-dove birds,
Breathed all the air with croon.
Purple and golden hung the plums ;
Like slaves bowed down with gems
The peach-trees were ; sweet-scented gums
Oozed clammy from their stems.
And birds of every land were there,
Like flowers that sang and flew ;
All beauty that makes singing fair
That sunny garden knew.
For all together sang with throats
So tuned, that the intense
Colour and odour pearled the notes
And passed into the sense.
And as the saint drew near, he heard
The birds talk, each to each,
The fire-bird to the glory-bird.
He understood their speech.
84
THE HOUNDS OF HELL
One said : " The saint was terrified
Because the hunters came."
Another said : " The bloodhounds cried,
And all their eyes were flame."
Another said : " No shame to him,
For mortal men are blind :
They cannot see beyond the grim
Into the peace behind."
Another sang : " They cannot know,
Unless we give the clue,
The power that waits in them below
The things they are and do."
Another sang : " They never guess
That deep within them stand
Courage and peace and loveliness,.
Wisdom and skill of hand."
Another sang : " Sing, brothers ! come
Make beauty in the air !
The saint is shamed with martyrdom
Beyond his strength to bear.
" Sing, brothers ! every bird that flies !"
They stretcht their throats to sing,
With the sweetness known in Paradise
When the bells of heaven ring.
85
THE HOUNDS OF HELL
"Open the doors, good saint!" they cried,
Pass deeper to your soul ;
There is a spirit in your side
That hell cannot control.
" Open the doors to let him in,
That beauty with the sword ;
The hounds are silly shapes of sin,
They shrivel at a word.
" Come, saint !" and as they sang, the air
Shone with the shapes of flame,
Bird after bright bird glittered there,
Crying aloud they came.
A rush of brightness and delight,
White as the snow in drift,
The fire-bird and the glory-bright,
Most beautiful, most swift.
Sweeping aloft to show the way,
And singing as they flew,
Many and glittering as the spray
When windy seas are blue.
So cheerily they rushed, so strong
Their sweep was through the flowers,
The saint was swept into their song
And gloried in their powers.
86
THE HOUNDS OF HELL
He sang, and leaped into the stream,
And struggled to the shore ;
The garden faded like a dream.
A darkness lay before.
Darkness with glimmery light forlorn
And quavering hounds in quest,
A huntsman blowing on a horn,
And lost things not at rest.
He saw the huntsman's hood show black
Against the greying east ;
He heard him hollo to the pack
And horn them to the feast.
He heard the bloodhounds come to cry
And settle to the scent ;
The black horse made the hoof-casts fly.
The sparks flashed up the bent.
The saint stood still until they came
Baying to ring him round :
A horse whose flecking foam was flame,
And hound on yelling hound.
And jaws that dripped with bitter fire
Snarled at the saint to tear.
Pilled hell-hounds, balder than the geier,
Leaped round him everywhere.
87
THE HOUNDS OF HELL
St. Withiel let the hell-hounds rave.
He cried : " Now, in this place,
Climb down, you huntsman of the grave,
And let me see your face.
" Climb down, you huntsman out of hell
And show me what you are.
The judge has stricken on the bell,
Now answer at the bar."
The baying of the hounds fell still,
Their jaws' salt fire died.
The wind of morning struck in chill
Along that countryside.
The blackness of the horse was slirunk,
His sides seemed ribbed and old.
The rider, hooded like a monk,
Was trembling with the cold.
The rider bowed as though with pain ;
Then clambered down and stood,
The thin thing that the frightened brain
Had fed with living blood.
" Show me. What are you ?" said the saint.
A hollow murmur spoke.
" This, Lord," it said ; a hand moved faint
And drew aside the cloak.
88
THE HOUNDS OF HELL
A Woman Death that palsy shook
Stood sick and dwindling there ;
Her fingers were a bony crook,
And blood was on her hair.
" Stretch out your hands and sign the Cross,"
Was all St. Withiel said.
The bloodhounds moaned upon the moss,
The Woman Death obeyed.
Whimpering with pain, she made the sign.
" Go, devil-hag," said he,
" Beyond all help of bread and wine,
Beyond all land and sea,
Into the ice, into the snow,
Where Death himself is stark !
Out, with your hounds about you, go,
And perish in the dark !"
They dwindled as the mist that fades
At coming of the sun ;
Like rags of stuff that fire abrades
They withered and were done.
The cock, that scares the ghost from earth,
Crowed as they dwindled down ;
The red sun, happy in his girth,
Strode up above the town.
89
THE HOUNDS OF HELL
Sweetly above the sunny wold
The bells of churches rang ;
The sheep-bells clinked within the fold,
And the larks went up and sang ;
Sang for the setting free of men
From devils that destroyed ;
The lark, the robin, and the wren,
They joyed and over-joyed.
The chats, that harbour in the whin,
Their little sweet throats swelled,
The blackbird and the thrush joined in,
The missel-thrush excelled.
Till round the saint the singing made
A beauty in the air,
An ecstasy that cannot fade
But is for ever there.
90
CAP ON HEAD
A TALE OF THE O'NEILL
O'NEILL took ship, O'Neill set sail,
And left his wife ashore
In the foursquare castle like a jail,
Between the Mull and the Gore.
Many a month he stayed away,
His lady sorrowed long ;
She heard the tide come twice a day,
And the sea-lark at his song ;
She watched the sun go down in the west,
And another day begin ;
At nights she made her mate a nest,
But no mate came therein.
+
One night a red light burned at sea,
A ship came into port,
A foot stirred and the horn was blown
Within the outer court.
91
CAP ON HEAD
It was all dark save up the brae
The dead moon wore her heel ;
The watchman called, " Who's there the day ?"
A voice said, "The O'Neill."
The watchman flung the great gate back :
" Come in, lord, to your own."
O'Neill stood huddled up in black
Upon the threshold stone.
White as a riser from the dead
He passed the lintel post.
" God spare us, lord !" the watchman said,
" I thought you were a ghost.
" I never heard you come ashore ;
And, look, your ship is gone.
Are all our fellows dead, my lord,
That you should come alone ?"
O'Neill stood grinning in the porch
A little breathing space ;
The redness blowing from the torch
Put colour in his face.
" I've left my ship behind," he said,
"To join the Scotch King's fleet.
I've left my men behind," he said,
"To haul on her fore-sheet.
92
CAP ON HEAD
" I have come home all alone," he said,
" In a country ship from sea.
Let my lady know the news," he said,
" Then open here to me."
Then lights were lit, and men gave hail
And welcomed him ashore ;
The wife was glad within that jail
Between the Mull and the Gore.
O'Neill went swimming in the sea
And hunting up the glen ;
No one could swim or ride as he
Of all the sons of men.
His wife went happy in the lane
And singing in the tower ;
The sweet of having him again
Had ended all the sour.
But Kate, an old crone muttering dark
About that windy place,
Did not rejoice ; she said : " I mark
O'Neill has fal'n from grace.
" He has been under the dark star
Since when he went away.
Men think that when they wander far
The black thing becomes grey.
93
CAP ON HEAD
" He has been dipped in the strange vat
And dyed with the strange dye ;
And then the black thing what is that
That dogs him, going by ?
" A dog thing, black, goes padding past
Forever at his heel :
God help us all to peace at last !
I fear for the O'Neill,
" His teeth show when the Host does come
To comfort dying men ;
And in the chapel he is dumb,
He never says Amen."
She would not speak with the O'Neill,
But when he crossed her path
She prayed, as tremblers do that feel
The devil in his wrath.
# * *
And so the Time went by, whose hand
Upheaves the lives of men ;
The cuckoo left his burning land
To toll along the glen.
So loud the thrushes sung that spring,
So rich the hawthorn was,
The air was like a living thing
Between the sky and the grass.
94
CAP ON HEAD
O'Neill's wife bore a little son,
And set him on her knee ;
He grew apace to romp and run
And dabble in the sea.
But one thing strange about the child
The neighbours noted there :
That, even if the winds were mild,
His head was never bare.
His father made him wear a cap
At all times, night and day,
Bound round his forehead with a strap
To keep the cold away.
And up and down the little lad
Went singing at his game :
Men marvelled at the grace he had
To make the wild birds tame.
Men marvelled at the joy he took,
And at the things he said,
And at the beauty of his look,
This little Cap on Head.
And when the nights were dark between
The new moon and the old,
And fires were lit, and winds blew keen,
And old wives' tales were told,
95
CAP ON HEAD
This little son would scramble near
Beside his mother's place,
To listen to the tale and peer
With firelight on his face.
O'Neill would gather to the glow
With great eyes glittering fierce ;
Old Kate would shake to see him so,
And cross herself from curse.
# * *
It fell about hay-harvest time,
When the Lammas floods were out,
A ship all green with water-slime
Stood in and went about.
And anchored off the bight of sand,
And swam there like a seal,
With a banner of the bloody hand,
The flag of the O'Neill.
Then there was cheering in the court
And hurrying to the beach.
" A ship !" they cried, " a ship in port,
Brought up in Castle Reach.
" It is our ship. They are our men
There, coiling up the sheet ;
It is our ship come home agen
From out the Scotch King's fleet.
96
CAP ON HEAD
" And who's the noble in the boat
Comes rowing through the sea ?
His colours are the O'Neill coat,
But what O'Neill is he ?"
r *
O'Neill was in his turret tower,
With writings red and black ;
Kate crossed herself to see him glower
That tide the ship came back.
He looked long at the anchored ship,
And at the coming boat ;
The devil writhelled up his lip,
And snickered in his throat,
He strode the room and bit his nails,
He bit his flesh with rage,
As maddened felons do in jails,
And rats do in a cage.
He looked at Kate, who crossed her breast ;
He heard them cheer below.
He said : " The wicked cannot rest,
And now I have to go."
They saw him hurry up the green
And on into the rain ;
Beyond the brae he was not seen ;
He was not seen again.
# * #
97 G
CAP ON HEAD
O'Neill's wife went to watch the boat
Come driving to the sand ;
The noble in the O'Neill coat
Stood up and waved his hand.
"That is O'Neill!" the clansmen cried,
" Or else his very twin."
" How came he to the ship ?" they cried.
te Just now he was within."
"It is O'Neill/' the lady said,
" And that's his ship returned.
And a woman's life's a school," she said,
fe Where bitter things are learned."
O'Neill called to her through his tears :
" The bitter days are past.
I've prayed for this for seven years,
Now here I am at last."
Then, as the boat's bows cut the strand
Among the slipping foam,
He sprang to take his lady's hand ;
He said : " I have come home."
His lady fainted like the dead,
Beside the slipping sea.
" This is O'Neill," the servants said,
" What is that other he ?"
98 ,
CAP ON HEAD
" Master," they said, "where have you been
These seven years and more ?"
" I've served the Scottish King and Queen
Along the Scottish shore."
" Master," they said, " another came,
So like in voice and face
To you, we thought it was the same,
And so he took your place.
" These seven years he's ruled us here,
While you were still at sea,
And that's his son that's coming here
Look, Master, that is he."
* * *
O'Neill took off the wee boy's cap
And ruffled through his hair ;
He said : " A young tree full of sap,
A good shoot growing fair."
He turned the hair for men to see,
And swallowed down his tears ;
He said : " The gods be good to me,
The boy has devil's ears !"
He took the young child by the heels
And broke him, head and breast :
The red hand ridded the O'Neills
That cuckoo in the nest.
99
CAP ON HEAD
O'Neill flung out the little limbs
To drift about the bay.
" Watch, fellows, if he sinks or swims,"
Was all they heard him say.
He said : " The wicked cannot rest,
And now I have to go."
He set his ship's head north and west
And stood into the flow.
The ship went shining like a seal,
And dimmed into the rain.
And no man saw the great O'Neill,
Nor heard of him again.
100
SONNETS
LIKE bones the ruins of the cities stand,
Like skeletons and skulls with ribs and eyes
Strewn in the saltness of the desert sand
Carved with the unread record of Kings' lies.
Once they were strong with soldiers, loud with voices,
The markets clattered as the carts drove through,
Where now the jackal in the moon rejoices
And the still asp draws death along the dew.
There at the gates the market men paid toll
In bronze and silver pennies, long worn thin ;
Wine was a silver penny for a bowl ;
Women they had there, and the moon, and sin.
And looking from his tower, the watchman saw
Green fields for miles, the roads, the great King's law.
101
SONNETS
Now they are gone with all their songs and sins,
Women and men, to dust ; their copper penny,
Of living, spent, among these dusty inns ;
The glittering One made level with the many.
Their speech is gone, none speaks it, none can read
The pictured writing of their conqueror's march ;
The dropping plaster of a fading screed
Ceils with its mildews the decaying arch.
The fields are sand, the streets are fallen stones ;
Nothing is bought or sold there, nothing spoken :
The sand hides all, the wind that blows it moans,
Blowing more sand until the plinth is broken.
Day in, day out, no other utterance falls ;
Only the sand, pit-pitting on the walls.
102
SONNETS
None knows what overthrew that city's pride.
Some say, the spotted pestilence arose
And smote them to the marrow, that they died
Till every pulse was dusty ; no man knows.
Some say, that foreign Kings with all their hosts
Sieged it with mine and tower till it fell,
So that the sword shred shrieking flesh from ghosts
Till every street was empty ; who can tell ?
Some think, that in the fields, or in the pit,
Out of the light, in filth, among the rotten,
Insects like sands in number, swift as wit,
Famined the city dead ; it is forgotten.
Only the city's bones stand, gaunt in air,
Pocked by the pitting sandspecks everywhere.
103
SONNETS
So shall we be ; so will our cities lie,
Unknown beneath the grasses of the summer
Walls without roofs, naves open to the sky,
Doors open to the wind, the only comer.
And men will grub the ruins, eyes will peer,
Fingers will grope for pennies, brains will tire
To chronicle the skills we practised here,
While still we breathed the wind and trod the mire.
Oh, like the ghost at dawn, scared by the cock,
Let us make haste, to let the spirit dive
Deep in self's sea, until the deeps unlock
The depths and sunken gold of being alive,
Till, though our Many pass, a Something stands
Aloft through Time that covers all with sands.
104
THE PASSING STRANGE
OUT of the earth to rest or range
Perpetual in perpetual change,
The unknown passing through the strange.
Water and saltness held together
To tread the dust and stand the weather,
And plough the field and stretch the tether,
To pass the wine-cup and be witty,
Water the sands and build the city,
Slaughter like devils and have pity,
Be red with rage and pale with lust,
Make beauty come, make peace, make trust,
Water and saltness mixed with dust ;
Drive over earth, swim under sea,
Fly in the eagle's secrecy,
Guess where the hidden comets be
105
THE PASSING STRANGE
Know all the deathy seeds that still
Queen Helen's beauty, Caesar's will,
And slay them even as they kill ;
Fashion an altar for a rood,
Defile a continent with blood,
And watch a brother starve for food ;
Love like a madman, shaking, blind,
Till self is burnt into a kind
Possession of another mind ;
Brood upon beauty, till the grace
Of beauty with the holy face
Brings peace into the bitter place ;
Probe in the lifeless granites, scan
The stars for hope, for guide, for plan ;
Live as a woman or a man ;
Fasten to lover or to friend,
Until the heart break at the end
The break of death that cannot mend :
Then to lie useless, helpless, still,
Down in the earth, in dark, to fill
The roots of grass or daffodil.
106
THE PASSING STRANGE
Down in the earth, in dark, alone,
A mockery of the ghost in bone,
The strangeness, passing the unknown.
Time will go by, that outlasts clocks,
Dawn in the thorps will rouse the cocks,
Sunset be glory on the rocks :
But it, the thing, will never heed
Even the rootling from the seed
Thrusting to suck it for its need.
Since moons decay and suns decline,
How else should end this life of mine ?
Water and saltness are not wine.
But in the darkest hour of night,
When even the foxes peer for sight,
The byre-cock crows ; he feels the light.
So, in this water mixed with dust,
The byre-cock spirit crows from trust
That death will change because it must ;
For all things change, the darkness changes,
The wandering spirits change their ranges,
The corn is gathered to the granges.
107
THE PASSING STRANGE
The corn is sown again, it grows ;
The stars burn out, the darkness goes ;
The rhythms change, they do not close.
They change, and we, who pass like foam,
Like dust blown through the streets of Rome,
Change ever, too ; we have no home,
Only a beauty, only a power,
Sad in the fruit, bright in the flower,
Endlessly erring for its hour,
But gathering, as we stray, a sense
Of Life, so lovely and intense,
It lingers when we wander hence,
That those who follow feel behind
Their backs, when all before is blind,
Our joy, a rampart to the mind.
108
ANIMULA
THIS is the place, this house beside the sea ;
This was the setting where they played their parts.
Two men, who knew them all, have talked to me :
Beauty she had, and all had passionate hearts.
I write this in the window where she sat.
Two fields, all green with summer, lie below ;
Then the grey sea, at thought, cloud-coloured, flat
Wind-dappled from the glen, the tide at flow.
Her portrait and her husband's hang together
One on each side the fire ; it is close ;
The tree-tops toss, it is a change of weather.
They were most lovely and unhappy, those,
That married pair and he who loved too well ;
This was the door by which they entered hell.
109
ANIMULA
This is a drawing of her as a child,
This is she wed ; the faces are the same,
Only the beauty of the babe is wild,
The woman's beauty has been broken tame.
Witty, bright, gentle, earnest, with great eyes,
Dark hair in heaps, pure colour, lips that smile ;
Beauty that is more wisdom than the wise
Lived in this woman for a little while.
Dressed in that beauty that our mothers wore
(So touching now), she looks out of the frame
With stag-like eyes, that wept till they were sore
Many's the time, till she was broken tame.
Witty, bright, gentle, earnest, even so,
Destiny calls and spirits come and go.
MO
ANIMULA
This is her husband in his youth ; and this
Is he in manhood ; this is he in age.
There is a devil in those eyes of his,
A glittering devil, restless in his cage.
A grand man, with a beauty and a pride,
A manner and a power and a fire,
With beaks of vultures eating at his side,
The great brain mad with unfulfilled desire.
" With grand ideas," they say ; tall, wicked, proud,
Cold, cruel, bitter, clever, dainty, skilled ;
Splendid to see, a head above the crowd ;
Splendid with every strength, yet unfulfilled.
Cutting himself (and all those near) with hate
From that sharp mind which should have shaped a
state.
Ill
ANIMULA
And many years ago I saw the third
Bowed in old age and mad with misery ;
Mad with the bright eyes of the eagle-bird,
Burning his heart at fires of memory.
He stood behind a chair, and bent and muttered ;
Grand still, grey, sunburnt, bright with mad eyes brown,
Burning, though dying, like a torch that guttered
That once had lit Queen Helen through the town.
I only saw him once : I saw him go
Leaning uphill his body to the rain,
Too good a man for life to punish so,
Theirs were the pride and passion, his the pain.
His old coat napped ; the little children turned
To see him pass, that passionate age that burned.
112
ANIMULA
" I knew them well, all three," the old man said ;
" He was an unused force, and she a child.
She caught him with her beauty, being a maid.
The thought that she had trapped him drove him wild.
" He would not work with others, could not rest,
And nothing here could use him or engage him ;
Yet here he stayed, with devils in his breast,
To blast the woman who had dared to cage him.
" Then, when the scholar came, it made the three :
She turned to him, and he, he turned to her.
They both were saints : elopement could not be ;
So here they stayed, and passion plied the spur.
" Then the men fought, and later she was found
In that green pool beyond the headland, drowned.
lift
ANIMULA
" They carried her drowned body up the grass
Here to the house ; they laid it on the bed
(This very bed, where I have slept, it was).
The scholar begged to see her, being dead.
" The husband walked downstairs, to see him there
Begging to see her as one asks an alms.
He spat at him and cut his cheek-bone bare.
' There's pay/ he said, ' my poet, for your psalms.'
" And then they fought together at the door,
Biting each other, like two dogs, while she
Lay dead, poor woman, dripping on the floor
Out of her hair the death-drops of the sea.
" Later, they fought whenever they might meet,
In church, or in the fields, or in the street."
114
ANIMULA
Up on the hill another aged man
Remembered them. He said : " They were afraid ;
They feared to end the passions they began.
They held the cards, and yet they never played.
" He should have broken from her at all cost ;
She should have loved her lover and gone free.
They all held winning cards, and yet they lost ;
So two were wrecked and one drowned in the sea.
" Some harshness or some law, or else some fear
Stifled their souls ; God help us ! when we know
Certainly, certain things, the way is clear.
And yet they paid, and one respects them so.
" Perhaps they were too fine. I know not, I.
Men must have mercy, being ripe to die."
1J5
ANIMULA
\
So this old house of mourning was the stage
(This house and those green fields) for all that woe.
There are her books, her writing on the page ;
In those choked beds she made the flowers grow.
Most desolate it is, the rain is pouring,
The trees all toss and drip and scatter evil,
The floods are out, the waterfall is roaring,
The bar is mad with many a leaping devil.
And in this house the wind goes whining wild,
The door blows open, till I think to see
That delicate sweet woman, like a child,
Standing with great dark stag's eyes watching me ;
Watching as though her sorrow might make plain
(Had I but wit) the meaning of such pain.
116
ANIMULA
I wonder if she sang in this old room.
Ah, never ! No ; they tell me that she stood
For hours together staring into gloom
Out of the prison bars of flesh and blood.
So, when the ninth wave drowned her, haply she
Wakened, with merging senses, till she blent
Into the joy and colour of the sea,
One with the purpose of the element.
And there, perhaps, she cannot feel the woe
Passed in this rotting house, but runs like light
Over the billows where the clippers go,
One with the blue sea's pureness of delight ;
Laughing, perhaps, at that old woe of hers
Chained in the cage with fellow-prisoners.
117
ANIMULA
He died in that lone cottage near the sea.
In the grey morning when the tide was turning
The wards of life slipt back and set him free
From cares of meat and dress, from joys and yearning.
Then like an old man gathering strength, he strayed
Over the beach, and strength came into him,
Beauty that never threatened nor betrayed
Made bright the eyes that sorrow had made dim ;
So that upon that stretch of barren sand
He knew his dreams ; he saw her beauty run
With Sorrowful Beauty, laughing, hand in hand ;
He heard the trumpets blow in Avalon.
He saw the golden statue stretching down
The wreath, for him, of roses, in a crown.
118
ANIMULA
They say that as her husband lay a-dying
He clamoured for a chain to beat the hound.
They say that all the garden rang with crying
That came out of the air, out of the ground,
Out of the waste that was his soul, may be,
Out of the running wolf-hound of his soul,
That had been kennelled in and now broke free
Out to the moors where stags go, past control.
All through his life his will had kennelled him ;
Now he was free, and with a hackling fell
He snarled out of the body to the dim,
To run the spirits with the hounds of hell ;
To run forever at the quarry gone,
The uncaught thing a little further on.
ANIMULA
So, one by one, Time took them to his keeping,
Those broken lanterns that had held his fire ;
Dust went to dust, and flesh had time for sleeping,
And soul the stag escaped the hound desire.
And now, perhaps, the memory of their hate
Has passed from them, and they are friends again,
Laughing at all the trouble of this state
Where men and women work each other pain.
And in the wind that runs along the glen
Beating at cottage doors, they may go by,
Exulting now, and helping sorrowing men
To do some little good before they die.
For from these ploughed-up souls the spirit brings
Harvest at last, and sweet from bitter things.
120
THE LEMMINGS
ONCE in a hundred years the Lemmings come
Westward, in search of food, over the snow ;
Westward, until the salt sea drowns them dumb ;
Westward, till all are drowned, those Lemmings go.
Once, it is thought, there was a westward land
(Now drowned) where there was food for those starved things,
And memory of the place has burnt its brand
In the little brains of all the Lemming kings.
Perhaps, long since, there was a land beyond
Westward from death, some city, some calm place
Where one could taste God's quiet and be fond
With the little beauty of a human face ;
But now the land is drowned. Yet still we press
Westward, in search, to death, to nothingness.
121
FORGET
FORGET all these, the barren fool in power,
The madman in command, the jealous O,
The bitter world biting its bitter hour,
The cruel now, the happy long ago.
Forget all these, for, though they truly hurt,
Even to the soul, they are not lasting things :
Men are no gods ; we tread the city dirt,
But in our souls we can be queens and kings.
And I, O Beauty, O divine white wonder,
On whom my dull eyes, blind to all else, peer,
Have you for peace, that not the whole war's th uncle
Nor the world's wreck, can threat or take from here.
So you remain, though all man's passionate seas
Roar their blind tides, I can forget all these.
122
ON GROWING OLD
BE with me, Beauty, for the fire is dying ;
My dog and I are old, too old for roving.
Man, whose young passion sets the spindrift flying,
Is soon too lame to march, too cold for loving.
I take the book and gather to the fire,
Turning old yellow leaves ; minute by minute
The clock ticks to my heart. A withered wire,
Moves a thin ghost of music in the spinet.
I cannot sail your seas, I cannot wander
Your cornland, nor your hill-land, nor your valleys
Ever again, nor share the battle yonder
Where the young knight the broken squadron rallies.
Only stay quiet while my mind remembers
The beauty of fire from the beauty of embers.
123
ON GROWING OLD
Beauty, have pity ! for the strong have power,
The rich their wealth, the beautiful their grace,
Summer of man its sunlight and its flower,
Spring-time of man all April in a face.
Only, as in the jostling in the Strand,
Where the mob thrust or loiters or is loud,
The beggar with the saucer in his hand
Asks only a penny from the passing crowd,
So, from this glittering world with all its fashion,
Its fire, and play of men, its stir, its march,
Let me have wisdom, Beauty, wisdom and passion,
Bread to the soul, rain where the summers parch.
Give me but these, and, though the darkness close,
Even the night will blossom as the rose.
124
LYRIC
GIVE me a light that I may see her,
Give me a grace that I may be her,
Give me a clue that I may find her
Whose beauty shows the brain behind her.
Stars and women and running rivers,
And sunny water where a shadow shivers,
And the little brooks that lift the grasses,
And April flowers are where she passes.
And all things good and all things kind
Are glimmerings coming from her mind,
And in the may a blackbird sings
Against her very hearte springs.
BILLING AND SONS, LTD,, PRINTERS, OUILDFORD, ENGLAND
Masefield, John
6025 Enslaved, and other poems
A77E5
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UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY
